Demo Update! Version 1.3.3!

The demo has been updated! Read about all the new changes! Plans for the future!

First off, thanks!

First off, we wanted to say thanks for playing the demo! The response to it has been really amazing. Way more people have checked it out than we expected, and we're so happy with how it's being reviewed. Watching people react to various moments has been incredibly fun. The response has been very gratifying to see, and our team is motivated by the feedback to keep at it and make the game something special.

We still appreciate any help spreading the word, too! Keep on showing the game to anyone who might be interested. Every bit of visibility we get helps us a ton!

What's the update about?

We've been working hard on the full game! In doing so, we've made a lot of overall improvements and we thought it'd be neat to bring some of the improvements we've made back to the demo. So, we've put together a new version of the demo that has many of our latest enhancements.

These changes are more general improvements and some new minor features, rather than new content. It's basically the same demo still, but just smoother!

We've also reworked and rebalanced the battle content: poachers should be slightly smarter, and Prati has had her abilities replaced to make her much more impactful! Social calls are easier to find, and stronger, too.

The full patch notes are included below. There's lots of changes! (Your previous version saves should still be compatible with the version)

Where's the new stuff? What's next?

Our focus is working on the full game! Over the last few months we've been implementing all kinds of things! Story elements, gameplay, abilities, enemies, etc. However, we're adding stuff to the demo only if it's stuff that we're creating during our regular development anyway, and fits the purpose of a demo well.

However, we do want to get new things for people to try out!

One of the things we've heard is that the combat in the demo is very easy for most players. We wanted to keep things accessible for the demo, especially considering the unusual melee stealth combat style that Clever Girls has. However, we want to make sure that the full game can deliver a challenging and interesting game that requires some fun decision-making. And, of course, we want to have a wide variety of enemy types, instead of the single one the demo has!

With that in mind, we've been iterating on combat gameplay, with a focus on adding in variety, challenge and depth. Feedback from players is really valuable, and we want to show off some of our hard work, even before the game comes out. So:

We're thinking of adding in a few new battles to the demo's "quick battle" mode that more represent the "mid-game" of Clever Girls, with a more challenging difficulty and enemy variety. We don't know precisely when these battles will be ready to share, but when they are, we're going to add them to the demo so people can get a hold of them. Just like these other changes, they're things we're making anyway, but they can be shared earlier, so why not?

These battles wouldn't have any story context or anything like that, so there's no worries about story spoilers!

There's also still more things to do! General fixes that are compatible with the demo will continue to be backported. When we add things like dialogue printing noises or whatever else, they'll make their way back to the demo.

Anyway, that's all for the chatter! See the patch notes for the demo version 1.3.3 below!

Patch notes:

DEMO STORY CHANGES:

• Fixed a softlock that occurred after loading into the second part of the second battle, and then completing the encounter. Now the game should properly progress if you load saves at that stage.

VISUAL CHANGES:

• Sawyer's face texture has been adjusted so that she doesn't look so "stunned" all the time. Chill out, Sawyer!

• Added a blinking animation to dinosaurs. No more continuous staring!

• Added a head look dynamic animation feature for dinosaurs! Now they look where they're going while you're moving around and turning.

• Refined how dinosaurs handle running into obstacles, in explore mode and in battles. They should now duck their head when they would bump into something, and also slide past obstacles more cleanly, to prevent clipping. A similar solution to prevent tail clipping, will be implemented in the future.

• Added tail physics to each of the dinos!

  We think all these character features combined are a big improvement at making the dinos feel alive, and makes just running as them around a lot more satisfying.

• Fixed the alpha artifacting along Shade's spines.

• Grid dots no longer leave mysterious shadows when invisible

• Shade had some animation weirdness when diving in and out of the water. This has (very probably) been fixed.

• Poachers have had their rifles redesigned to look a bit more readable at a distance.

• Refined many of Shade's animations. Further animation refinements to the whole cast (like proper sprinting animations!) still to come.

EXPLORE MODE CHANGES:

• Added pop-up dialogue text to the dinosaurs you aren't playing when you approach them in exploration mode. Like so:

  

  This adds a lot more life to exploration! The dialogue isn't anything critical, but we want the characters to show as much personality as possible. Even just a line or two of text goes a long way!

BATTLE CHANGES:

• Reworked movement in battles. The dinosaurs now move along the grid in a smooth way, and can even sidestep/automatically turn if they can't occupy the space they want to reach in their default facing. This should make moving around as Daisy and Shade (especially in water or tight spaces) much easier.

  The ease-of-use for moving large characters around has been greatly improved and it's much less likely that a character will get stuck or that their movement will be reset unintentionally. It should be way easier to get shade up to the shore for her aquatic stealth KOs now!

