Infiltrate the city of Dawn's Point with an exciting new character - The Bard, Moonstone!
This unique hero has a set of tailored abilities; from Talents only she can access, to specialised equipment. Battle through the streets, encountering many new scenarios and enemies, including a new named mini boss!
Moonstone must be chosen as your starter character, but unique to her playstyle, you will have the option to immediately start your campaign with up to two more party members.
In combination with her Lute, Moonstone's unique hero ability allows her to apply temporary passives to all of her allies! New passives are made available every time Moonstone uses her ability. Those passives can then be applied by playing her Lute, and last until the next time Lute is drawn.
Moonstone is the ideal support character, with her abilities and talents built to aid and augment her team, but make sure you keep this hero alive, or your run will be over!
Moonstone has a unique hunter on her tail; the lone wolf, Mordis. This new opponent has a gamechanging set of tricks up his sleeve that should prove challenging to even the most veteran players.
With Lewd Island’s story completed and a bunch of improvements made to gameplay, sound and UI, it has never been a better opportunity to find out how you’ve ended up on that island with your beautiful female companion.
Why can’t you remember your past? How did you end up on this island?
As a part of the Autumn Sale, you can get answers to all the questions with a disscount. You can save even more if you buy in a bundle with our new game Helping the Hotties!
It’s been a while since the last Steam update - hope everyone is doing well! Like most people, I had a busy summer and the day-job has been pretty demanding too. However, I’ve kept up with Tales of Autumn daily progress, so even though I’m not pushing a release tonight I thought I’d drop an update anyway!
Nature reserve summary
I’ve spent nearly all my available time on the next major content update, which is the Nature reserve. You can expect a full writeup when release day arrives, but in summary:
- A new upgradeable area in the town where you can create Hal’s research dream of an open space for wildlife - You’ll be able to donate creatures, or have them arrive naturally based on terrain - Small animal displays as a new creature type to collect (and a cage & baiting system to do so!) - Animal produce displays, museum-style - A tourism score that can help with costs, and attract new characters to Autumn
It’s been quite the workload, but I’ve done everything except the Tourism mechanics, and then adding lots of character content. For example, once the nature reserve is open, many of the villagers will update their schedules to spend time there.
Of course there’s also then a long list of new dialogue, quests, bugs for Danica, cutscenes, and more. And of course, new creatures!
A roundup other changes that have gone live in the past weeks:
- Added 'Excited' and 'Annoyed' portraits for NPC dialogue, and painstakingly went through all existing dialogue to update them! - A new player skill, Groundskeeper, which you can use to help stay on top of weeds! - A bunch of code changes on the animals to benefit performance for busy ranches! - Bugfixes - Selecting a tool from your backpack wasn’t always unpausing time! - If you skipped the sphinx intro scene, you wouldn’t be able to start the sphinx challenge - Text fixes in the review scene
Finally, I picked myself up a Steam Deck. I’ve not done any special development for it, but from a quick test Tales of Autumn seemed to be behaving. If you play on one, or intend to, let me know and I’ll devote some proper time to it!
Thanks for your patience on the next update, it’s been a much bigger workload than I first anticipated! I’m always keen to share more details so get in touch if you’d like to hear more!
We are announcing increased rates for the successful improvement of weapons and armor!
From 00:00 to 23:59 (UTC+3:00) on 27.11 you will be accompanied by the good magic of the rate:
x1.5 UPGRADING
What does it mean? The chance of successfully improving equipment during this period becomes one and a half times higher. And that is not all! The bonus from the rate is multiplied with the bonus from the strengthening crystals, that is, using them, you can improve things with a chance 3 times higher than usual!
I've released a big new update, which includes the much requested Steam Workshop support. This is something I've wanted to integrate from the beginning, but it took me a while to wrap my head around the Steam API required to integrate the Workshop.
Before we get to that I have some minor changes and bug fixes to report.
Bug Fixes:
When character resistances were added in the last game it created a bug where players hit by duration spells would be kicked out of the game. This has been fixed, and duration spells are working normally again.
Fixed a bug where the DM changing an enemies HP would always drop it to 0.
Fixed a bug where the portrait importer on the new character editor would not close properly.
Fixed a bug where renaming an item to the same name deleted it.
Small Features and Changes:
I've added blood effects to players in the multiplayer games. These are the same as the blood effects seen on enemies and NPCs as they get damaged. This should give players a better indication of their current health than just the health number on the left hand side.
Players will also no longer take fall damage when they fall less than 10 feet (1 level in the game), as I thought it was more realistic that players can safely jump down that far without hurting themselves. As well this fixed a bug where players stepping off stairs in a direction without a floor would take fall damage.
Enemies and NPCs controlled by the DM will now fall down levels when stepping off floors just like players do, as well as take fall damage from heights more than 10 feet. For flying enemies the DM can negate fall damage by updating the enemies or NPCs health.
