The Festival - Developer Log 18, 5/24/2026
Hello everyone! I hope you have all been enjoying the spring and early summer weather, even as it has been erratic here in the Northeast.
I paused development since the beginning of April, as I once again took care of personal matters, but since the last dev log, I have made a ton of updates big and small. Around the end of March, I released a new build of the game (which I didnāt announce here, oops), which, among other things, features the revamped Disco Elysium-style dialogue UI that Grace and I have been working on. Iām slowly returning to work now, but I wanted to give a quick update of what changes have been made since the end of February.
First off, the Disco-style dialogue UI has been reworked to better fit Graceās mock-up. This means making the layout of all the elements a little more consistent and easier-to-read, though all of this will be replaced with polished assets in the near future.
Next up, a small but major update has been changing the lighting for the Hemmingward village section. I loved the red-orange saturation from before, but it always felt unnatural relative to daytime lighting, AND it would cause problems on certain monitors that were too saturated in their colors. While I donāt know if this current lighting scheme solves that issue entirely, it at least looks more consistent with the sort of lighting you would expect from a sunny fall afternoon.
Speaking of lighting, something I finally rectified was showing a storm + rain roll into Hemmingward after your first conversation in the Temple. The characters and flavor text referenced it previously, but now it is actually implemented ā and it looks pretty nice! This was accomplished through loading a different sublevel for a lighting setup and using Unrealās Niagara particle system to mimic rainfall.
Iām still working on fleshing out all possible interactable objects in Act I, but I have finally gotten around to making certain objects in the environment have their own dialogue. Everything you can click on and read about will tell you a little more about Hemmingward, and the world at large.
Last, but not least, we now have TRAITS incorporated into the game! Theyāre not present in every conversation (Iām still working on that), but upon starting a new game, you will be asked to choose two of six traits to reflect Nishmaās interests and expertise. These will grant unique dialogue options in conversation, and ā potentially! ā have more gameplay ramifications down the line. Iām basing this traits system directly off those found in Pentiment, and in Scarlet Hollow (pictured below).
Actually I lied, there was one last-er update after the traits one.
One significant quality of life change that I implemented was allowing the graphical quality to be adjusted/reduced from the settings menu. So far, this is the only real games setting that can be tweaked ā Iām still working on figuring out the others. A major reason I implemented this is because Unreal seems to package games at the highest quality settings, so this will hopefully help people run the game on older/lower-end systems. Heck, my own PC tower from 2017 canāt run the game well if itās anything higher than medium, so that incentivized me to incorporate this feature sooner rather than later.
Iāve been pacing myself with development, but I would like to have Act I of Hemmingward finalized relatively soon. Most of what is already in place and integrated into the game. I just need to add some ancillary content to flesh everything out, from item descriptions, to bonus interactions, to major animations (though minor animations may need more time to be integrated, and so may come at a later time after Act I is considered feature complete).
I canāt say for certain when I will have everything finalized, but pending any other major life updates, I am aiming for a tentative due date of the end of June to have the last of Act Iās features implemented and corrected. Even this may be overly ambitious, though it feels nice to slowly return to work on the game once again.
I will try to return again with another devlog soon ā I have some other exciting developments in store, though it is too early to report on those.
I hope you all enjoy the transition from spring to summer in these coming weeks!










