Five Stages of Pink has been improved!

Five Stages of Pink has been improved!

This is not a new story part (but it’s coming soon!).

It’s weird to call this a small update, but it kinda is in a way, even if quite a LOT changed. This is the better version I talked about in my previous post. I highly suggest you read it if you haven’t, it’s very important. It talks about what happened since the last update years ago, my very serious return on this project and my future goals!

This improved version took longer to finish than I originally planned, it’s because I ended up adding many things! I’ll list them here.

(All of these were talked about in more details in the Discord server in the teaser channel if you want to read/join)

WHAT CHANGED IN THIS IMPROVED VERSION?

* The BIGGEST and most important reason for this improved version to exist to begin with: Fix the huge pacing issues.

Those who played the previous version might have enjoyed the story/game, but it had a lot of pacing issues (that most of you noticed). So I basically deleted (or moved for later chapters!) about 30min to 1h of content/dialogue (the time depends on how fast you read and played the game). It’s still the same story and scenes overall, but better paced. This version is more condensed and goes straight to the point. The goal was to make sure new players experience the true meat of the story sooner (especially the plot twists).

This was my biggest issue with my own game for years, I’m so glad it’s finally done. I know I’ll still come back to these parts to improve stuff here and there, but for now I’m 90% satisfied and more at ease knowing new players will experience this version!

(For old players: when you’ll play the next chapters you might feel like a sense of deja-vu with some of the dialogues, it’s normal lol. Most of the "deleted" dialogues are just moved for later parts, so keep that in mind when you read them again in the future. I just made sure the beginning was not dragging as hard as it was.)

* The second most important thing that I wanted to do absolutely: improve some of the artworks!

Like I said in my other post, with time I became a better writer but ALSO a better artist. I needed to fix some of the art/sprites, there are too many examples for me to show them all here. You’ll notice them in the game if you remember the previous version well.

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* A lot of ‘Likes’ and ‘Dislikes’ options in the Journal have changed.

Because my story and characters have improved (a lot!) since the last update. So it makes sense to update some of these. You might need to refill some of them because the old ones are still there if you selected them previously, but you need to reselect or change them completely.

* 5 pages of saves in total!! Instead of 8 slots you now have 40 slots!

For a game this big I realized a bit late that 8 slots was too little. When the story will expand it’d be a big pain to stay with only 8 slots. This is the type of game where players will be tempted to redo some parts to get items/interactions they missed, so it’s important to have more freedom with that.

I hope this will encourage players to save more frequently. PLEASE do NOT use only 1 or 2 save slots, if you get stuck in a bad ending loop it’s very bad.

* I added a jumpscare option!

Yes, you read that right, this option is for people who enjoy horror stories/games but not jumpscares (like me actually, I LOVE horror stories/content but not necessarily jumpscares). You can do this in the settings but you also get the choice when starting a ‘New Game’.

* The middle mouse button is now the skip button instead of the right click. And the right click is the new button to hide the UI (to see the artwork better).

A few players who replayed the game have told me they had an issue with accidentally clicking the right button and skipping a lot of dialogue, so it's best to just swap these two buttons. It’s not as easy to skip by mistake now.

Besides all the improvements, I also ended up ADDING MORE content to these parts:

NEW CONTENT

* BIGGEST new Horror addition: VISUAL ANOMALIES.

This is actually something that was supposed to appear in the next chapters, but when I realized that some sections of the beginning were too ‘slow’ or lacked some horror elements, I decided: why not add this important part of the plot more sooner than I originally planned? So I added 2 very short scenes of 1 to 4 minutes maximum each, small but impactful.

(I’m not showing everything here, to not spoil it, you need to experience them)

They are Visual Anomalies that Timor experiences, but they are not actually hallucinations.

I won’t say more, but these are very important additions (plot wise but also for the overall themes of the game). If you want to experience them specifically without replaying everything: one happens in the entrance hall of the house in the very beginning, the second one happens in the school hall section in the beginning. Enjoy.

* A very new 2D animation video in the beginning after (SPOILER) inspecting the corpse in the office.

This is a big one!! I suggest you at least replay the very beginning of the game to see it!

It’s the type of video that games/stories like to put in the beginning to hype people, you know what I mean? It’s short (20 second) but still cool. One of the biggest additions.

* New dialogue/text

While improving the pacing issues, I also added a few lines here and there to improve the story overall, and sometimes spice things up. They are very small additions, but still very important.

* New Art!

The Visual Anomalies are the biggest visual additions obviously, but I also added other things here and there. The main ones are: an actual image of Aura Lunaheartz (Anne’s mother, and Froy’s mentor), but also, in one of the visual anomalies Timor remembers talking with the Mayor of Septeek, so here’s a silhouette of the man. I won’t say more to not spoil.

(This list was abnormally long, but this is a proof on itself that this was a needed improvement and that I took a long time to upload it for a good reason lol)

IS IT WORTH REPLAYING?

Yes and No, in the end I added a LOT MORE changes than a ‘simple’ improvement, but they are not big enough story wise to replay the entirety of the first parts, so it’s still hard to suggest players to replay 3 to 5 hours of content again and redo every collectible things/Journal filling etc (maybe keep your current save and redo the game, so that you can just come back to the old save that has all the collectibles/Journal fillings).

For old players, I’d actually suggest you wait for the next story part to come out to replay the beginning and refresh your memory (since it’s a game that needs you to remember info and use them etc).

Anyway, it's finally done!!

-- Please do not hesitate to report any bug/problem you come across in the game!! Via the Discord/Steam or email. --

NEXT STORY PART

While working on this improved version I already worked so much on the actual continuation! Now that this version is finally up, I can speed up the development of the actual story! I’m genuinely so excited. I decided to do shorter updates (1 to 2h hours) more frequently, instead of big updates less frequently. So the next part will be short, but at least I’ll post more regularly!

Join the Discord server for more info and future updates!

Thank you all so much for all the support. It means the world to me.