#demonclaus

Life threw me a pretty rough curveball the past two years and in that chaos the parts of development I'd have preferred to work on took a bit of a hit.  But on the bright side: the story and gameplay are in their last stages of revision and are rapidly cementing into their final forms. 

I still have a tall grind on assets, dungeon design, and cutscene planning but we're moving very strongly in the direction I want things to go. Back in February I completed a new private demo build that I sent out to my testers (shoutout to Reteryisk and Kago! Please check out their stuff!) and from that I received really positive feedback  so I can confidently say the gameplay quality of life improvements are set in stone for the final game. I'm debating on doing a public release of that demo but I may hold off just to see if I can get a bit more stuff together for a lengthier build. I'll know a bit more clearly by the end of the summer if I'd like to release something new or hold off until the game is done, but overall I'd like to have a demo available that's more reflective of the final game.

As a fun aside: Reteryisk discovered the game can be run on steamdeck (featuring her cat Wizard).

Lastly, I've been making the slow transition from Twitter to Bluesky as a social media platform for Almari. If you're more inclined to follow your favorite projects on bsky please give us a follow! Or if Discord is your preferred method, Almari is partnered with the Unique Indie RPGs discord server where you can check out our channel and also check out all the other cool games cooking in there! 

Thanks for reading!

Fanart by Kago

-DemonClaus

The first draft of the final version of the story is complete! What remains from here is finalizing cutscenes, pacing, dungeon design, and creating the rest of the assets for the game! It's pretty exciting for me to finally say a crucial aspect of the game is complete. There's still a long ways to go but everything else can fall into place much more smoothly from here. 

With that bit completed, I've been able to experiment with new visuals as well as begin writing new projects!

You can see this background in motion on twitter!

As for what else I'm working on, you can check out my blog post on cohost: "What is MNY?"

(Artwork by Reteryisk)

-DemonClaus

It's definitely been an endeavor as I've figured out what's totally scrapped and what's still good and worth keeping from all my ideas, as well as refining many new ideas. In addition to that, I've been working on several documents organizing and going through each chapter of the story to get it all out of my head and summarized from previously complete versions of the areas in the game. It's a lot of work, but as a result the story, characters, and groundwork are really coming together.

As I've focused on the story, I've also given myself a chance to work out a few gameplay changes regarding touch encounters and battles that I've been a bit hung up on for the past year, and I'm glad to say I've finally figured out some answers that I like for them. However, I won't be giving any fine details until they're properly coded and tested. Though here's a little peak at some of them:

(in addition to this, running from enemies will stun them and prevent you from running into the exact same enemy after you've escaped!)

Also, Post Elvis and I have been reorganizing our music document to get things ready to go in that department as well, pretty much just spring cleaning but it gets us both in a great position going forward!

Here's another track off the soundtrack for you to check out!

And lastly, if you're looking for some fun bonus Almari stuff, @punkitt-is-here​ and I did a two-part stream of the demo together last year and I answered viewer questions as well! We had some technical difficulties in Part 1, but Part 2 is mostly fine!

Check 'em out!

With all that said, I've ended up prioritizing working on the final game over getting another demo ready despite wanting to get another one out last year. I think in the long run it's just the better approach for completing the game. I'll definitely release another playable build when I'm in the position to, whether that be the final game or another demo only time will tell. But for now, I'm gonna keep on cookin'.

Thanks for reading!

-DemonClaus