Devlog #3 - The Update Board
Hello everynyan!
It has been some time since our last devlog (3 months!) and we think is time to talk about what we are doing behind the courtains, our plans and, well, our roadmap.
This is our current roadmap for the demo before the release of Darkbound's Chapter 1. After this, the demo will not receive more content, just maintenance updates like game breaking bugs, as we will have our full focus on the development of the first chapter. And as you can see, we are halfway there!
The audio rework implies the incorporation of FMOD to the project, and it being the first time I use it, the tool proves a bit of a challenge as I am still learning it. Also, there are new sounds and systems that come with it, like the footsteps and cameras tracking Miauguel.
(Miauguel's footsteps sound different depending on the surface, when walking over liquid *splash splash * until his socks are dry)
As for the story added update, it will be a short introduction of a new character and a new cinematic to wrap up the demo. To make everything more cohesive we are changing some dialogues, adding/changing cinematics and polishing the story we want to tell overall. We are really excited about this new content and we hope you like it!
(Storyboard previa of one of the new cinematics because, yes, we storyboard EVERY cinematic)
Lastly, the translations update. Some people who enjoyed our game volunteered to localize the demo in other languages! We can't share many details yet but we are very thankful of everyone who is helping to make Darkbound available to other kittens around the globe.
This is a slow process as we have to gather all the dialogues in the game (new ones included) and send it to the translators. Then, make sure everything works and looks good in the game (without us understanding the language D:). When everything is finished, we'll post a build on our Discord server so the bilingual kittens can try it and send us some feedback. Many new things happened since our last chat, we've reached some impressive accomplishments! Like reaching 130 Discord members on Darkbound enjoyers! And reaching 7k wishlists on Steam! Thank you everynyan, we cherish every single fanart, message of support or simple reaction we get from you, it really gives us strenght to keep pushing through! I (Oruga), personally, like to keep track of every piece of content people make of Darkbound (I have a folder on my pc with every fanart I've encountered so far) as I'm the one in charge of our social media. Because of that I also have to deal with situations that fuel my social anxiety to its core. A month ago, while searching in youtube for Darkbound related videos I ran into a 500k views russian video where someone made a very cute summary of the demo. Ignoring the obvious AI images and the fact that I was watching it with auto-generated subs I was pretty impressed with the editing and happy that our game could be shared with a russian speaking community! Then, the summary ended with him extracting the game data and opening it in Godot (we were aware that this could happen) and leaking every piece of juicy content that we don't show on the demo but is included in the game files! Even if most of it is pretty outdated I was still dissapointed. I guess it's our fault but I'm sad now :( Anyways, thanks to this we have a lot of russian speaking followers now (привет!) the Darkbound virus keeps spreading around the world, nyehehe!~
(Insanely funny fanart by reallycrazyinconvenience posted on our discord server)
I also wanna talk about a part of gamedev that no one wants to talk about... The marketing and publicity production... I'm no marketing expert, I have no idea what I'm doing 90% of the time, but this is something exceptionally important when you want to realease a game! Because Trashdaw already has too much on his plate I take care of this burden, and let me tell ya... this is hard. Not only I have to squeeze my brain juices to create content for social media (mostly awful tiktoks) I also have to keep an eye on available events that MIGHT accept Darkbound. This last month we joined two Steam fests and we already set everything up for two more next year. Hope I get a raise someday!
(Process of the marketing images I make for the Steam fests, because I like to add my own touch to everything!)
Welp, that's everything we had to say! If you want to ask anything, we are available at our Discord server!
Until next time! ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ
- Oruga and Trashdaw
