As we approach the Extended Demo release (27th September!) and Steam Next Fest in October I thought it would be a great idea to lay out some bite-size insights to the many things you can do within Tales from The Dancing Moon.
So without further ado - let's dive in!
Developer Let's Play ๐ฎ
For the ultimate quest gameplay breakdown, feel free to watch this 30 minute developer "let's play" where I go through one of the quests early in the game.
Follow the main quest and read collectable diary entries scattered across the land to fully understand your place in this world.
Unravelling the mysteries behind the disappearance of four teenagers who lived in the village before you arrived.
Explore with Changing Weather & Seasons ๐ธโ๏ธ
Play at your own pace through an ever changing backdrop of seasons and weather effects in the village of Illisor, a place recovering from a recent invasion of a threat known as the "shadow beasts".
Meet the Villagers ๐ฎ๐งโ๐ณ
Each NPC comes with their own beautifully drawn portrait and unique personality and traits.
They are the driving force of all quest related gameplay in the game!
Here's just a small sample of the people you'll meet.
Fishing ๐๐ฃ
It wouldn't be a casual life-sim RPG without its own fishing mini-game!
Match the controller/keyboard inputs to the fishes swimming direction in this tricky but fun mini-game!
Farming ๐๐จโ๐พ
Prepare land, plant seeds, and nurture your crops to help provide income for yourself and the struggling village.
The changing seasons provide a different colourful theme to your farming aesthetic!
Explore procedural zones ๐ฒ
Just east of the village you can explore procedural zones, where you can practice sword skills, find rare artefacts for the museum, and find valuable loot.
Find Museum Artefacts ๐๐น
Speaking of the museum, on your travels you will find rare artefacts that the local curator will be interested in.
Learn stories and explanations of the various items you find.
Cook and Brew ๐ฒ
Experiment with a food ingredients to cook meals that buff your health, or mix liquids to create drinks with special enhancements and abilities.
Craft and Build ๐๏ธ๐ ๏ธ
A robust crafting, construction, and free placement system allows you to build and decorate the village to your heart's desire.
And that just scratches the surface of the gameplay, without really going into the story or quests! (unless you watched the 30 minute video above. If you did so - yay!)
- DjMonkey
Enjoy reading my dev diary newsletters? Then please consider giving me a Wishlist & Follow! I'd greatly appreciate it! You can do so from the the Steam page.
If youโd like to join the community and discuss the content of this post, please visit the Discord or make a comment on Threads or Twitter!
Make sure not to overlook the fantastic live stream by indie__scum during the Game Devs of Color Expo! Be part of the excitement on September 23rd at 7:30 PM EST, as they dive into the world of Sky of Tides.
Kat is a passionate fan of Animal Crossing and enjoys exploring a wide range of games. Their hobbies extend to anime, skincare, and, of course, a special fondness for Taco Bell! Don't miss out on the actionโtune in!
15 years is a long time! We're so grateful to have seen so many young Wizards pass through the Spiral over the years and grow right alongside us. Through all the ups and downs and unexpected surprises, thanks so much for sharing all of life's magical moments with us!
Echo Stones are no longer in chests! They have a unique sprite!
Stages 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 have been made fully backtrackable. You can now run laps around them and return to paths that were once one-way.
You can now go to both Stage 9 and Stage 10 at any point during the post-game
Stage 7 has a brand new Minecart section. You can use it to backtrack or as an alternate path.
Stage 10-2 now has an abundance of late-game weapons and armorโฆ The catch is they donโt show unless you meet a specific requirement. For example, Kiyotaโs Armor can only be seen if you have four or more Sync with her.
Some in-game Items now have reminder text! Items and Armor that had extra space now tell you what certain statues do.
Arch-Demon Gemini and her Faceless counterpart now have a new music track!
Balance Changes Enemies who use Null Number will use it less, instead of 100% of the time. F. Nut now properly heals for itโs full value Doomsday now gives the user Panic for two turns, and its cooldown has been lowered. Stage 1-1 has more healing items. Primarily to teach players about the status Shopkeepers now conveniently carry items that help with the corresponding elements. So Mika carries Icy Profen to help deal with the Frozen status in Stage 3, and Quan carries Eye Drops for the Blind, the enemies in Stage 5 like to inflict. Null Number now reduces Hype by 1. (Down from 3) Enemy Luck in Stage 1 has been lowered across the board New Cooldowns for all Upgrade Skills, like Wave Slash and Stop Gap. Every ten upgrades reduce their respective Cooldown by 1. This should make it appealing to go all-in in a stat. Genesis has Bonus Base Evasion and Ward. She is the squishiest character and canโt really hang in some late-game fights. This hopefully helps. Extended Warranty now has a longer cooldown and warm-up in Hard Mode Headache now properly reduces your MP Regen to 0, THEN inflicts -1 MP. Guarding and Hype MP is cancelled out. Guard now correctly gives 1MP upon using the skill and an extra 1MP a turn. (It was giving 2MP upon execution.)
