Howdy!
As some of you might know, we made an announcement a year ago, stating that the game would be put into the hiatus phase.
Due to me having had some important stuff to do (primarily studying and preparing for the exams) before continuing on with the game's development, it was necessary for us to temporarily stop and we had no other chance.
Fast forward to a few days ago, I took the three mandatory exams and tried my best to achieve the best results. Currently, I'm still waiting on the results, which are typically announced on August.
Good News
The good news is that we're going to be actively continuing on with the development. Since the mandatory exams are over, I can now say that I have tons of free time to do literally anything now, including spending most of my day developing the game and talking with the team members.
Real life matters aside, let's begin with what we're going to be doing from now on:
Planned Roadmap
The first thing I and the team discussed was about the game's current status. Although we were able to release a few builds, we were somewhat in a development hell. In the end, we created ourselves a roadmap that looks like this:
Add rooms in between so that playtime is lengthened
Focus on adding side quests and new areas
Maintain the original art style of Toby Fox's UNDERTALE
JAPARITALE Team Members Application Form
Want to contribute to the game's development? Now we're hiring new volunteers for the game!
As for what we need the most:
Spriters
Artists
Musicians
These highlighted categories are going to be prioritized for the hiring process. Other categories can also be chosen, but they'll stay at a normal priority.
Bad News
The bad side of the news isn't really THAT important and decisive to the game's development.
2 years ago, JAPARITALE was in the Special Mentions of UNDEREVENT 2022. In 2023, the game was absent from the event, due to the game being in the hiatus phase. Unfortunately, due to lack of progress that came with that phase of the game, JAPARITALE is not going to be joining UNDEREVENT 2024.
I did the required prerequisites for the application of the game, talked about the whole process with the team members of UNDEREVENT and they discussed the qualification of JAPARITALE to decide whether it was eligible or not.
The Future
We're moving at a slow pace right now, but as for the future, we're going to be increasing our pace after a while. We're going to be continuing on working on v3.0.0, which will include new and changed areas, changed user interface, and other stuff.
Q: So, that means, there'll be monthly progress reports again, right?
A: Yes. However, I cannot guarantee everyone that devlogs are going to happen every month, but we'll try our best.
Q: You said that there are going to be rooms in between. Does that ruin our save files? Are the previous versions uncanon anymore?
A: I'll call the previous versions uncanon. As for the save files, this is a very controversial topic. We could do both things:
We can either automatically complete all cutscenes that come before the last thing the player did. (For example, if you had beaten Arai-san before, all cutscenes that come before that will automatically be completed)
We can simply mark the save data as outdated, and the player would have to replay through the game again.
I would like everyone to choose what we could do in the poll below. I do not want to make any controversial changes without asking for people's decisions.
That tells everything about the hold! Please note that some stuff may be subject to change. Stay tuned for new devlogs!
- Team Furenzu
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