Hello! It's been a long while since I made a devlog, but I have a lot of important updates involving the game's development to bring to you all!

As you all know, I've been working really hard on this game recently and I was finally able to get a huge chunk of it done.

I recently completed what I like to call the "Base game." The base game includes the office gameplay, free roam, and dialogue. I'm basically able to play through the entire game without having to skip or jump through anything.

Being able to complete this part of the game helped me optimize it more while stabilizing the game's difficulty curve.

Now that the base game is complete, I'm focusing on finishing what I like to call the "Post Processing" part of the game, like cutscenes and stuff. But more on that later, let's first talk about the base game's updates.

To start off, I completely changed the free roam's mechanics. In the demo, you were able to roam around the restaurant to get from the office to the post shift task, however some areas were off limits. But in the full version, free roam is available at the beginning of the night so the player can locate their office.

Why did I change it?

Because, during these free roam portions, you're able to interact with A LOT of things in the Pizza Palace. Your cursor will change whether something is interactable or not. Interacting with something will prompt Lake (The dude you play as) to comment on it.

Wandering around the restaurant is completely optional, you don't have to do it. But it gives you the opportunity to help fully understand the game's story.

The game's difficulty curve is wayyy more stabilized than before. I wasn't able to say anything about it before because I wanted there to be more content to share with you, as the amount of gameplay footage I've shared so far is very confined.

The games mechanics are introduced once at a time, so you're able to understand how it works, able to perfect it, and create your own strategy as the game progresses. Because remember, every animatronic has their own mechanic.

I also changed how the office's tasks work. In the demo, they were just boring press and hold tasks that didn't actually have you doing any work to complete them.

But in the full game, they've been completely reworked. To be able to complete a night, you'll have to complete a select number of very short tasks, failure to do so will result in a game over. But don't worry, these tasks change each night so you're not doing the same ol' task for the entirety of the game.

Now onto the more disappointing updates I made to the game.

I removed most of the game's post shift tasks.

Why?

This game is long as hell for a fan game lol, well over an hour of gameplay for the average player.

The reason they were removed is the exact same reason why some of the nights were removed from the game. Which if you forgot, the original story for the game had 10 nights with post shift tasks after every night.

But after revising the story, a lot of them felt like padding time and filler. Most of them weren't even relevant to the story, and it seemed like they were just there to make you scream a couple times.

But I can't be too upset about it because...I wrote it

But don't fret! The game still has a few post shift tasks, just not as many as I led you all on to think. I removed the fact that the game even had any from the description about two months ago while I was thinking it over lol.

The remaining post shift tasks were kept because they're important to the game's story and aren't just there to scare you (half lie). I promise

: )

Now onto the game's minigames and cutscenes.

There's a lot of cutscenes that use stills as well as completely rendered cutscenes that I have to make.

This is a story-centered game, so expect a lot of reading here and there. And also some voice acting too but more on that in the end.

These cutscenes (still and rendered) range from a minute to around 5 minutes lol, at your own pace of course.

And lastly, for the voice actors out there!! After finishing the cutscenes, I'll finally begin to work on the game's scripts. I'm still revising the game's dialogue and stuff so expect that to take some time.

A few roles are already taken but the next devlog will be about the casting call. So keep your eyes peeled for that.

And hey, you'll even get paid for it by the time the game's done!

Before I close out! I want to talk about the game's release.

At the rate that I'm developing this game at, it should be COMPLETED by the end of the year and ready for a 2027 release. I want to make sure EVERYTHING works.

As of right now, the game's about 75% done. Hell, I was even able to size the game down to around 500MB, which compared to the demo's size, is INSANE. I've optimized the hell out of this project so far and I want to make sure that most devices can run it.

So thank you all for reading all of that bullhonkey, I deeply appreciate all of the support I've received on this game for the past couple of months. And seeing it all coming together is such a jubilating feeling. I love you all, and I'll see you in the next devlog!

Cya! ♡