Demon Lands - Devlog 4 (Pixiv Fanbox)

Hey, everyone! Hard to believe it's already April!

As you may have seen in the supporter posts, I have been humming away at sketching all of the required art for the game. Things are starting to get close to a releasable state, which makes me incredibly excited and nervous at the same time!

Progress and Plans

As you can see, progress is going well! Once I complete everything to the right of the first column, I can release a "Closed Testing" version of the game to Supporters here.

This Closed Testing version of the game will have greyscale sketch art for the enemies and lewd scenes, the same as what's been shown in the Fanbox WIP posts (though potentially with a blur censor rather than black bars due to legal restrictions). However, every other part of the game will be functional, and thus this Closed Testing will be used for gathering feedback and bug reports!

While it's being tested and you're submitting feedback, I will spend time colouring the sketch art and fixing bugs that you find. Once that's all done, the game will be ready for an "Alpha" release to the public ^^ The alpha will still be free, and I'll still be gathering feedback, but from then on updates will be in the form of new content as I work towards making the game bigger.

I am excited to get to that Alpha Release. I think balancing programming and art together in regular updates be a lot more fun! It'll be a lot more enjoyable releasing a new quest with a new lewd scene every few weeks, expanding the game rather than focusing on the content already programmed like I am currently.

Navigating the Demon Lands

I've mentioned before that the game will be in four chapters, each representing a different continent you can visit. The Alpha release of the game will cover the first continent, "The Verdant Grasslands". It ends right before you unlock the second one, which is still under heavy development.

When you first start your adventure, the map is blank. As you take quests and unlock new areas, points of interest appear visually on the map. You can fast travel to different locations at almost any time from the menu.

I am mulling over some future features such as the ability to remove all areas you've "cleared", quest markers, etc. These would be in the far future, once the scale has reached a level where location management is an issue.

Another neat feature of the map is that you progressively expand it when you unlock new continents! The scale of the world will increase, which I hope will add to the feeling of discovery in the world I wanted to cultivate :3

The map is something I am still working on, using a tool called Inkarnate. It was a very difficult process trying to find a style that fits into the game while not being too difficult to reproduce, but I am very happy with the results.

This fast traveling system was quite important to me. I wanted the capability to introduce new areas to the player at any time. This is opposed to having all of the maps be physically connected, such as through a traversable world map, a standard RPGMaker game would have.

I believe this system works better because it lets me add new content without worrying about exactly where it fits in with the rest. Instead of worrying about how the player will get to the new content, I can focus purely on the new content. NPCs can simply give you the location of a demon they spotted, or a cave they discovered, and the player can instantly explore.

Future Areas

Just for fun, I thought I would include this temporary map I made more than a year ago to try and keep the areas and locations straight in my head! Although temporary, I have put a lot of thought into the entire game's flow and areas already.

Though I could go into more detail about these areas and what they contain, I figure that might spoil the surprise and stroy a bit. ^^ Rest assured I hope to have a large range of different settings for the player to visit, from a deep jungle filled with milking plants to a lava plateau with red slime traps.

Sprites

I finally finished the sprites for each of the boys! I am very excited to have them finished as pixel art is quite tedious, especially for 5 characters in 4 directions each. In addition, I also needed underwear-only and nude versions of each one for future "story" reasons. ^^

Lucas:

Tommy:

Chris:

Isaac:

Alex:

In addition, some of the quests have other various lewd sprites you can stumble across. I try not to let myself get too carried away with these, as they're just something extra in addition to the lewd scene you get to watch, but they are still a lot of fun.

With all of these required arts finally finished, things are getting close to something playable! I hope to keep working on the lewd scene art this month. My goal is to finish the remaining three scenes either this month or next.

Video Scene

As a bonus, I wanted to include a video of one of the lewd scenes in the game, to give you a sense of what to expect during the Closed Testing build!

I hope that the video quality is alright. I am not much of a video editor so I am sure the quality isn't pristine, but regardless, I hope it serves as a good demonstration :3

I am not 100% satisfied with the lewd SFX I am currently using, particularly the background looping noises. It could be entirely in my head, but it sounds "tinny" and non-diegetic to me. I may still explore other sound packs, depending on what I can find ^^

When you unlock scenes in-game, they can be viewed from the main menu's "Gallery". Even if you delete your saves or start new games, they can always be viewed so long as you have seen them at least once. For defeat scenes, you only need to encounter the enemy to unlock them, so you never feel compelled to lose unless you want to.

You can see a visual preview of each scene when selecting them, as well as sort them by category. I also added in an "auto message" function in the options menu. This automatically progresses any dialogue at a pace you can adjust, so you don't need to hold spacebar throughout.

Thank you!

That's it for this month! As always, thank you all for your tremendous support. I wouldn't be able to work on something like this without your help.

Have a happy April everyone!