Mid-Summer Dev Updates for Scaredy Cat

Hi everyone,

I'm excited to share the latest in Scaredy Cat's development! Since our May devlog, the focus has been on polishing and enhancing the demo content, which you'll have the opportunity to play shortly and definitely by the Steam Next Fest this October (14-21).

Here's a breakdown of recent progress:

✨ Demo-Specific Enhancements

• A thorough consistency pass on the quests featured in the demo, ensuring they all have proper progression, alerts, sounds and polish elements. (Internally, we've created a quest template and standardized process for new quest introductions - this makes it easier to spin up quests in-engine!) - Additional side quests have been introduced and refined for the demo, adding more depth to the world - More conditional dialogues for clue, puzzle and world objects, enhancing interactivity and narrative integration in the demo areas (Translation: For all you narrative nerds, you'll get different information from items depending at what stage you are in your playthrough.) - In general, the game has undergone a visual lift to prepare for the demo, including new art assets, light and shadow review, SFX, particles and interaction feedback - New audio elements have been added, including animal and interactable object sounds to bring the demo areas to life and provide more audio feedback - More cinematic flair introduced to support moments with strong narrative beats such as replaying a flashback - General updating of placeholder content such as characters, UI, draft dialogues

🧩 Puzzle and Gameplay Improvements for the Demo

• New puzzles have been added to one of the demo areas, increasing the variety of challenges players will face - The office puzzle has been tweaked and refined for a better player experience, with the aim of tutorializing some of the later gameplay you'll experience whilst pet-sitting for different owners

🐶 NPC and Pet Behavior in Demo Areas

• After iterating on levels/puzzles, several updates have been made to pet stats, behavior and puzzles to make the demo levels feel cohesive - An important new NPC has been added to the game in a chain of side quests, expanding the cast of characters you'll meet and teasing future relationships

📖 UI and Quality of Life Improvements

• The Quest Journal and HUD have received updates for better usability, which you'll experience in the demo - We've made improvements to the Dialogue and Text Message UIs to improve accessibility and give more narrative flavor

🐛 Bug Fixes and Optimizations

• Fixed various bugs, including issues with wanderer scripts, teleporters, and dialogue triggers to ensure a polished demo - Refactoring of some major gameplay systems to optimize and make more usable in future projects

We're excited to have you experience this slice of Scaredy Cat during Steam Next Fest this October. This demo represents significant chunk of the vision for the game, which is intended to be a more engaging and narratively rich experience.

Your support through engagement and wishlists has been invaluable in getting us to this point! ❤️ If you haven't already, wishlist Scaredy Cat for when the demo drops, and mark your calendars for Steam Next Fest in October!

Stay tuned for more updates, and follow us on socials for more frequent, bite-sized dev updates:

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Sincerely, Mel and the Scaredy Cat Team 🖤