• The action menu has been redesigned to take up less space, and will use the movement inputs to navigate it while it's open, which is consistent with other pop-up battle menus. Let us know if you think this better! In the future, we may add options for this sort of specific thing.

• Social calls have been moved to the main actions menu, allowing you to see all your abilities at a glance. Almost nobody we saw figured out how the tabs worked and used the abilities!

• Social calls have been buffed. The healing from "Support" and the movement from "Coordinate" now apply over the usual maximum of that attribute, and carry over across turns. "Rile Up" now gives an AP refund effect, as well, similar to Shot Caller, only you don't need to defeat the enemy to trigger it. It does not stack with Shot Caller's AP refund, however.

• Enemies now have dialogue pop-up text! Poachers now often say what they're doing, or react to seeing enemies, taking damage, etc. This is partially just to give them more life, but also to make their intentions clear so that they seem more intelligent and active.

• Enemies can no longer be stealth KO'd by a dinosaur they spotted in the same round. This should help make the game a little more challenging, and also make it so dinosaurs that can leap can no longer simply run out in front of an enemy and jump over them for a stealth KO. You gotta work a bit harder than that! At least leap out from a hiding spot!

• We've slightly tweaked some locations in the demo battle maps in order to better fit our more grid-aligned movement system. Bridges and rivers should be easier to navigate.

• The end turn check mark on the turn order bar is now reset by movement. Now when you switch back to a character whose turn you've ended, then move them, they should properly prevent the round from progressing (until you end their turn again). This should prevent some of the rare cases where the player would accidentally progress a round.

• Fixed a bug that was preventing enemies from noticing when someone in their line of sight was attacked. They should now be more concerned when they see their friends get attacked or pulled into a stealth KO.

• The Ability Targeting UI now shows the target's previewed health value in the number display, instead of their current, with the color of the text indicating a gain or loss in health. It should now be clearer how close an enemy will be to getting KO'd after your attack.

• Increased Daisy's base melee damage to 7. Even though she's trying to be gentle, she still packs a punch! Her speed has also been slightly increased.

• Text popups for damage and other effects now stack instead of appearing in random, possibly overlapping locations. Text applying to multiple characters may still overlap, however. (working on it)

• Tweaked UI for readability.

• The poacher's turn order icons now indicate what weapon they have. In the demo, they all have the same kind. Who knows how that might change in the full game? :)

• Added an input and keybindings to move the cursor up or down, which makes selecting spaces on or below bridges and overhangs easier. By default it's the scroll wheel, or arrow keys Up / Down, on PC, and D-Pad Up / Down on Controller.

• Fixed a divide-by-zero in poacher patrol path code, which was resulting in poachers wasting their turns

• Fixed the gigantic hitch whenever a poacher starts their turns.

• Greatly improved long-range poacher pathfinding and reduced turn-skipping chances. The poachers at the end of the third level should now be less lazy!

• Throwables no longer damage other throwables, which should help prevent Daisy accidentally destroying a useful rock by hitting it with another rock (we're not cavemen here!).

• It should be much easier for dinosaurs to jump over breakable objects. Breakable objects can now be directly targeted by throwable ones.

• Increased poacher movement attribute. They were just a little bit too slow to be threatening at times.

• Reworked Prati's "Ventriloquism" ability! Here's the new description:

  "Throw your voice to make the nearest enemy look that direction. Also makes nearby enemies think you're there. / Choose a location within range. The nearest enemy within 9 meters will face that way immediately. Others nearby will also think a dinosaur is there. Only works on enemies who can't see the targeted location or the acting dinosaur."

• Ventriloquism now costs 2 AP instead of 1 to compensate for its new power, and to prevent Prati from rotating an enemy then stealth attacking them in one turn. Sorry, Prati fans! She's not that powerful (yet).

• Ventriloquism now no longer allows you to perform the action when it won't affect anyone. This should make the ability's "learnability" much better, as the "can't use" messages should guide you towards choosing an appropriate target location.

• Round start messages now no longer overlap.

• Enemy turn delays (the time in between their action animations) can now be fast forwarded, just like their animations. Did you know there's a fast forward button? If you hold the End Turn input (X by default) during any battle animation or during enemy turns, the game will play at 2x speed!

• Prati's "Taunt" replaced by "Mocking Laughter":"Alert nearby enemies to gain "Taunt" and "Dodge" for 3 turns. Enemies that are not panicked will prioritize attacking a character with Taunt. Dodge will be used to dodge the next attack targeting this character."

  This ability makes Prati a lot more useful, even when she's not doing direct damage-- she can safely distract a problematic opponent. However, she'll still get into trouble when multiple enemies target her. Use this along with the new Ventriloquism to make a mockery of your enemies!