Hey everyone,

Sorry it's been a while since I've released one of these Devlogs. Life's just been kinda crazy these past few weeks. Two weeks ago, both my sister and my partner had their birthdays in the same weekend and so there was quite a lot happening around that time. Not only that, I spent a good portion of last week helping my partner and her friend, so there wasn't really much time to work on the game. By the end of last week, I was tired and just needed a bit of time to chill and get my energy back up. Now that some semblance of normalcy for me has returned, let's get back to NIRAVASI. Two weeks, I talked about how the game's third level was complete and that work would go under way for the fourth level. This week, we won't be talking about that. Instead, I'm going to talk more about some quality changes being made to the game's current build, as well as setting up donation pages for the game.

Quality Control

As I (probably) mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to work on some quality-of-life changes for this latest build of the game. In particular, the tutorial level where Mura and his crew first land in the mysterious land of Niravasi. If you played through the earlier demo builds of the game, you may recall that when you reach a certain point of the game, you'll be bombarded with a barrage of cutscenes. While initially I felt these scenes were important in establishing context for the story, it was clear to me that it robbed players of a lot of agency in how they approached things. At first, I tried optimising the scenes to not nearly be as narrative/story heavy (Removing the Storybook Intro, Allowing Players Freedom after the first Proxy scene, etc.), but it's clear that still some players were not happy with having their ability to play the game being taken for more than 2 minutes. I agree, so here's what I've done to remedy this.

First off, I removed many lines of dialogue that weren't necessary, as well as squashed some of the less impactful dialogue sequences into a single text box. My hope with this is that it'll still give enough context for the scene, but not be as visually tiring as many of the text box sequences were in previous builds. Next, I've redesigned the scenarios before encountering your first Proxy. Now, instead of going through a long cutscene upon entering a certain building, you'll now have the choice to explore said building a bit before the same scene unfolds (RIP).

Next, I've given players the option to just flat-out refuse to follow the Lieutenant into the scary building and just make their way back to the ship. There'll even be an alternative scene that plays out that'll essentially skip the part with the smaller robot committing the unalivement (the big one will still try to kill you, though). Furthermore, I've tried my best to optimise a lot of the scenes in the introduction level of the game so that you'll be able to get right into the action from the get-go. However, this will be a long process and I can see this becoming a constant thing as development of the game continues. With that said, please let me know if you have any suggestions and comments and I'll do my best to tinker them into the game. Heck, the HP Bar wouldn't have existed if it weren't for all of your feedback.

Visually Pleasing

As some of you may have noticed on my social media pages for Niravasi, the last batch of characters in the game have received visual overhauls for both their Facial and Overworld sprites. These include Mura's younger self, his older sister and their estranged father. Thanks to the incredibly talented ZeeMadMaverick, the cast of Niravasi is looking very fancy and definitely a big step up from their original designs by myself. With the last sprite overhauls being complete, here's a grand look at the cast of the game so far:

Pictured above is the entire cast you'll interact with in Niravasi. I should stress that the characters you meet here are not all active in the journey and that it's really just Mura you'll be controlling and seeing. Well, there is also technically one other character, but I'm not quite ready to reveal his beautiful face just yet. Some of you may know him as Clovis and I've seen a few debates here and there about his identity. Well, lemme just drop a little something down here:

What does this mean? Who knows. Let's just say that he's a very nice person and only wants the best for Mura. You wanna know what else is nice? Money.

Love and Donations

As I mentioned before in last week's Devlog, the current build of Niravasi is nearing the stage for public release, so let's talk about what's coming for the future. So my plan right now may be a little bit naughty, but my plan right now for when everything is ready is that I will be releasing two demo builds on the game and I plan to keep this a consistent thing going forward.

The first will be the public demo builds, which will focus on testing certain levels in the game going forward into the future. These will be public and will remain for as long as that level in question is the most recent one. Here's an example of what I mean.

If Level 4 is in development, a demo of Level 3 will be playable for all.

If Level 6 is in development, a demo of Level 5 will be playable for all.

For each demo release, the previous demo will be removed from all digital marketplaces that NIRAVASI is being hosted on (but I'm not gonna demand people delete their demo copies from before, since that'd be too mean). The goal with this is so that players can give vital feedback on both the design and feel of these levels, but still not have the full experience of the game without paying for it (I know freebies are nice, but I need money man. :[). So for example, Level 4 is the most recent level and I'm working on Level 5. You'll be able to download and play the 4th level's demo to your heart's content. But when I've finished the 5th level, I'll remove all the public download links for that build and you'll have to play the next level's demo build instead.

The second will be a Early-Access permission of playing the game, which will include larger demo builds of the game that contain multiple levels in succession (almost as if you were playing a full game). The kicker here is that like the Backer Tier I listed for the game's Kickstarter back in January, you will need to donate £5 or more to gain access to these more-complete demo builds. I know this can be a little scummy, but as NIRAVASI is a commercial product, it would mean the world to me if you could the project through that way. You will only need to donate once to gain access to all these future builds of the game and as long as you have the receipts to prove to me that you did, I'll happily provide you with as many copies as you like as development continues.

Things change when money's involved in a project and I truly understand. It'll be a subject I'll be keeping a close eye on as work on the game continues, but please let me know how you feel about things like this in the comments below and/or in my social media pages.

That wraps it up for another NIRAVASI Devlog. I know the topic of money can be a little sensitive, especially if you're not exactly sure you're getting your money's worth. But being a sole-developer on a big project like this, I would really appreciate the support coming from you all of you. I have a lot of fun working on this game, but sadly even fun has its limits. With that said, I'll be keeping a close on how things develop over the next few weeks regarding this and if you have any comments or concerns, please let me know what you think in the appropriate social media channels. With that said, thank you very much for reading this weekly devlog and I'll talk to you all again next Tuesday!

Kind regards,
Angus (Sangos)