Hey folks, proper update for you all today.

A shorter and more structured breakdown of this update is up on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2815560/view/4187862599441025763

This update cycle I started out with a simple desire - complete the writing for the first encounter of Siphonogore's Dungeon Crawling loop, the "Mass of Flesh'' encounter. As I began writing I quickly realized the pacing was way too quick, and since different branches needed a similar origin a super quick pacing meant I had to bring the characters from point A to point B in ways that I didn’t like. So I revisited the drafting flowchart. To give an idea, this was what I had started with:

The actual notes aren’t important, but the general realization was that I had made some pretty big errors out of comfort - for instance, the path on the far left and the next to it were determined by a random value roll - I thought it would be nice to add uncertainty so that the player would have variance, some adversity to overcome, but that clashed with the “make strategic choices” experience I wanted to fulfill; taking away player control is, generally, not a good idea in that regard. Also the choice in the “middle” smaller route that just links back with the other path instead of being its own thing felt lazy to me - a way to “go back” might be a good idea in the future, but re-routing and continuing down a different path felt like it punished exploration.

So I started drafting a new encounter flowchart, and quickly realized another issue: I wanted to add special options that would become available if you had a certain move or upgrade, like being able to talk to the Mass if you had the Mock Distress move - well I can’t implement all of those that I want without fully fleshing out the moves of the other 2 characters. So I started working on the moves and specializations of the Dopplegrabber and Vasculurch characters, revisiting notes on character identities, personal lore tidbits, and figuring out what I could implement as at least an initial set of moves for the characters. I also realized it was about time I actually showed off the moves of all the characters:

After that I worked on some internals and tested the moves, fixed some bugs, realized the status effect code needed to be revised (for the fourth time now), and beefed up some of the code’s modularity.

It was around the time I was adding this little box that let me change between loot icons that I remembered…

“Don’t I have an encounter to write?”

The bad news: that took an extra few weeks from the schedule. The good news: it was both entirely necessary and helped a lot.

Drafting the encounter was a lot easier since I was able to use the new changes to the code and the fresh move work to determine things like how the parts would act, what they could or would do, etc. After a bit of work I ended up with this:

Much more “branchy”, no RNG, no illusion of choice that plops you back into another path, just 23 ways to end an encounter, and 38 different possible loot items. All the work on status effects allowed me to design the loot to be a little different than just a new move or an upgrade, adding in things like situational buffs, or applying status effects if a condition is met. Stuff that would be too powerful to happen all the time, but add a bit of spice to the parts over time.

As I started writing I also added 2 more functions, one to control the art that’s displayed so I could change the art to reflect the current scenario instead of using one still image, and another that I could use for “Pain Checks” basically just ways to damage or ding player stats. In this case it was used as banacing drawbacks for more powerful loot outcomes, but in the future I plan on also adding in puzzles that utilize them or giving the player a chance to make strategic sacrifices.

I concluded writing last week, and ended up with around 5000-6000 words if my calculations are correct. It took some time to figure out the proper workflow, but I was eventually able to get the hang of it. I still need to finish up art, add some hovertext, do some loot handling for the status effects and conditionals, etc. but that’s pretty easy-going all things considered. This is the last month before I open up the playtest, so I'll be tightening up the package and adding in what I can to make a proper experience for everyone.

Thanks for stopping by and reading, if this sorta stuff interests you and you haven't already, consider joining the discord below to get notified for updates, and wishlist Siphonogore on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2815560/Siphonogore/

https://discord.com/invite/gFfPxeCeQE