Boo! It's the spookiest thing of all... A surprise update!!

Back in February, I shared the prototype demo for Sol and the Endless Orbit. My goal was mainly to collect feedback on the gameplay, so a lot of planned story sequences were left out. In that devlog, I mentioned that my next priority would be finishing up this content.

Well... I did that! And you can play it now! Not only that, but I also added:

• New items, Skills, and secrets
• Saving/loading and a title screen
• Settings and keybinding
• Controller support
• Shiny new pause menu
• Reworked tutorials and battle mechanics
• More visual/audio improvements and bugfixes than I can possibly list

Basically all the stuff that the full game will have. (On my end, I also reorganized the game files and added debug tools in order to speed up development.)

I don't know what to call it, so I'm just going to go with "the Crates & Condiments update".

And it's on Steam too! As I understand it, it's really important to get a lot of wishlists early on — it tells the algorithm to recommend the game to more people, thereby assisting me in my devious plan to one day become a full-time indie game developer. So if you have a Steam account (or you're considering creating one), I would really appreciate it if you added the game to your wishlist! It really helps!!

Oh, I should also mention that I released the soundtrack sometime in the months since the last devlog. It'll be updated as the game is developed. It already has all the tracks from this new demo!

Here are some questions I expect people might have about the update:

What took so long?

I really don't like that this is how I'm starting two devlogs in a row, but... yeah, in the last devlog, I implied that this update would be out around May. So let's talk about that.

Most of the delay can be summed up by two lessons I learned: first, don't share deadlines unless I'm really confident. I'm notoriously bad at estimating how long things will take, and by making my estimations public, I just end up putting more pressure on myself, leading to burnout and ironically slowing down the whole process. Going forward, I'd like to showcase progress in more reliably measurable ways, like the completion percentages on the website. (Oh yeah, did I mention there's a website now?)

The second lesson is, I need to write a full script of the game's story. "You're making a story-driven game and you haven't written a script yet?!" I know, I know, let me explain my thought process. So far, my approach has been to keep my plans loose and subject to change; I realized that the older I get, the better my ideas tend to be, so I wanted to leave room for those future ideas. This gradually developed into an aversion to committing to any ideas ahead of time, and this update was the first point where I started to realize that flaw in my approach. I really struggled to set up the story in a way I was satisfied with; at one point I even implemented a whole cutscene with original animations and whatnot, only to end up scrapping it and starting a new version a few days later. This wasn't a huge time loss, but I started to worry about similar things happening down the line. It made me realize the value in having a clear direction. It made me want to have confidence in the execution of future story beats. So I'm changing my approach; while I work on this next section of the game, I'll also be developing a "playable prototype" of the game's story (basically a condensed version of the whole experience) with the goal of getting feedback from people I know.

Another part of the delay can be chalked up to side projects. My comic was on break while I worked on that first demo, and this time it wasn't. I've also started making a game with my little brother since then (at his request). The Steam application/approval process takes the blame for about 3 weeks of the delay (to be fair, I probably should've started that before finishing the update).

Overall, the update was just a bit overwhelming — I was adding new stuff at the beginning, middle, and end of the demo, and polishing up all the old stuff in between. It felt like I was doing a lot at once, and it was hard to know when to stop. Now I only have to focus on the new stuff, which I think will make the rest of development a lot more straightforward. I'm feeling especially optimistic now that I'm done dealing with save files and keybinding; progress is always smoothest when I'm just making content, which is basically all that's left to do! It also helps that we're now out of the stage of tutorials and plot setup, and moving onto the parts where actual cool things can happen...

When's the next update?

In terms of major content updates... probably when I finish Chapter 1 in about a year from now, but it depends. Maybe I'll get impatient and release the first segment on its own. (In case you're wondering, Chapter 1 consists of a prologue (this demo), 3 main segments (the first one is the largest), and a much shorter epilogue. Future chapters will be structured similarly.) So we'll just have to see how things go.

In terms of development progress updates, though... in the last devlog, I said I wanted to do these monthly. This one was an exception, as it was always planned to be posted alongside this first major demo update, but the fact that it took 8 months doesn't necessarily bode well. So this is another case where we'll just have to wait and see how things go — if things start going really well from here, and I have a lot to share, then maybe I will post monthly devlogs! Or maybe I'll decide it's more fun to share a lot of stuff all at once, rather than a little bit every month. In any case, I'll keep thinking about how to strike that balance, and sharing small regular updates in the Discord server in the meantime. I've even been thinking about streaming the process of programming, drawing, and composing parts of the game there. If any of that sounds interesting, I'd be pleased if you considered joining! Everyone there seems really cool, and they've given me a lot of really good suggestions.

Next time, I hope to share a glimpse of the Sunrise Isles! Happy Halloween!