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And what a rearview it is!
So... we've still avoided COVID-19 thus far, though some of our family hasn't been so lucky - I have a cousin who's been in and out of the hospital all year because of it, and my poor sister is currently experiencing her third bout of it, which scuttled our New Years' plans.
ANNNNNNND, I drafted this post on the 29th, and then my parents paid us a surprise visit on the 30th, a week after my sister had it, and lo and behold, my father has it! He felt sick on the drive over, and then they came into my apartment anyway and then told me about it! Long story, very annoyed about it, but to make it short - we may be incubating COVID over New Years'. It's fine, I'm not mad! I'm not mad at all! Happy Holidays, everybody!
Anyway, let's talk about ToA.
We were out and about this year, but still not quite back to pre-2020 levels, and we did spend a lot of that time in-doors working on ToA. This year our second programmer finished up the translation support, created an entire encounter editor, and has been helping with various technical tasks throughout, making it much easier for me to focus on writing and new feature work. About midway through the year we got our new animator, who's up to speed, and that gives Alis a lot more time to work on the art and various other game elements, which has been coming out great. And we're getting to the point of musical saturation for all the characters, which has been a goal of ours for a while. We're thinking of maybe starting voice work, as well, so we'll see in the coming year if that begins.
Speaking of the coming year, we'll be hopefully finishing up story mode (or at least the bulk of it) and getting the Evoker mode rolling, meaning that ToA will be ready from start to finish, and we can keep filling out all the planned content.
Alright, time for some stats.
YEAR-END REVIEW:
This year we've added a few more characters - the Sperm Bank Nurse, who has a whole encounter to herself in story mode (basically a whole vignette game unto itself at this point, with more content planned from the survey scenario winner!), the Dryad finally got a rework (she was originally a placeholder, now a full-fledged character), Merrybelle as well (similarly, she was a cameo from an old story of ours), and also the brand new Mimic, who looks absolutely gorgeous. And, of course, as preparation for them being a playable character, we added the Evoker.
Just like the last two years, we added over
50 new pieces of art and animations, with a new one each week. We've got a bunch of new content for many of the characters, as well as a more thorough base for every character. We've also added the Gloryhole scenario and some more crossover scenarios with their own art, or that'll be getting their own art - like the Werewolves x Catgirl scenario or the demon king crew all having a jerk-off party in Hiro's mouth (wow, that's a sentence).
This year we've expanded the Golem, Slime, Dryad, Orc, Brigand, Kylira, Goblin, Harpy, Werewolf, Brothel Madame, Gadgeteer, Catgirl, Tentacle Witch, Dark Knight, and Demon King interactions in adventure mode, a ton of new story mode encounters, crossover encounters (your whole companion crew can now "take on" the Tentacle Witch, for instance!), new Game Overs, new item upgrades, tons of new music, and... just so much, I can't keep going through these changelogs!
We added combat VFX that I think, along with the sounds, really help make the game feel a lot more tactile. We're hoping to add more, and to create a proper low-fidelity mode for Android so it can handle battles better without running into out of memory errors. We have a bunch of tech work lined up, actually, that should greatly improve the stability and experience of playing ToA, which isn't as sexy, but necessary.
We're gonna bring back devlogs this year, because while the weekly updates typically talk about what we're working on, it's nice to give more long-term planning and peaks into the technical background that we've been missing out on. I had a whole post about some of the heavy tech stuff that by now we've already done, and we'd like to talk more with you guys about the whole process.
Thank you so much for supporting us, and Happy New Year! To many more!
Majalis
(P.S. Boot up ToA today for a surprise~)
