Hello and welcome to January's showstopper.

This edition consists of a few concept pieces, descriptions of technical concepts, a few other random things, as well as a note or two.

Also do note, this edition of the Catchup was delayed by a week and some bit more.

First, I'd like to note that the Outfoxed Interactive account on GameJolt was, regretfully, hastily repainted. It used to be my own personal account (@WolfNT90 ) as well as one more iteration that never really saw the light of day. While Outfoxed's intellectual property can only be traced back to 2019 (the inception year of the Kamoto Project as well), this account displays much older.

A decision was made to keep it this way, and instead reopen an account for myself when I begin creating games (alone) again; More on that later.

Kamoto

Kamoto can be considered the flagship game of ours. We love it and want it to satisfy expectations. We have other ideas in mind, as well as partnership potentials, but it's not good to bite off more than we can chew.

We've run through a few different game design ideas, only a few of which are vague enough to be able to disclose without spoiling anything! Such as... whether Kamoto can directly be controlled in freeroam, or if she should have a dynamic moral compass (based on contextual circumstances), or if vendors should have a simulated queue, as an extension to the time-management element of the game (and for a pinch of realism!), and more.

Yeah. So, moving on, let's talk about what's publicly known (or, should be) about the gameplay elements of Kamoto.

Concepts

Written

The save system is currently our biggest gripe. The working implementation right now is to only save during Sundays, allow resets to the last saved Sunday at any point, and quick-save the beginning of the current day in case of a game crash, or the player may be leaving in a hurry. Save scumming will always be a thing and it doesn't make sense to sour the lives of honest players because of it; If you find yourself having to save scum, play at a lower difficulty.

We have the idea of bringing in a timeline save system (similar to 'Papers, Please') where one can choose at which day they wish to branch off as a new "save", though we have no work done on this nor do we think of sticking with it.

Art

This is the first ever rendition of the end-of-day screen. The idea was to have it be similar or otherwise integrated with the HUD. This was quickly scrapped. 

The following three renditions are the same idea, but different variants. These were scrapped because they looked unfitting for the screen in question.

This is the current end-of-day screen. It is unlike any other menu or screen in the game, admittedly sticking out by being so (and being the reason the previous two were scrapped), but the look and feel has just the right amount of character to it.

Even it has seen tweaks, though!;

We felt the [NEXT DAY] button felt odd when placed in the timeline view.

Feedback

What are your thoughts? Do you have ideas, questions, or wish to provide feedback of any sort? Remember - We have a Discord server that you can join!

Closing remarks

This edition of Catchup was delayed due to, really, lack of time-keeping. That is bad (we know) and we'll strive to do better.

Additionally, as mentioned before, I (@WolfNT90 ) opened a separate personal GameJolt account (it used to be this one). I've been feeling the urge to create projects that differ from the professionalism and perfectionism (sans the awful time allocation) I strive to reach with Outfoxed.

Outfoxed is a small team. We hope to remain a tightly-knit team and make something that will be remembered with, at the very least, good reception.

That being said, do check out the people that we're comprised of:

• @nynxus (@nynxus and @artnynx on Twitter) - Artist, Design

• @WolfNT90 (both on GameJolt and Twitter) - Writer, Programmer, Design

And, a complementary plug,

• @Nico15037 (on GameJolt and Twitter) - Partner

Nico has his own indie game adventure going on. We're open to the idea of one day creating something with him and his team.

Though, beware: The Indie Game Development Community is not without its faults. Just a few days ago, Nico's community server fell victim to a Discord Token grab attack, under the guise of a "school project", that "other indie developers" needed to "rate". NEVER run executables, scripts, or commands from people you do not trust.

We hope to see you again soon. February being so short (and this edition being delayed into it), we may see each other again at the beginning of March.