Summer Roadmap

We have been receiving a lot of feedback since we published our demo (give it a try if you haven't already!). We even got a review! Receiving feedback is really useful; it helps us focus on what matters to you, so keep sending comments, ideas, and feedback!

At the moment, there are three big things we want to achieve:

• Marketing - Gather the interest of publishers and, overall, a larger community

• Creative - Improve the game experience, always

• Readiness - Make sure we maintain a stable demo and that we are ready to scale up when the time is right.

On the Creative Side:

• Time of Day 2.0. We got a lot of great feedback when we implemented the first version of the time-of-day feature. It really helped ground the experience and provided some guidance on what to do next (ex, if I don't have time to forage, I can cook). We have some great ideas to tie the system up more closely to the main narrative themes of the experience.

• Cooking Hints. Players have been having fun experimenting with plants and Fae, and seeing which combinations work and which do not. We want to add a layer of information so that players who engage with the lore and the narrative get rewarded with some useful hints in the cooking section.

• Taste & Fae Matching. We are working on a new, much clearer set of tastes and a new reward screen UI as well.

• Narrative Sequences: How do we tell our story? How much is narrated, and how much is baked into the gameplay? We're working on an intro sequence that will answer all those questions.

Marketing:

• A Steam version of our demo: we aren't ready for a Steam demo yet, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a Steam build. The downside of it is that it is work that will not be seen by the community for quite some time. On the plus side, it's good to practice deploying the game on Steam, and also to see if there are any Steam-specific bugs. It's also a nice signal we can send to potential publishers. A Steam key carries a little bit more weight than a link to an itch demo.

Finally, on the Readiness Side:

• The Inventory system is one of those systems that has grown with the game, and that is getting a little weedy. Simple things like object rotations or even preventing objects from sticking out of the inventory would take a lot of time to fix in the current system. We also need a system that allows us to bring a lot of items easily. We also want to use the iteration to unify a bit the way objects are handled in the game, the plants, the decorations, etc., and make everything feel a little more tangible.

Here we go, those are the next set of tasks we are working on. On the side, we are also making progress with our overall narrative arc and our content production: the Faes, especially. (Did someone say 'Cat King'? ;) )

We have a clear vision for each element, a fairly clean build, and a fantastic team. I feel overall pretty good about where we are and where we are going.

Speaking of which, we like to tie up our objectives to events, and this time, our next big public-facing event is the Cooking Fest on Steam in October.

Of course, we will have some updates to the demo in the meantime, so follow us on Discord, Itch, or Steam if you want to stay in the know!

Seb