New Features:
The first new feature is the ability to change the game font to a simpler font, Arial. Some players mentioned that the in game font was difficult to read, so I added this option in for anyone who wants to use an easier to read font. If you want to can change the font you can change it under the settings menu to "Simple" to get an easier to read font for almost all game features. The labels on top of the dice in multiplayer are images, so they don't change font with this feature, but when you hover over one of the dice the pop-up with the full name will have the simplified font.
And of course the Steam Workshop has been integrated into Dungeon Maker. You can access the workshop by pressing the workshop logo on the bottom left of the main screen. From there you can create new workshop items for your Assets, Blueprints Characters, Campaigns, NPCs, and Enemies.
Workshop items need a title at least 5 characters long, and a description at least 20 characters long. The preview image is optional, but can only be added or edited from within Dungeon Maker. Any workshop uploads require at least 1 file to be selected.
You can also edit any of your previously uploaded workshop items, allowing you to add or remove items, as well as change the name, description, and preview image. If a previously created workshop item has been deleted through the workshop hub in Steam, it's info will still remain locally. Trying to edit a deleted workshop item will just delete the local data for it.
Workshop items can be subscribed and unsubscribed to using the Steam Workshop Hub under the Dungeon Maker Community tab. Any subscribed items will be installed when Dungeon Maker is opened, and their filenames will be changed to avoid overwriting any files you already have.
Finally in this updated I've added a handful of new items to the map maker for you to use.
Hello to everyone who has wishlisted the game so far! No doubt you are wondering how development is going. So, let’s get into it and here's a little teaser video to check out:
Broad Overview
The full game of “The Abandoned Planet” (TAP) contains a total of 5 Acts. Likely, you noticed that Act 1 (the demo) is on the shorter side. From comments I’ve seen, first time playthroughs range from about 15 minutes to 45 minutes, depending on the player. This is good! Personally, I like to design my games with a quick descent into story and gameplay mechanics.
While Acts 2 through 5 vary in length, they will be considerably longer in gameplay than Act 1. This is especially true of Acts 2, 3, and 4. No spoilers, but… as the Astronaut continues through the Acts, she’ll travel further and further away from the crash site, uncovering the mysteries of the planet.
What have I been working on?
When I developed my first commercial release (Dexter Stardust: Adventures In Outer Space), I developed the “final” artwork without even storyboarding or sketching out an entire zone/area. This was not the wisest course of action. It means that I had to go back and completely redesign and redraw this “final'' artwork; doubling, and sometimes tripling, my efforts. What a waste of time!
We always learn from our past mistakes. I can’t promise I won’t make any mistakes again, but I’ve certainly learned it’s wise to sketch out the entirety of TAP before creating final artwork. And this is what I’ve done. I sketched out every background in the game, roughly planned out major puzzle elements, and I’ve placed those sketches into my game engine. I’ve also set up the directional move system for the entirety of the game. You can see what this looks like here:
Yes, it’s pretty boring to look at, but it’s essential to the process and a huge time saver in the long run. It took a few months to do this, but now I’m full steam ahead on final artwork.
Additionally, it’s important to note that I design environment sounds and SFX as I put the final artwork into TAP. This can be quite time consuming. However, it’s something I enjoy a lot!
How much of the game is completed?
So far, only Act 1 is playable, complete with puzzles, dialogue, and polish. However, I have completed final artwork on Act 2, and I’m well underway on Act 3. I’m not programming all the puzzles yet, but I’m making sure to implement door opening puzzles, travel elements, and elevator stuff (yup, there’s elevators).
It’s important to remember that it was only about a month ago that I reached the milestone of completing the sketches and directional move system for TAP. So, it took only a month or so to complete the final artwork for an entire Act. I think that’s pretty good progress!
Conclusion
TAP is coming along nicely. I’ll try to keep everyone up-to-date about the progress. As for the release date, my publisher and I were originally shooting for the end of the first quarter in 2023, but we’ll have to move it back. The reason is that I spent a lot of time porting Dexter Stardust to iOS (where it has done really well!) and trying to port it to Android (Google has a frustrating maximum base_master.apk of 150MB for app downloads, and I can’t get mine below 178MB. I spent about a month on this. ARGH! No dice. We’ll see!).
So, I think you can likely expect the game sometime mid-2023. Personally, I feel this is still really great. I’m a solo-developer who has a full-time job and a family. Our daughter is almost 2 years old. She’s a climber. So, trying to draw while she’s climbing all over me is a challenge, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. :)
Thanks for wishlisting TAP! And please let me know if there’s something you’d like to see in the game, and if you have any questions about the development. Take care and stay safe.
We've updated the game so achievements are available! We had a lot of fun finding fitting names for all of them, we hope you enjoy all the references!
This update shouldn't have broken any launch files, but as always, if you have any problem getting the game to start, please make sure that your game is up to date with the latest version.