What's new in Version 1.8?

If you missed it over the holiday weekend, Version 1.8 of Project Red went live on Friday.  This is probably the biggest update since the 1.0 launch as it contains two new chapters and loads of additional content.  This post will be a companion to the changelog giving you a closer look at what's new and breaking down some behind the scenes stuff so if you'd like to avoid spoilers I'd recommend just downloading the update and giving it a go.

If you don't mind the spoilers or have already played it for yourself then stick around.

Chapter 1: Prologue - The Girl in the Red Hood

Now if you've paid attention to prior devlogs you'll notice that Chapter 1 itself underwent some major changes from when I first built it to the released demo.  I'd like to discuss a lot of what happened here in detail.  To start I wanted to say that the original plan for Chapter 1 was for it to be played like the rest of the game.  That is an actual level set at the school that you would walk around in and explore.  Where I ran into issues however was the size and scope of that level.  If I made it the way it was in my head, with SEVERAL floors.  And the ability to enter into classrooms and hide, well, it would be a ridiculously long section of the game.  And surely some players would spend way too long exploring the rooms.  On top of that a stalker style enemy would take LOTS of work to figure out and have the events all play out properly.  So I quickly scrapped my plans and moved on to a second idea.  A first person dungeon crawler style section.  This way it could be more railroaded, and I wouldn't have to actually program an enemy that walks around the map and follows you but I could just make scripted encounters occur.  This was also where I had the idea to change the sequence to being in black and white.  The chapter ends with the Girl walking through a mirror and I had the cool idea of mimicking The Wizard of Oz and making her step into a world of color after passing through the mirror.  Now again I ended up scraping the dungeon crawler aesthetic for challenges making that actually work on top of my background arts NOT being my strong suit.

So the final version ended up being a Visual Novel approach as you can play now.  The only problem was that I and I imagine many others, stumbled upon a game called "Slay the Princess."  A game that is in a visual novel style, with black and white imagery, told through a first person perspective and for which a mirror plays a major role.  Fantastic game but it made me weary of actually committing to my ideas.  I guess I didn't want people to think I just copied that game since Chapter 1 was never playable.  And so as you can see in older dev logs, when I got around to MAKING Chapter 1 I went with a different aesthetic.  With black as the major color and white being used for the lines.  And it's not that I disliked that exactly.  It was fine.  And I was going to leave it that way until after some play testing I remembered, oh yeah, I still haven't add the Chapter title card to the start.  So I put that in, did another play test and realized.  Wow, it's really dumb to have Chapter 1 be called "The Girl in the Red Hood" when you can't SEE THE CHARACTER. NOR HER HOODIE.  This name was decided from the original conception where you would play as a proper visual character sprite.  And rather than change the title, I finally cracked I suppose.  And with two days before the demo deadline I quickly redid the entire chapter.  Drawing in the titular Girl into several frames.  And while I was at it I finally got over my insecurities and fear of comparison and decided.  Ya know what?  Slay the Princess is great.  I don't really care if people think I ripped it off.  I'd be happy to be compared to such an amazing game.  On top of that the art looks way better like this, AND it makes the Wizard of Oz parallel way more apparent.  And so Chapter 1 morphed into this final form.

And as a result of removing the first person aspect I was able to use more wild ideas and stick a few more references in there as well.  Throughout Chapter 1 it's possible to have a number of encounters with Death as she chases you down the halls of the school.  There are several variant dead ends here ranging from being sliced in half to having your heart crushed.  They were all really fun to write and I hope some of you have a good time going through and trying to see all the ways you can get killed here.  And yes this is indeed the same Death featured on the Death tarot card in the game.  While I'm not going to elaborate on what this means for the context of this scene I'll leave that to your imagination.

Eventually after crossing through the mirror you'll meet with the Strange Girl.  It was hard to talk about this sequence pre release but now that the demo is out I'd like to talk about it in more detail.  The informal title for this girl is "The Game Master."  And I think you can understand why simply by looking at the image above.  She asks to play a "game" with YOU after all.  And you can see a game board, figurines of Red and Witch and a deck of cards.  This is the context for the cosmic chess game that is Project Red.  What are the Tarot Cards in the gameplay about?  Literal events where the Game Master draws a card and the story unfolds based on what position it is in.  She out right tells you that your choices will impact an innocent girl before you assume the role of "Red" and begin dictating what will happen to her.  I've said this since I first shared this game publicly, but it's important to understand that you do NOT play as Red.  You are a voice in her head. You can convince her to do things whether she really wants to or not.  You can influence her and corrupt her.  And the context for that is finally made clear with the inclusion of Chapter 1.  What that means for the story going forward, how you feel about manipulating Red from here.  That's all things that will be left in the air until the full game I'm sure.

