Devlog #29: Yusuke In Action

I finally released the long-promised polished update last week, and I’m very happy with how it turned out. I playtested it myself multiple times and got my brother to play it through again so I’m confident that it’s bug-free and definitely a huge improvement on the last demo.

I also got my non-gamer mum to play it for the first time now that it’s nearing it’s final form and she struggled a little at times but seemed to enjoy it (or at the very least understood the appeal).

If you’re interested in the full list of changes to the demo, I wrote a change-log here > https://yozoraki.itch.io/nagayami-nights-demo/devlog/513322/demo-update-v105-cha...

---------------------------------------------------------

Sound Effects

One of the biggest additions to the demo is improved audio, although I'm still missing a lot of SFX. But thankfully, I’ve now recruited someone to help with the sfx for the game, starting with the adaptive footstep sounds you can hear in the demo.

I wrote  out a full list of all the sound effects I need for the game so far, and in hindsight I now realise I would’ve eventually needed to get help at some point because I just don’t have the time or skills to get them all done up to standard. So I really appreciate the help, and things are going much smoother already! You can find his stuff here. Even in a short time working with him I can already heartily recommend him for any audio needs and look forward to having him on the team.

Now with SFX and Music delegated to much more talented people than me, I'm pretty confident I can create the final game I have pictured in my mind. Exciting stuff.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Battle Yusuke

I’ve been working on mostly random stuff this week, mostly plans for new areas and sprites/tilesets that’s not ready to share, but I also started working on adding Yusuke's functions as a recruitable party member:

Yusuke is a new type of contestant: Heavyhitter. His attack is a classic found in many minigame-style RPGs- a hammer attack. Hold it down to charge it up for more damage, but hold too long and the attack fails. It hit's two characters but can only reach the back two if there's nobody in front. I drew the animation to match his overworld building animation. (clearly still needs some work)

His SPIN is very different from usual and I had to rework the system entirely to get it working but I think it was worth it: to match his love of building, I made his SPIN DIY.

Yusuke's SPIN is split into two stages. The first stage will give you a blank spin and you'll have to select your own prompts to add. Two of them are randomised to add some variation and stop players doing the same build every time.

The next turn you use SPIN will then ask you to repeat the prompt you built, and getting it right will daze a single target. Daze is really powerful, completely immobilising the target for a turn, so the build stage means you have to charge and spend two turns to pull it off. (a guaranteed daze every turn would definitely break the game)

At first you'll be wasting a turn to charge his SPIN, but I'll fix this with upgrades available later in the game. The first of these upgrades planned is one that will give Yusuke +1 temporary DEF for each unique prompt used to build his SPIN. e.g. if the prompt is 'XCZVXXCC' then he'll get +4 DEF for a single round. This  also incentivises players to make more difficult builds!

----------------------------------------------------

Goals for next week

I’ve been planning out a lot of the heart scenes and character upgrades, and it’s got me in the mood to work on the battle system. I'd especially like to get some other character's power moves added as I've been putting them off for a while now.

-Yusuke in party (battle and overworld)
-Abu in party (battle and overworld)
-Momo’s POW
-Ayumu’s POW

-----------------------------------------

Tell me what you think

I’ve set up an anonymous form for demo feedback if anyone reading has played it previously and had any thoughts that they’d like to tell me privately, and if you have any thoughts on anything in my devlogs from now on you’re welcome to use that form too and just ignore the prompts.

Submit feedback here> https://forms.gle/26nnpDH4kQGMCPRJ9

Be as critical, direct and brutal as you like, completely anonymously (or add your name if you like). Nice feedback is appreciated too of course.

Now that my game is very close to the quality I plan for the full release, I’d really appreciate any feedback so I don’t overlook something until it’s too late. I often see other’s indie games and see glaring flaws that I’m too polite and conflict-avoidant to point out, so I hope if anyone has those thoughts towards my game then they'll tell me through the form!

--------------------------------------------

Thanks for reading! And if you have time, give the new demo a go and let me know what you think :)