Update - 21/02/2022

Hello guys! How's everyone doing? I hope you all had a great weekend! Mine was a relaxing one; especially after the scare with my dog not being able to walk... it seems he has some sort of congenital problem and his kneecaps are slowly moving to the side, so he needs surgery. It's not super expensive but I'm certainly glad I have the Kickstarter money, or else I wouldn't be able to afford it... So yeah, it's nothing life-threatening, but the little guy needs surgery if we want him to be able to walk. He's just 3 years old and it would suck for him to be unable to run, we'll take him to the vet in about 2 weeks.

I finished the Known Threats stretch goal for Across a Thousand Dead Worlds; or at least, the creature part of it, I'm still working on the rewards from defeating them. The creatures themselves are quite gnarly, and I think they're going to add some nice variety. It's also served me to kind of prototype the type of combat behavior tables I'm planning to use not only on future ATDW's content, but on Empire Undying as well. As usual, this idea has its origins in the game I'll never finish: Under Ashen Skies. Each enemy has a table detailing the possible attacks they'll perform on their turn. I think that moving forward the ideal is to combine both the general, role-based behavior tables I have in place for the randomly generated creatures, with these fixed attacks tables. That way you'd get general combat behavior (target priority, stance changes based on how the combat is going, etc.) with cool, unique attacks, other than the standard melee or ranged damage. This is what I'm planning on doing with ATDW's first expansion. But before we get there, since it's such a game changer ("Chapter 2" of the story) that literally changes how the game is played, I want to explore a bit further what can be done with the game in its current state. I have three main chapters planned for the game, as I think I've mentioned before: Chapter 1 is the core game, the one you'll be able to play once it's released; Chapter 2 will take the game's story and your character(s) to a place I guarantee you will not expect, and Chapter 3 deals with the consequences of Chapter 2, basically. If things go as planned, this will turn ATDW essentially into 3 different games, and ideally one could have a character go from chapter 1 to chapter 3, of pick a chapter and stay there, without triggering the next phase. I'd love to see the community creating stuff for each chapter, once they're all out. This is a multi-year plan though; after all, I'm a single developer and I'm also working on Empire Undying, so it's all going to take time.

Speaking of Empire Undying, yesterday I worked on the Acavian Empire's timeline, would you guys like to see that? I lost a few Patrons last week so I don't know if it's just a coincidence, or some of you didn't like the idea I pitched about creating initially system neutral stuff for Patreon, that would later on be repurposed for EU (at least until I can start pumping out content for ATDW). I think I'll have to do some polls to see what you guys want me to do in the near future!

So this week I'll try to finally be done with the stretch goal content, and continue adjusting systems based on feedback. I also keep adding little things here and there, so even those who playtested the game will have plenty of small surprises waiting for them once the game's done!

That's it for today, talk to you guys soon. Have a great week, everyone!