Chapter 2: The Witch and the Wolf that Howl's my Name

Chapter 2 is actually where the very idea of Project Red began.  When I had a dream about a girl in a red hoodie brutally stabbing a man to death while straddling him.  It was such specific imagery that it really stuck with me after waking up.  I remember thinking to myself as I closed my eyes "What would happen next?" And perhaps because she was wearing a red hood or perhaps because at the time I was two chapters deep into an Alice in Wonderland adult comic the first thing that came into my mind was a Wolf emerging from the bushes.  Not an ordinary wolf however, a massive hulking beast.  And in that moment I knew my Alice In! spinoff, Project Red was born.

Now if you've played Chapter 2 you probably have a few questions about it.  It's not hard to notice after all that the girl in the park and the girl who wake up in Wonderland have several differences.  Ranging from the lack of Pink streaks in the hair to different hairstyles all together to different eye colors and of course different voice actresses.  And while I know exactly why that is...I have no intention of explaining any of it to you.  You'll just have to play the full game when it comes out and seek out the answers of the True Ending!  As another fun fact, Project Red was originally planned to be an interactive webcomic.  But the more ideas I added and came up with like combat and alternate routes the more my friends told me "Why don't you just make a game?" and well, the rest was history as they say.

Now of course the meeting with the Wolf goes about as bad as you would expect, and I have updated the games warning screen on boot up to better reflect some of the more graphic content.  The safe for work version itself pulls no punches with the very clearly implied assault that takes place here.  The R18 version is far more graphic as it stands.  I struggled a lot with figuring out where to draw the line of "effective" and "too much" and I hope I landed that well enough.  I'm an internet person so I know there will always be people turned on by things that aren't really MEANT to be erotic and of course I think my art style itself is a bit of a double edged sword with wanting to depict anything serious of this nature as it leans too far INTO said erotic territory.  But hopefully some people will be made uncomfortable from the scene as it is depicted as that's what I really wanted to try and convey.

The Path of Blood

The third Goddess route has officially been introduced into the game.  While prior builds alluded to Ichor and themes of self harm this build firmly establishes her altar and the start of her skill tree.  That being said it is still a VERY early build and not fully functional.  Ichor's path will be fleshed out in future updates to be as finalized as the other routes as well as to have it's proper events such as desecrating other Goddess Statues by marking them with Red's blood and such.

As mentioned above this skill tree is not yet fully functional but the TIer 0 and Tier 1 skills SHOULD all work and function.  I'm not sure your affinity with Ichor CAN go beyond that in the current build,, but if you do go to Tier 2 you'll find the whole thing will start to break and give you Eros skills since I haven't updated my copy and paste yet.  Apologies for that!  But it was another last minute push to include this at all.

You can find Ichor's altar at the River map before you meet Scarecrow.  Simply interact with her fountain to unlock the new skill tree.  Of course the full game will feature more fountains as well but in the demo this may be the only one included.

Other Updates

As for other updates a new secret boss has been added to the game.  This is the Abomination Omega. A hideous creature formed through alchemy and magic and the corpses of women.  Like the bloodlust stuff above this was VERY last minute so I'm sure the balance is all wrong and there are likely other issues.  But I'll clean that up for a small update before the end of the month I'm sure.  Just waiting to see if any bugs get reported for now first.

Voice acting has been heavily improved as well.  Scarecrow and Cheshire were elevated to fully voiced and Cheshire even has a song that can play while in her shop.  And Red and Hati had their missing lines added in.  All in all pretty substantial stuff.

A new lewd event was added where you can give a second hand job to the camper who asks for one.  Features new voice acting and new art with a different outcome for the event as a whole.

3 new enemies have been added with Imps, Golems and Plague Rats as mentioned in previous devlogs.  As well most enemies have had their details updated and new Enemy Intel can be purchased from the Alchemist at the Merchant Camp  and the Innkeeper at Broomhill so you can spend gold to uncover enemy weaknesses and make battles more manageable.

Other systems that I've talked about in more detail include item crafting, bullet crafting, cooking, and even weapon upgrades and skill mastery.  It's a very large update and whether you simply play the new chapters and bounce or go through the whole thing again to experience all the changes I hope you'll have a great time with it.  

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!  And as always thank you all for your continued support!

For behind the scenes updates, voting on future last minute updates and other bonuses, considering supporting the games development on Patreon.