It's been a while, huh? To say that a lot has happened is... an understatement.
Before we get into the actual devlog, there's a few things I wanted to say:

1) The game is free. Ever since I announced DEERWOOD as an original project, many people have jumped to the conclusion that I was randomly going to charge for it.
That's obviously not the case.

2) DEERWOOD won't be ported to mobile and I don't know when it's releasing either, stop asking me about it.
We're still actively working on it to ensure that it's the best it can be while still following my vision.

3) Thank you all so much for 45k views on the Teaser Trailer, that's insane.

With that out of the way... let's get into it.

General Update

It's been a long time since the last devlog, and for that I apologize. I was only willing to make another update after reaching a specific milestone in the game's development.

Despite that, I haven't been COMPLETELY quiet.
Back in November, I made a Gameplay Teaser as a donation goal for @DavidBaron 's Charity Tournament!

You can go watch the Teaser here. It showcases some of the mechanics you will be seeing in the game!
(Fun fact: it actually took me multiple attempts to record because Russel wouldn't attack me, what a dickhead.)

I've also been gathering more reactions and thoughts from multiple people in my circles, which was both helpful for motivation and feedback.
We ended up tweaking how the game works because of that!

In addition, the voice acting is done! @softSynthethic recorded all of her lines a few months back and they've (mostly) been implemented.
You can hear a tiny bit of that in the teaser I talked about earlier!

Beta Testing

Aside from a few balancing issues and bug fixes... WE'RE DONE WITH THE GAMEPLAY LOOP!

Not only can you play a fully functional night in DEERWOOD, you can play ALL of them!

This is easily the portion of the gameplay that took us the most time and effort to figure out, but it's absolutely been worth it so far.

Part of the reason it took so long was longtime issues, such as character movements malfunctioning a lot and instantly killing the player.
@HackGameX294 had to reprogram this function roughly three times while dealing with software crashes. However, it was worth seeing the game in a near perfect state!

(Can you see the anomaly?)

To accompany this, the game also features Discord Rich Presence! Now everyone will be able to judge your progress on the game, just like real friends do.

Cutscenes

We've made more progress on the cutscenes!
While I won't show them for obvious reasons, I can say that people have been really enjoying them so far.

There aren't a lot of them and they're not super long, but I do think they add a lot to the story...

Alright, I'll give you a new frame to compensate.

What's next?

I'd obviously like to continue game development (preferably with more original projects), but I DO have something in the works.

@TheDuggster has been hard at work on something very special. Introducing:

DEERWOOD: Letters from the Edge is a short film. Set a week prior to the events of the main game, it explores the effects of the establishment and its ghost-like nature on the guard that preceded you.

That's all for now! Thank you for the constant support and patience.

DEERWOOD is a project I'm still very passionate about.
I'm always trying to make things that (specifically) my friends and I would like, but I do hope you'll like it too.

- @bonzee

Oh and Emil asked me to include this too: