[Devlog] Current WIP 37

Heya everyone,

Today, I want to share a bit with you how the story is headed for in the next update, and my game design decision over the narration.

The last major update featured a really big level : The hospital. While it was really interesting to craft and allowed a lot of fun gameplay decisions, a few drawback were called out with good reasons by a lot of you all.

First, since the level was really big, this impacted performance a lot and called for drastic optimizations measures. Working and working again on it, I finally got it working on my last minors updates without having to cut down on content or quality. In the end, it was a positive outcome because I applied all of theses optimizations technics to the whole game, who end up running far better.  Still ,this was  a good lesson and I'm now aware of what I can push to optimize a level as soon as it become too big.

Second, on a gameplay-wise design, it's quite a complicated level and I've got a lot of feedback of peoples getting lost or having trouble completing it. While I like doing intricated level and push level design around it, I understand it's not for everyone, especially in a fetish game. 

Third, I had to work on only this level for nearly two full month, which burned me out a bit. It's a long race to close a level this long, and in the end I ended up cutting corners on some details and mecanisms I would have wanted to implement. I especially regret not pushing a lot more on the pediatric ward, on the whole "getting captured and babyfied" trope. I could have done far better, but I was fed up by this level in the end and wanted to get done with it. 

So, I decided to change my approach for the next part of the story. As I mentionned in one of my latest post, I worked a lot of NPC behaviour, reactions,and AI. My idea for the next bit of the story is to provide a more focused, linear and narrative experience (while still having some fexiblity and freedom of course), allowing me to handcraft more events and focusing on interactions.

The general idea is that, if you choose to accept Jason's help, you'll get the possibility to have him follow you around on the next pieces of story. He will comment on what you do, on your accidents if you have one, and so forth. I wanted to provide a more meaningfull experience that focus on telling a story.

Instead of making a big level, I also wanted to split it more. You'll be revisiting the haunted house to find a secret passage, and you'll infiltrate the school at night. And since this was a bit lacking, the whole school will become a place you'll be able to come to during the day, too in a future update. I find it interesting to make you visit it first at night, on a focused narrative experience, then be able to visit it again during the day when it be filled with life. It's also allowed me to make shorter, smaller area so I was less burned out.

I also iterated on some  mecanism to make the whole "infiltration" trope less frustrating. Each patrolling NPC is now able to be hit or distracted by throwing things at them so you have some way to defend yourself. Who didn't dream of knocking of a guard with a giant hammer?

I'm not sure I'll avoid some drawback in the end. Maybe this will be too short, or too much on the linear scale. I'll be eager to hear feedback from you, as it's always precious to me when I design a new area. Finding the right balance is hard, but I'm always glad to hear from you and adjust it one way or another.

That's it for now, the next major update is near ! See ya next time !