Fancy a Likusake?
Hello! I'm going to start this post by saying, the Steam store page is officially up!
Wishlists would really help me, so if you have the time I'd be very grateful for it. I hope you also like the design of the page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3202610/Malevolent_Planet_2D/
Now regarding my progress so far for this week, I have been working a lot on the bar content, trying to stay ahead of the development plan. The bar content doesn't yet have animations/illustrations yet because those are still being drawn… and animated.
Add in all the bar content dialogues I've written so far and make sure there are enough dialogues to advance with the stamps content for the finale of the Village. ✅ Did this, there's only one sequence I'm not sure about. Maybe I can seek feedback in the form of a poll regarding the idea I had so you can tell me if it's a worthy addition to the bar (it involves a trio of drunk Likurieris with strange favors). Currently there's more than enough content that allows you to get enough stamps to finish the village plot, but I'm aiming for the entire village plot to be replayable by offering more sequences than you technically need to advance (the game will advance the content when you get 5 and 10 stamps respectively, so you can't get all the content in one run)
Add NPCs to the bar and together with them develop the cutscenes that will take place in the bar. ⏳ added some cutscenes but there are more I want to add, for immersion purposes. There are also a few NPCs I have yet to add, depending if the sequence I'm not sure about is actually popular with you.
Have the Steam store page up by the end of the week if possible, to seek your opinion on the design and your wishlists 😇 (they'd really help me) ✅ Done!
Now the optional tasks, secondary to the above:
Polish up all the ISA scenes involving lighting and everything else that might look out of place. ⌛ Still in progress, but I have fixed the lighting in some places.
Release a public build this Friday 🤔 I didn't expect the Steam page to be actually approved by the end of this week so I was mostly focused on content. I'll see if I can actually make this public build today, because I'd like to link the Steam page.
Now regarding other things I did this week that I didn't schedule:
Did a rough draft/planning of everything that's supposed to happen after the bar content, setting up the story and the pacing in a way that encourages you to do 2-3 side quests in the ship with the crewmates, one of them will be to figure out what's causing the water contamination by physically getting into it, it'll have a scene involving a famous actor in artistic works of culture (starts with Hen), but I won't say it 'out loud' because public posts are supposed to be SFW. My planning pretty much links the village ending to the city/hub starting as well, meaning that after making the ship a bit more lively with some side content (and a new crewmate 😏, you'll see soon why it's not really a spoiler) we can get started with the city/the hub.
Did some planning for a new… crewmate mentioned above, and this new crewmate will have an unique sequence in the village outdoors (unrelated to the stamps gathering, but it'll be triggered in the village outdoors just by walking around). This character very much likes to go in trouble.
In conclusion, I have been having (or I have needed) to micromanage many things (planning, content, marketing/steam, public builds planning) but I think everything is still going fine.
The Steam version will be a full release of the game, scheduled towards Q3/Q4 of 2025. It'll include the ISA content and all the Gaia content leading up to the first trip into space (as in, the first space launch), but that's where it'll stop. Everything that will be included will be polished to the best of my abilities and likely existing content will get some improvements over time.
(I'm still looking into whether it's fine to send steam keys to patrons who've supported for more than the price the game will have, I'd feel bad to "double charge" for the definitive release, even though the definitive release will also be available on Patreon)
That's all I had to say for this week, have a great weekend!