Danny Phoenix - Revised Plan - Demo Update Details

For those of you who may have missed it, a lot has happened over the past week. My little niche game suddenly gained a LOT of attention. And while that attention is beginning to settle back down, at least to some degree, it's left me with some serious self-reflection.

Up until now, the plan was always to blast through the full game. Then put out an update to the free demo, followed by the full release. And this plan largely made sense when I was getting around 150 views a day. Maybe 10 downloads a day here or there. It was acceptable to me to simply wait and update it later.

However...When THIS happens. And you suddenly get 60k views in the span of 3 days. And THOUSANDS of downloads. Well. I sorta feel like a fool now haha.

See the demo is 7 months old. It has some REALLY silly bugs that were only caught later on in the early access builds. It has a lot of missing features, or outdated versions of things. And like I said before, I didn't really mind since so few people were actually SEEING it. It served its purpose and would update when I was ready, and I would market it when I was ready.

Somehow that plan went to shit. And now tens of thousands of people have been exposed to this version of my game. And I'm a little bit embarrassed by it I'm not gonna lie.

SO, having survived this week, I've had a shift in focus. Instead of just quietly building up the full game for play testing, I want to update the demo, like ASAP!

But what exactly does that mean? Well, more or less, I want to make the demo that I was intending to release the week before launch. Or at least, something VERY close to it. I can't finish all the art assets from the cut scenes, but I can INCLUDE those scenes in their unfinished state. More importantly though, instead of building out every mechanic and concept from chapter 1 to 13, I'm only going to focus on what a player will experience within the first 4 chapters that the demo covers.

That means I don't need to worry about every class being 100% done, or every skill being balanced, or every enemy, or making sure every single optional scene is fully scripted with placeholder art, etc etc.

I can just FOCUS on the early game, and what this demo requires. Then from there I can build out the rest.

It's really important to me that all of these new people really get to experience the best that I have to offer. And right now, what they have is FAR from that. So, forgive me as I indulge in this for a bit.

This is what I'd really like to talk about today. Because believe it or not, a LOT is going to be changed. I'll tackle it one thing at a time, but like I revealed in the previous dev log, right on starting a new game, you will immediately be met with brand new content.

The opening segment, where you set the games difficulty and content modifiers, has been completely rewritten, and is now framed as a conversation between you and a mysterious voice in the darkness. On top of that, the content levels have been adjusted.

Chapter 1 -

This chapter will not feature any notable differences, not that I can think of at least. The prologue is just the prologue of course, so there's not much here that can reasonably change.

Chapter 2 -

Likewise with chapter 2, there aren't really any planned changes. This is largely just a small tutorial and set up sequence.

Chapter 3 -

Now from here, things will start to change. First of all, are all the updates from the early access versions. Bug fixes, additions, quality of life stuff. But there's going to be even more new features.

One of those new features will be the ability to gaze into mirrors. Doing so will reveal a screen like the one you're seeing here. It's something like a status screen, that tracks important variables.

The final version will track 4 different variables that a player might want to reference as they play.

Which endings they have already unlocked. While this information was always displayed on the games title screen, it was never accessible mid playthrough. Now you can actually just check with a mirror to see how many endings you've gotten or what letters you need when you're following a walkthrough post release.

Goddess Affinity. There hasn't been any way to truly understand what goddess path you are on while playing. But now you'll have an easy metric. Each path has 4 levels, and they will light up as you unlock them. So, whoever has the most lit up icons, is the goddess you have the most affinity with. This will be very useful for those of you doing second and third runs to see the different path related endings.

Relics. You can easily see how many of the games 6 relics you've collected. It's important to note that the relics will not be displayed UNTIL you have restored them. You must find them and then bring them back to the forgotten and view the associated memory for them to be counted as "found." This is very important. Simply collecting them is NOT enough to effect things. Hint hint, nudge nudge.

Secrets. Not pictured on this earlier wip, but included in the demo will be a secrets category. It only keeps track of 2 crucial items. Items that may not seem to serve any purpose but will be required for unlocking the games deepest secrets.

Another thing that will be added from here on out are death animations. Not every enemy has a dedicated death animation, nor are all unique. But there are quite a few to experience as you go along. Depending on your game's settings, you may even encounter variants that are less bloody and more sexy.

As well the Mirror World will see its locked doors finally open to you. The room of memory will allow you to rewatch unlocked scenes, and the room of combat will let you more easily farm memory fragments by fighting waves of enemies.

Chapter 4 -

Chapter 4 will continue the trend of new content. Multiple brand-new scenes will be presented in the demo, albeit in an unfinished state.

To list a few off the top of my head, we have;

Alternate interactions with the alchemist that reflect if Red has done lewd events at the camp, making her plan to flash her breasts for a discount no longer viable. New scenes with the drunkard, including an extended version of the stuck in wall scene, a new sequence that skips his boss battle entirely, and a new sequence for losing the battle. And of course, an updated sequence related to the Slime King battle.

Updated minigames for fishing and mining. And one more crucial feature that has yet to appear in any build.

New game plus! It will finally be presented and given its context. The new game plus room will also store all of your endings so you can rewatch unlocked endings or even ask for hints as to how to get the remaining ones (of course, not many CAN be unlocked in the demo).

You will however be able to use the new game plus feature and restart your night while carrying over certain data. Use this to your advantage to boost your eros levels and experience higher level lewd content or locked choices or use it to get stronger and overcome a tricky boss fight.

Now there will be restrictions and caps set up to prevent you from breaking the game by carrying over a super farmed save file, but I do want to give you access to pretty much every feature and mechanic this time. Nothing held back.

So yeah, that's the plan, that's what I've been working on these past few days. Is there a release date? NOPE! I'm working pretty hard to get it out super quick, but I can't say for sure when. Maybe it'll take the previous release date of November 13, but if it's ready before then, I don't really see a compelling reason to sit on it.

Regardless, you'll know when it comes out as I'll make a proper devlog showing off the new features before it launches.

Now this is something that I didn't expect to happen. However, with the demo getting an update, it feels a bit bad to leave the early access without a lot of these features. It is of course, unreasonable to expect me to be able to have all of these new things working for 10 chapters in a short span of time though.

I don't have a firm answer yet. But I am considering adding more waves to it. For example, maybe the next wave would cover up to chapter 5 or 6? A manageable chunk. And I can update it as I go and we move towards full release? Let me know if you have any particular thoughts on that.

I think that's about all I have to say for now though. I'm really overwhelmed by all of the sudden attention. It'd be one thing if I put out a trailer or an update that blew up but, it just kind of happening...out of nowhere, when I've done nothing, and with a seven month old buggy build...yeah, it's been a lot on my mind haha.

I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity though, and that's exactly why I want to work even harder to thank those of you who have been patiently waiting as well as those that are brand new.

It won't be a huge amount of gameplay, but a taste of the full experience to show you my appreciation and really reveal what sorts of things have been going on in the background as you waited for updates.

Thank you so much for your support and patience. I hope to have something substantial to provide to you soon.