V0.6.4 Progress Report

Hey everyone,
it's time to let you know what I'm working on again, and I guess also tell you a little of how I'm holding up. First of all, progress on the game is steady, but as always I will have to wait for some art to be delivered. That said, I also have to do taxes this month, so I have plenty to do to fill the voids. Transitioning is going great, but it's crazy how many changes are already full underway after less than three months. The list of effects they all start between three and six months, but I'm already feeling all of them. That's great for my dysphoria of course, but there are also some negative things like... I wake up every single night because I have to pee and then I can't fall back asleep a lot of the times. So I'm quite tired on those days, which so far hasn't affected my ability to work effectively, but if this goes on forever and I don't get enough sleep every night, it might. So I'm going to ask my doctor about this. What are they supposed to do though? Anyways... here comes the list of features in V0.6.4:

Harpy TF & NPC

As the title suggests, this patch will introduce the probably final monster girl—the harpy. You know by now how the content pipeline for Doomsday works, so I don't think I need to say much more about this. There are new orb locations and new player transformations. After this, I want to work on one more crazy transformation, but it's highly experimental, and if it doesn't work, maybe I'll introduce one more monster girl instead. We'll have to see next patch.

Taking The Elevator

If you've been following the Doomsday puzzle as it comes together, you may know that the goal is to get the elevator running and that that goal has been achievable with V0.6.3, so now it is time to explore the first new area of the house. You'll be able to go up to the management floor. I can't really promise that this patch will already contain much content in that area, but I'll have to see when I get all the final images. I'm looking forward to this, though, because it opens up the possibility of some more world-building.

Katelyn Expressions

If you've followed the last few patches, you know that I'm currently working on replacing all NPC characters' standing images with complex expression systems. This time, I'm working on Katelyn. Again, this is not just the implementation of the graphics itself but also going through all dialogs with Katelyn to add code to trigger what expressions to show, which is, unfortunately, an impossible-seeming soul-crushing amount of work. But I got through it before, so I'm sure I will achieve it again.

More Audio Work

Over the last patches, the audio engineer has done incredible work on all kinds of fronts. Music and FX have greatly improved our experience. This will, however, be the last patch in the near future I'm letting him work on because I feel like the game needs to be in a more finished state to get polished from here on out. That won't be extremely far off, though. I expect him to continue working on the game around this time next year.

New Legacy Items

With the v0.6.x patches, I'm also trying always to improve some aspect of the main gameplay loop so that it becomes more enjoyable. This time, I'm adding new Legacy items that'll let you bypass the contestant quests to make them your ally immediately. As with all Legacy items, you can, of course, only get these if you have already completed the corresponding quest before.

And that's it for patch V0.6.4! I actually had a few more things on my list, but I have to push those back to the next one. I promise V0.6.5 will finally contain a new end-of-week show again. It's been a while. The end of the Doomsday content in general is also at least on the horizon. It will be a few more patches of this, but then I'll be able to go back to finishing the main gameplay loop once and for all.

I hope you look forward to the patch, and I'll talk to you soon.

Best,
Kim