Bug Fixes Fixed certain Treasures not being passable after opening them Fixed Akira not learning Mirror Beam when getting their first Sync. Fixed Leoโs Ultimate Move not properly killing every Spawn Fixed certain backtrack switches not working Fixed the hanging bars in 5-1, letting you float Fixed Mirror Beam being usable in the skill menu. Fixes Leonis having unintended damage reduction. Fixed lots of weird collisions in 10-2 Fixed Tsukasa sprite turning into a completely different character (it was funny but incorrect) Fixed typos and repeated Dialogue Fixed Quot not answering a question in her first location. Fixed a particular character talking even though they should have been dead. Fixed Akira doing a disappearing act when in the backrooms of the Mocha Bar Fixed weird music cut-offs in Stage 6 Fixed Twelve being revived suddenly Fixed ???? and Arch-Demon variables not updating properly.
In the upcoming SHMUP Steam Fest, the next September 25, we will open a new playtest for all players that want to try a little bit of the game, we are now ready to show a small taste of what this game is becoming: THE GREATEST COMBAT VEHICLE GAME EVER MADE.
Thats what we want to do, the best game we possibly can. So stay tuned for the next September 25 and get ready to kill some warlords!
You will be playing a little bit of the gameplay, 7 zones to get to the end, plus a new tutorial with 4 stages. Still not metagame (will do that next), so no roguelike experience yet, but we are getting very closer to that quickly!!
Hello Starchasers! Does it feel like time is speeding up for everyone else, or am I just feeling the effects of gravitational time dilation? No? Just me? Right.
Don't believe I'm in space right now? Here's proof:
First images from the James Webb telescope. Haters will say they're fake.
Obligatory cat open aside, some exciting news: Underspace has a new demo 69 days after the last one. Nice.
The game's gone through some significant internal changes, particularly how input and flying is handled. To those more familiar with... classic games, your muscle memory might start to fail you a bit. We recommend for returning players to reset their keybinds in the options menu and do the in-game tutorial again. That should help with most things. As always, note the known issues too before making any bug reports.
NEW CONTENT & FEATURES
New arcane effects for highengines, drives, and more.
Mining beams: Low range high power beams that specialize in breaking down rock and stone. You can find a few available for purchase aboard Bravenstar Spire.
Full cockpit textures for all flyable ships.
New graphics and effects on space stations.
New deaddrop missions available from Kaisus Circle.
Totally redone character controller, which now has momentum, crouching, and headbobbing options.
Ships and equipment can grant special abilities or skill points.
New quick equipment menu as part of our total input refactor (see below).
CHANGES & BUGFIXES
Total refactor of all in-game inputs. Returning players are recommended to reset their keybinds to default to benefit from this. Benefits include less keys to memorize, new UI elements to make it clearer how to fly, and more.
Docking is now done manually by default, and lanelines, jumpgates, and jumpholes do not require a docking request anymore. Simply fly through.
New contextual based targeting UI. Selecting a target ship, solar, etc, brings up a simple list of interactions the player can perform, greatly reducing bloated inputs.
Inventory, navmap, reputation, questlog, and generally all menus now have quick action keys in addition to normal menu driven interactions.
Flight controls reworked slightly. Highengines are now, by default, double-tapping w.
Internal refactor of the gameโs skill system and readouts on items to show what affects what skills.
Introduction tutorial now rewritten to accommodate for the changed controls.
Camera controls are now a single universal key that toggles you between cockpit, backwards, and orbital views.
Pause menu graphics redone to move away fromโฆ certain inspirations.
Greatly reduced file sizes and loading times, as well as frequency of loading interactions.
Added indicators to show if a tradable commodity was currently affected by the dynamic economy in some way.
Fixed issues where some stats were calculated incorrectly.
Fixed issues where missions wouldnโt complete correctly.
Fixed errors relating to NPC flight.
Fixed some black screens and softlocks relating to loaded games.
Fixed some mesh errors on ships.
KNOWN ISSUES
Voice acting is currently unimplemented, unbalanced, or placeholder for several quests and dialogue lines.
Interior detailing on a majority of stations are not in.
Joystick and controller support vestigial and more or less not implemented and having a controller plugged in can introduce weirdness.
Trading in ships may have a UI mismatch between ammunition counts on a ship and the actual ammunition.
Please take a look at the demo and give your feedback on it -- join the Underspace Discord if you feel so inclined to tell me about stuff in real time. Or talk to other Starchasers about the game and such. Or post cat photos. The possibilities are endless.
As for what else I've been up to this week, I redid tutorial aspects to better fit new input system and hooked up new options to the options menu. I also finished up the cockpit textures (something that was being implemented last Friday).
I've also added the basics of party member recruitment and personal quests. I've also scripted many new quests for party members and recruiting them. More progress on this will be made in the coming week.
Lanelines also got a pretty sizeable makeover. Indicators to laneline routes have been added, some laneline effects have been sped up, and new lanelines for the multiplayer main quest.
On that note, I worked on finishing the multiplayer main quest.
Next week's focus is going to be on finalizing the multiplayer campaign, finishing up all interiors, and getting party member recruitment implemented.
If you want to stay updated more immediately with Underspace's ongoing work, please give the Underspace socials a follow. The engagement helps offset the feeling of shouting into the void (the big void, not the cat void. The cat void gets love, not shouts).
