Trembling Essence Devlog 4:💙 Poll results + Analyzing the script💙

Helloooo and welcome new followers, here's how the progress of the game is going! :]

There will be spoilers if you haven't played through the [Extended Demo], specifically the MORNING route. Click here if you would like to play! :]

**A big thank you to the recent influx of interest towards Noah and the game itself! I have to catch up with a lot I missed but I am very grateful! :D

Onto the poll results!:

Thank you to everyone that played the [Extended Demo] and recently participated in some of the recent polls I've created! It's still optional but I would really appreciate any feedback on why you picked your decision to this one if you still would like to! This really helps me out moving forward with my game developing process! :,]

I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into to this: The results left me very surprised especially towards "Talk to Noah" and "Look around" being picked the most out of everything else and the "Go outside" having the lowest, which explains a few concerns I had behind the scenes given this one has the Morning route attached to it. With this information, I'll take all of it into consideration while I continue working on things behind the scenes! :D

I talked about this a few months ago but the "Talk to Noah" and "Look around" choice are being revamped and updated. There's some old game development posts that showed some of the old CG's and dialog with it but extends from very old code which had major spoilers in the script before I got better at pacing the story and realizing that I was missing the other half of Day 3 during that time. :S

In good news around this time I managed to have a conversation with my play tester about everything and we had a very good talk about where to go from this. I expressed a couple of ideas on how to move forward with the choices and they gave back a good amount of feedback I needed when I was struggling with writers block. :,D

Onto the game development!:

Here is a small recap:

Midway through December up until the start of March, I went through the afternoon route and made adjustments to the choices, story-building, and overall pacing of the route to make the closeness build-up feel more rewarding given that I'm aiming for more of a slow-burn. Outside of more testing and grammar checks, CG's, etc, everything is about 95% done!

Morning route progress:

Since this is still just the second half of Day 3, I'm still trying to be extra careful with balancing a meaningful slow-burn and not over-doing it. :,]

The last time I played through the Morning route was around the start of spring(?) back in 2024 before I went and fixed up the beginning of the game leading up to the cabin.

With a new and fresh perspective of what needs to be done, I went back to the script and went over how I want certain parts of the game to happen. I noticed several inconsistencies that really needed fixing which is largely due to pacing/spoilers happening way too early for my liking. :,]

When choosing the 'Go outside' and the choices after it, I updated it with better dialog between the player(Y/N) and Noah.

It's nothing too extreme but just a nice quality of life to get a better understanding how Noah responds to this. I also fixed how much HP you lose along with editing the additional visual effects that happen here. It was originally split into 2 HP loss situations but now it's only one.

I won't say which scene but there was one part of this route I was going to ultimately cut but I've spent a lot of time brainstorming and came up with an idea on how I want it to go moving forward which might include a new CG and choices being made to give it more meaning. This is all still up in the air and I want to have my play testers check everything out first before I continue with it just in case I end up over-doing it again. :,,,]

Weird bug found?:

I also found a couple of mismatched sprites and a weird bug where a CG of Noah pops up towards the end of the Morning route, I have no idea how it happened or if this can occur in the [Extended Demo]. I can only hope it's not though. :,]

CG clean up:

Around the time I had announced the [Extended Demo] back in early 2024 there were parts of the Morning route that was actually suppose to have CG's but since I was still developing my art style I couldn't do much perspective art like I wanted to.

**As far as CG clean up goes, I do have plans to update some of these in both routes but for now I will keep them as placeholders until I get just a bit more practicing in. There's also 1 or 2+(?) new ones I have planned for this but I'm not ready to share them yet. :D

I think that's about as far as I've gotten up until I couldn't work on the game for about a week and a half so I'll stop here. :[]

If you like what I create, please consider supporting what I do on kofi [Here]! All donations and tips help tremendously while I continue to work on the game. Thank you to those that optionally bought the [Extended Demo] on itch.io. :,]

Q&A / Ask box is open:

To know and understand Noah through Asks and random posts about lore, they'll be under #Get to know: Noah ! :]

**Some asks won't be answered if it contains spoilers but I do appreciate what I receive. I will most likely spend this time going through and catching up on everything I missed. :]

If you have any questions about Trembling Essence/Noah feel free to ask <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/new/ask/zombeebunnie" rel="noopener" target="_blank" ]<here]<="" a=""></a><a href="https://www.tumblr.com/new/ask/zombeebunnie" rel="noopener" target="_blank" ]<here]<="" a=""> or on itch.io please. This makes it easier for me to see and answer accordingly! I enjoy hearing from you guys!</a>

Thank you everyone for the continued support! :,]<a href="https://www.tumblr.com/new/ask/zombeebunnie" rel="noopener" target="_blank" ]<here]<="" a=""></a>