Clarifications on the late release

As some of you may have noticed, Serment's release has been... rather delayed, to put it mildly. We've had people messaging us asking about the situation or offering to help us with the testing process. It's an honor to know there're this much interest in our game, and believe me when I say we are just as impatient as you are! However, the delay is a necessary evil and I will now elaborate a bit more on why we are taking so long. First off, as I mentioned in another part of this discussion forum, there were several design flaws present in the demo that we didn't notice until testing the full game. Redundant mechanics that served no purposes ("Hang around" option in most places in the demo), mechanics that are not scalable beyond the small scope of the demo (Buffs and debuffs being purely percentage based and stacking indefinitely), lack of replayability between different routes, we had them all. These problems can't be left unaddressed and after some discussions, we decided to rework major parts of the design from scratch instead of making impromptu fixes whenever things go wrong, otherwise there'd be no end to them. This was our inexperience as developers showing and we have no excuses, but if we have to choose between a timely release and a quality game, we would always choose the latter and I hope you can agree. There are also many bug fixes and polishing touches to be made. Unclear UI, awkward controls, unnatural dialogues, unnecessary clicks or button presses are some of the issues we've been trying to tackle. Here're a few polishes we've done since the last demo update to give you an idea of what to expect in the full commercial version:

• Added visual indicators for several UI elements

  • Example 1

  • Example 2

• Added some QOL features

  • Review crafting orders

  • Confirmation for important choices

  • Make another purchase instead of moving back to the shop menu

• "WASD" keys can now be used to navigate the game's interface to make it more convenient for players using a mouse and keyboard

Of course, we have no intention of delaying things forever. We are fairly happy with how the latest build turned out, and have supposedly entered the "final" phase of testing. However, we have a track record of underestimating how long these things would take, so I can't really give you a release date until things are absolutely confirmed (The demo was released 2 months later than what we'd planned. We also thought the full game would be ready by last November, but here we are ːsteamfacepalmː). I hope that clears up the situation a bit, and hopefully Serment will turn out to be a game that's worth the long wait. Also, a quick shoutout to our publisher Sekai Project, who has been very supportive and understanding thus far.