Hi guys,

It's been quite some time since the last "devlog". And honestly, I enjoy taking some time off of development to let you in on how progress is moving. So moving forward, there will be monthly updates either on the 6th, 10th, or 11th of each month.

Three Random Archives:

Back in August I announced that TRA would be delayed out of this year and into next year. Since then, I have spent the last 3 months and a half completely overhauling the current systems and gameplay experience. Fixing and improving upon issues players had with it, specifically Archive #1: "Hail To The Jester" and its difficulty curve, considering most players will start with that story first. Do the changes make it any easier? No, but it is a little less rage inducing.

Archive #2: Coming Home has also had some work done for its story, such as the lighting in the HD version and the admittedly annoying potholes that appear in the minigame. But I'll save all changes that were made to the overall game for when the update eventually release.

What I want to focus on today is the new content that'll be releasing, over the course of the following months not only for TRA, but also new projects that been in the works.

Kicking things off, last month I began development on Archive #3 story! I won't reveal too much about it, nor the name just yet, but I will show off some of the gameplay teasers I already revealed three weeks back.

As always what you're looking at is a WIP, but nonetheless I hope you enjoyed these teasers.

As seen in the demo, Archive #1 is focused on creating a very chaotic, intense gameplay experience, Archive #2 is for those who want a relaxing experience ala Nights in the Woods. While Archive #3 is a mix of the two, but very much a story-driven experience. Lore will not be the focus of this game, as I want the gameplay and a unique player experience to be at the forefront of everything.

What I'm looking to achieve with this game is a sandbox-esque experience - an amusement park of games if you will. You can play the game in any order you like, there is no "correct way to play it". When one section becomes too rage inducing or you just need a break from the action, you'll have another story/minigame to fall back on. You can start with the rollercoaster insanity that is the first archive, or maybe you want to start with the relaxing Ferris wheel that is the second. The choice is yours. But considering this is an indie game in 2022-23, you can probably guess there's more to the idea of stopping one story/minigame midway to play another. I'll leave just it at that. ;)

As for when you can expect to play the third archive? Originally planned to be in the demo, I decided the third archive will be apart of the full game.

There's still a lot of work that need to be done before I could consider this game to be complete though, three core boxes have to be knocked off the checklist both on the development side and social media side. These are: audience expansion, specialize package, and lastly intrigue.

Audience expansion: Pretty self-explanatory, but the game needs to meet a decent follower count before the game comes out.

Personalize experience: From its gameplay to the story, there will be at least 10 - 15 unique random events that'll occur in the game. Along fun extra stuff such as cheat codes being in the game and so much more.

Intrigue: While lore won't be a huge factor in the development of this game, that doesn't mean there won't be "some" open-ended questions at the end. Whether it be the characters or how the universe operates. These are fun things I would love to leave open-ended as I think its creepier to not have all the answers.

Extra:

As mention before, I have been working on a plethora of different projects in the background, some old, some new. None of which has taken time from TRA's development, if anything, it sped development up. Some the content from these projects will be seen in TRA, but I of course won't say which ones for the sake of not spoiling the gameplay, except for one, but more on that later.

First up on the dock is a really OLD game I made back in 2015-16 called, Cube-X: Journey to The Highest Mountain. It's a short 5 - 20 minute rage game, the content of the game will remain untouched, the only thing that will see a change is the music for copyright reasons. It's also a game I developed and remade for the Meta Game Jam at one point, so it'll be interesting to see how it holds up in today's time.

The second project will also be a re-release of one of my old games, this one is an arcade-style "sequel" to Cube-X. This game is garbage, boring, and has no substance to it whatsoever.

Cube-X 2: Adventure further (because I as a kid, I really thought this game idea and the name was "cool" haha...… -_-) This was the game where I started to develop a design philosophy and two signature features that would be seen in all my games going forward, something that may or may not be noticeable as you through them and TRA.

Project #3: This game is something entirely new and different, not only in concept but also something completely unique I haven't seen done in anywhere else. That's a bold statement to make, but what it is will have to wait. If everything goes according to plan it might be ready by the end of the year. This game in particular is a special case and has to be handle with care, there are many reasons for this but I'll save that for a future discussion, but essentially I'll be using this game as a test case to answer one question that has been running through my mind since the development of TRA: Can 2D horror games be scary? I won't be spending too much time on it as the prototype will only see a development time of 3 - 6 days. Here what I will say, a lot of gameplay that'll be seen in P3, came directly from one of the archives in TRA just without the horror elements.

Project #4: Soul Chain. This is another game made in a recent game jam I took part in, it's very short and I'm not unsure if it'll ever receive updates outside of the jam version that was released. But if it does, it most likely won't occur any time soon. I'm not really too fond of this game, as it's my first attempt at making a puzzle game, and the gameplay itself is really boring. The game is available right now for download on Itch.io, but it'll come over to GameJolt later this week.

As for the older games and Project 3, those games will be rolled out bi-monthly in-between development updates with TRA. So stay tuned for when they drop, I'm unsure if they're going to be release in order of when I developed them or from my favorites to least favorites, we'll see.

And that's it for this month! Hope you all enjoyed the reveals and new content, and if you haven't already I would highly recommend you subscribe to my YouTube channel. If everything pans out correctly, a trailer should roll out eventually in the coming week for the before the of the year. Thanks very much for reading, and I'll see you next month.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVKbh-nQDxx59CV1-Zh4MA

- Xion