Demo Build 10 + Post Next Fest

An Ecrazeus Castle Demo update has been released. Changes include:

• Rooms in the sky now have some pre-spawned enemies, due to player feedback.

  • The exact positions are based on your starting position in the room.

  • Not all enemies are spawned for both performance and retaining the spirit of the game reasons.

• The lighting in the Tower stage has been adjusted to be nicer to look at.

• Fixed a bug with the button icons when near the shop keeper.

• Added a small text reminder under the submit feedback button (in English only).

This will most likely be the last demo update for the time being, outside of the Japanese translation that's currently being worked on.

Trials and Tribulations

First of all, thank you to all the visitors on Steam for trying out the demo! Even if the initial versions had a lot of issues, your feedback has helped me patch out quite a few issues in the game, that I wouldn't be able to get with my usually small audience.

I would also like to apologize for some of the bugs that stuck in for the start of Next Fest, that were obviously an issue in the game, but that I mistakenly believed to be caused by user error or hardware limitations and didn't act on it fast enough. This was especially the case of the default language being set to French (despite the game being programmed to default to English), due to a 1KB file left in by error for at least 3-4 patches. That one in particular caught me off-guard, as I didn't even know that the file was being generated after testing the game exports (since they're generated AFTER the game closes).

Also, another apology for the poor performances. As I am trying to force an engine meant to run turn-based RPGs (RPG Developer Bakin) to play like an action game, there were bound to be issues... but I was honestly caught off-guard by how many bugs, memory leaks and issues were caused not by my poor code, but by engine default features. If you're curious what's been changed before and during Next Fest:

• The slopes and stairs in most maps had to be removed before the demo went live, because they cause a memory leak, but only when the game is exported.

• The FEVER mechanic had an automated draining of the meter if you didn't attack often, but that had to be scrapped last minute before the demo went live, because it over saturated the CPU and ignored the call to make it only run once per frame, not "as many times as possible per frame"... but this bug only occurs in an export build. This nearly made one of the stat upgrades useless, but it's been repurposed a bit.

• The 2D clouds, which were created using the 2D Stamps feature of the engine, which is normally used to create 2D pixel art characters à la HD-2D, was significantly more processing costly than expected, and had to be removed.

• The HUD had the portrait using an absurd amount of CPU, because I decided to use the built-in system designated to retrieve party member portraits.

• The weapon icons were also a CPU burden and negated the initial gains from the portrait update, so I had to create an entire font to substitute the icon system.

After Next Fest

The demo will remain on Steam, even after Next Fest. It is very likely that the demo will receive an update when the full game releases, so that it reflects the final game as much as possible. Don't worry, I've made it so that it's relatively easy to build a demo build from a project.

I'm aiming for a full game release towards mid 2026. That might seem a bit insane, but it's a small project. It doesn't mean that I'm not going to give it my all, and pack it with as much features as possible to make the small asking price as much of a impulse buy as possible.

There is a possibility that a Steam Playtest might occur when the game is nearing completion, in order to make sure that the game doesn't come out of the gate broken / forces the english to learn french.

If you've played the demo, make sure to submit feedback through any method that you can think of. Ideally, I'd recommend filling in the Google Forms, as that allows me to easily quantify feedback on various aspects of the game: https://forms.gle/Uzkh4cPDPoiZmMn9A. Additionally, you can get your name in the credits as a tester for completing the survey and leaving your username, but it is optional (maybe under a different tier to distinguish from those who've played the Private Playtest from December). Please note that at some point (no exact date or announcement), the survey will be closed, so if you want your name in the credits, do it ASAP.

To keep up to date on the game, or to simply follow me talking, showing off behind the scenes images, dev thoughts, or showing off my gacha pulls... you should follow me over at https://x.com/MeringueRouge.

If you just want the big important announcements, delivered directly to you by a discord notification: https://discord.gg/HEs9faqb2u. The server has no chat rooms, it is only dedicated to announcements. You can talk to me through DMs if you need to.

Finally, if you want to check my previous works, game jams, or plug-ins that I've made for RPG Developer Bakin and Blender, you can check my website that links to them all: https://meringue-rouge.github.io/

I'll try to keep an eye on the Steam Discussions for the game, but keep in mind that I don't get pinged or have a green bell icon, unless you're posting in a thread I've made or replied to. But feel free to leave your questions there as well.

Anyways, I gotta go to bed. From tomorrow, I gotta work on the rest of the game.

Later!