The start of August was pretty samey: more Zone 1 building and more admin crap. We also focused on point 2. Narrative, in particular we got down to writing the script. This was a little more challenging. Nothing really felt right, jokes weren’t landing, didn’t get a good sense of what was actually going on. This process then went right into September, as we got some pretty brutal (much needed) feedback on the crux of our plot and much more.
We also decided to conduct Side Quests, which feels much better now. They’re pretty funny too. We released we actually preferred to think and write the side quests than the actual storyline itself - any devs out there, this is normal, right?
After doing the majority of set dressing, Tom decided to start grey boxing Edric’s house - AKA Potentiam’s base. This is where all the fancy potion making and Flora cultivation happens. Charis has just begun his masters, so to take the pressure off Tom has taken the reigns of designing the house whilst Charis focuses on the Flora. Just with the creation of a base, it’s already starting to feel like a proper game now (as opposed to a demo).
Mid-August, our funding application is sent off, our investment has come in, so now we finally have some funds to play with (literally felt like I was in the Sims and just typed in Rosebud for the first time). So that queues job adverts drafted and out, we’ve called out for two positions: 1) social media/marketing manager and 2) 3D Environment Artist.
We got a huge number of applicants from both sides, from memory we had over 60 for the 3D Modelling and over 40 for the Marketing job, so it took a while to go through. Emily wanted to give feedback to every applicant, as it’s pretty shit to get rejected with no critique, people seemed to appreciate, this process of reviewing applicants went into September.