Mission Metamorphosis Development Update #3 (30/10/2025)
Chapter 1 Progress:
- Planning 70%
- Rendering 50% (626 renders total)
- Programming 15%
- Writing 15%
- Polish 5%
Overall Estimated Progress: 31% of Chapter complete
Updated Roadmap
- November 27th: Development Update #4
- December 18th: Dev Update #5
- January 29th: Dev Update #6
Thoughts
Decently long gap since the last update and progress has been good. Nearly 200 renders made since the last official update and I have begun exploring the technical and coding sides of the project. I am starting small currently by just stitching together some of the more visually complete simple scenes with their dialogue and transitions. Nothing crazy but it is a start.
On the rendering side of things, the month started very well indeed. My pace was incredible and I was producing more renders than I have at any other point in the project. The middle of the month saw a workload spike in my job and that slowed things a lot. But despite how stressy things got I still managed to maintain an average of over 2 renders a day, which I think is very solid. The past week and a half has seen my pace increasing again to a very solid speed and I am confident I can maintain this into November.
I wanted to talk a tiny bit about the plot and 'shape' of this update. As the first update in the seven part story it is going to be quite fast paced and active as our two main characters are thrust into this incredible situation. I originally envisioned that the secondary characters of each update would be very self-contained to that chapter, and for some that will be true. However I have now woven a more cohesive and continuous narrative to connect the chapters and that includes a handful of recurring faces. In terms of LI's Emily is distinctly the only 'primary' in the game. But now the chance to see certain side characters across multiple chapters and for 'routes' themed around these side characters is more realistic with the project.
I have also decided that I will not be doing the demo for the game. The first release will be a fully polished release of Chapter 1 in its completed form. My main motive for this, other than the poll, is the importance I place on first impressions. If I click on a game that has promising tags and find it to be underwhelming and short it will take a lot to get me to come back and try it again. Therefore I feel that any 'hype' or 'ancipation' I earn with a demo is undermined by the potential fans I will turn away with a shoddy or rough early version. Plus, at around 1200 renders long, chapter 1 won't be THAT long. I hope it will offer players a couple hours of enjoyment and have some replay value, but it is not substantial enough to be chopped up like that. Either the demo is so short as to be a pisstake, or it is longer and the actual main release gets undermined and feels like a mini update. I hope you understand my reasoning and that this is for the longterm health of the project. To make up for any disappointment I promise to be quite generous with the next couple of render showcases...
Render Showcase
Since the demo is now not going to happen I have opted to showcase renders here from deeper into the game. Every single render here is from after the 30% mark that the demo was going to cover. They show some new makeup looks for Emily and a bit more of the action and suspense you would expect from a spy themed game. Six renders this time as an apology for the death of the demo.