Hello everyone, over the past couple months of development some very large changes have been made to the project, each of which has had their own hand in pushing back the release date more and more. While these changes have been made, most of my focus went from transparency to the fans into brute forcing development, however that puts the fans in an awkward position, as they don't have anything to get hyped up about before the release. Whilst I cannot promise improvement with my transparency right now, I can give some context to why this game still isn't out and why I've been radio silent over the past year of development.

(Lovely WIP logo created @EgorUnde314 )

Where do I begin? There've been so many changes to the project it's actually hard to recall what I have and have not talked about since the demo released over a year ago. Though there is one thing I've had on the forefront of my mind for the past couple months I know I need to share, as it changes the scope and outlook of the project exponentially, but we will get to that later.

To begin, I'll talk about something a little more tame. As with most projects go, the further you find yourself in development the more you find yourself capable of, some devs ignore this new found skill set and continue to develop their project with a slight efficiency boost, other devs will go back and enhance their work from before with this new found perspective and skill set. I personally find myself as a dev willing to go back and redo some earlier assets and ideas with these newly learned skills, thus why this project hasn't been released yet. Had I not gone back and redone some assets the chances of the project being released by now is very high, however I could never get myself to release that version of the project and dip. Out of respect for everyone who has supported me and helped me get this far, I was never gonna drop some ugly, buggy, mess of a game as my thank you, that was worse then canceling the game in my eyes.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's start to talk about some juicer things.

For starters, the stars of the show have seen some of the greatest redesigns I've ever created, let's talk about the surgeons.

The surgeons in the demo worked simply, once one of them spots you, they'll alert the others to your location. For what the demo was, that one and only ability in zone 1 fit pretty well. The original idea was to give them more abilities in zone 2 as they entered their frenzy forms, however the abilities seemed pretty pointless and only really just annoyed the player more than anything. In zone 2 the surgeons would have gained a pill toss ability as well as a door smash ability. The pill was only really just a stun mechanic and the door smash was only for spooking the player, neither of these abilities really fit in well with the gameplay cycle, so they've been completely redesigned.

In the current version of Deception of Fate, the surgeons continue to communicate with other surgeons within the level, however in way more interesting and balanced way. Surgeons have also gained some new abilities, however I probably won't talk about them until later on in development incase some of them get scrapped.

But the surgeons have seen upgrades in more than just their abilities, as of recently the team and I have been working really had to make these doctors of destruction appear so much more life like. There were many things holding us back from achieving this goal, one of which being the actual model of the surgeons themselves. You see, the surgeon's model was one of the very first things I created when I begun the demo version of DoF, at that time I had no idea how to make a character model (I still don't, I just tell others to do it for me), so doing what most beginner developers do I threw them together in Fuse and slapped some blood-splatters on their textures in photoshop. At the time this design looked amazing to me, but as development went on I started to see more and more flaws in their model and rig. Now we come to current day, along side all of the other changes we've made recently, the surgeon's model, rig, voice lines, and AI have all been changed for the better. I will not be showing the new model, nor anything regarding the silly little surgeons until later on, as I truly do believe these guys deserve to have the best redesign reveal they can possibly have. Just know the surgeons are nothing like what they were in the demo.

The hospital in the demo version of Deception of Fate was surprisingly well received by most players, however I always knew I could do better. Looking back on that old design, there were so many issues that just take away from the player's experience. To list a couple issues, there was an excessive amount of vertices within the map, these would gravely tank performance for players with lower end PCs. Alongside technical issues there were flaws with the flow of the map, to be specific there are some rooms with multiple floors. The original idea of zone 1 was to have it feature two floors similar to zone 2, however I legit just got lazy. I kept in the rooms with completed second floors in the game under the assumption that the player would actually like it, after all, at the time there weren't many fangames within the community with a second floor. This assumption would end up falling flat on it's face when it came time to release the demo, as these rooms really just ended up boring the player and taking away from the overall experience. These rooms would feel more like tasks than anything else.

It should come as no shock by now when I say the hospital has been completely redesigned, this time with a way more dark atmosphere. Unsurprisingly, a lit up shiny environment really doesn't convey the lurking dangers present in the maze with you.

Finally, I can talk about one of the bigger change to the roots of the game itself, the story.

Originally the script was more of a light hearted story you'd typically expect to see within a fangame, however out of pure displeasure and borderline hatred for the corniness of some parts within the script, the entire game has been entirely rewritten in favor of a more enthralling and darker vibe. There isn't much I can really talk about when it comes to this change, as almost everything I would say would really just end up spoiling it. Just know there a greater focus on the characters themselves, their backstories, and how they interact with the environments they find themselves in.

But now, let's talk about the final massive change Deception of Fate has seen. This change has been the most challenging to implement, even so far as to make me contemplate the value on working on this game at all. This goes beyond a model or story change, this is quite literally a game-changer.

Developing a fangame is probably the best way to get introduced into game development as a whole, you never really have to worry about advertisement as you can just plop it into your server's local self-promotion channel and call it a day, you have plenty of premade assets at your disposal, and you don't have to worry about accidentally scamming people if your game is garbage. All of these reasons are why Deception of Fate began as a Dark Deception fangame, however considering the amount of personal growth I've had as a developer, I feel I'm capable of so much more. With this new story I previously mentioned, there are a lot more depictions of gore and examples of characters cussing. As I kept writing this new version of the script, the game began to feel less and less like a game similar to Dark Deception and more like a game similar to titles such as Outlast and Resident Evil. Because of this, I believed it was finally time to grow as a developer and make the transition. Deception of Fate is no longer a Dark Deception fangame, instead a stand alone title entirely owned by me.

This change was far from easy, now instead of simply ripping assets and using them in my own game as a way of speeding up development, I had to create everything myself. Thankfully, I work around tons of very talented people, when it came to something I had no experience in, someone would end up lending a hand and making my life so much easier. However with all this new talent, a lot of the design work still lays on me, making this the hardest change to implement over the entirety of development.

With Deception of Fate now being it's own thing, I had to make a noticeable separation from the typical "gather shards in the maze then leave" gameplay while still managing to hold onto the arcade-game feeling Dark Deception has. Game design is no easy task, to make a change to the roots of a project would turn some devs off, and I totally respect that. Thankfully we are finally past that process, but holy did I want to give up.

So, what does the future hold for Deception of Fate? I have some very big plans for this project, some of which you may see very very soon, others may take a bit. In the future I want do things like make an official Deception of Fate Discord server, or release some already revamped OSTs. But that's the future, for now I'll keep slamming away at this project until I have more stuff I can show.

As much as I want to finish the monster of an article on a promise that things speeding up and near the finish line, I don't want to outright lie. With summer break coming to an end and college appearing around the corner, development in all likeliness is gonna slow down in favor of my mental health. Don't get me wrong, I love working on this project with everything in my heart, but I also want to pass college and not waste my money. This doesn't mean I'm gonna take a 9 month break from this project, just probably won't be working on it everyday like I did over summer.

Regardless I want to thank those of you who have stuck around and waited patiently as these changes have been occurring behind the scenes, your support is the biggest reason we devs do what we do. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

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