Hey guys, hope all of you are doing well.

It's been a while since we sent out an update, we've been putting our best efforts on Terminus however we also found ourselves caught working for much more smaller projects which unfortunately results in development for Terminus getting slowed down. Yeah, game development isn't the nicest thing but as always there's a reason for everything.

The Transmute

Our current project is called The Transmute, which has a demo we've recently released an update to. It's also a retro survival horror game and while it is inspired by Alone in the Dark it also shares some of the core features with Terminus such as inventory management, combat and puzzles. A lot of improvements for Terminus have also been carried over to Transmute. If you wish to try it out the demo is available in both itch.io and Gamejolt.

The game was initially made for UDC Game Jam and the DOS Game Jam, however it was only a mere prototype demo which we wanted to expand into a full game. You may be wondering why would we prioritize Transmute over Terminus? If we're going to be entirely frank, we've been overwhelmed by the worst part of game development, burnout.

The horrors of development

Terminus is a project that needs a lot of work and care into it. We, as a two-man team, have burnt ourselves out trying to bring out the demo. We're not a flexible and experienced development team and we feel like it would be more appropriate for us to jump into a simpler project like Transmute. It's very challenging for us to finish Terminus as we need monsters, we need story, we need CGI, we need models for players and levels, animations/cutscenes, music, etc. It's a challenging ordeal and we can't easily do it ourselves nor do we have money for help.

Transmute on the other hand is a less challenging and something for us to blow some steam off. It is a project of much smaller scale and is something we feel like we can finish within a shorter timeframe. We believe by the time we finish Transmute we'll be able to carry over some of the experience we gained towards Terminus and can also hopefully have a proper budget to work with.

That being said though, it would be unfair not to show something at the end of this devlog so here's some interesting screenshots. These screens show an unused cutscene we made for v0.1.5 of the demo, which was as you can see, scrapped for certain reasons. This might be in the final game, although it could possibly undergo some changes.

Alongside this we've also got previews for the intro cutscene. These were being made for the Story (Town) portion of the demo but eventually it was left unfinished due to exhaustion. We hope to get back to it on a later date. 

Hard Riddle Mode Walkthrough

We know that our game might have been one hell of a challenge for you guys, and we greatly appreciate your efforts in going past through the hard riddle mode of our game. We greatly congratulate those who have succeeded, however for those who are still stuck, we've created an official walkthrough for Terminus and it's hard riddle mode.

You can view the walkthrough by clicking here.

Even though this news might not be the best we would thank you for all the support you've given us. We're looking forward to the day we can make this project realized to it's full potential. Until then, hang in there and take care.