Development continues! I thought I was close to a build I could share, but then playtester 1 (aka The Hubs) had some feedback that required a significant gutting of the last half of the chapter. And that was 5 days ago.
The good news is that the feedback and changes makes the game better and the psych content more accessible. It also sparked some interesting mechanic changes that I'm really digging and *hopefully* will actually solve problems further down the line.
One of the biggest changes from the previous builds are the portraits. Traditionally, characters have looked like this:
But one of the aspects of the game is digging into memories, recalling what happened in the past and asking questions about. Before, I just kept the portraits like above. But to help these flashbacks stand out, to be distinct and clear that you're not actually there, it was suggested to change up the way these dialogs looked.
This has been surprisingly challenging to do, but I've finally landed on something I don't hate.
And just to add complexity, our narrator Ellie also has internal thoughts. Which currently look like this:
Not sure it'll stay that way either, but glad this is being figured out in the first chapter and not getting this feedback after it's all but done.