Welcome to the "MoonWard Going Forward" (MGF) blog! I'm Mr. Slate and I'm here to let you know what's been happening with MoonWard as of late August 2024!
Before I begin, please make sure to check out the MoonWard demo on the Google Play Store and our Discord Community!
If you'd like to support us, please check out our Ko-fi page!
With that out of the way, let's get to the news!
There are two primary MoonWard tasks I've been working on since last MGF.
First one is the Apple App Store release. That's right, I'm announcing an App Store version of the MoonWard demo today! It's not out! I'm in the planning stage still. It'll contain near enough the same content as the android demo but be a complete, standalone game and not technically a demo (hence the planning). I'm thinking of calling it "MoonWard: Beginnings" but I'm not sure yet. Either way, I'm aiming for a late September release!
The second and honestly more exciting task for me personally, is the ongoing updates to the brawl screen. I've been in touch with some designer friends and the feedback reinforced my feeling that the combat screen is a pain point for players. Combat in general, but it's the core of the gameplay loop and I'm really happy with how closely it mimics Dark Souls so that's not massively changing.
Player onboarding on the other hand could use a lot of work. I should say I've also had playtesting done and have been taking feedback. The brawl screen readability seems to be the biggest issue for most. So I've been hard at work trying to improve the UI in attempts to make it more instantly readable. There is a real chance that I won't be able to crack this problem, in which case I'll be focusing on more aggressive onboarding instead. We'll see. In all fairness I'm quite happy with some of my prototype, but then again I had no trouble reading the original UI either so I'm not the best judge!
There is another aspect of the brawl screen I've been improving and that's feedback and effects. The plan so far is to add some screen shake effects, animate the damage numbers in a fun distinct way between damage types. In general, make things a bit less cluttered and more recognisable. For example, I'm thinking of making the poison damage numbers act like a drop of liquid falling down, while shock damage numbers will ping off diagonally up like sparks. I should be able to show these off soon!
Now, for the feature section! I'm including the same list as last MGF below. I have been adding tasks based on feedback and research to my Trello, but most of them are not critical so I don't feel confident adding them to the public list. I've also cut some features because I designed a better solution or they were going to require too long to do. I'm trying to keep the budget in mind. I don't want to have to stop for 7 months again!
Enough rambling, though, here's the current approved feature list (for elaborations see last MGF blog from May):
Improved Player Onboarding. Includes interactive battle tutorials.
Records for Completed Adventures. Number of paragraphs describing adventure events. Supports player dialogue choices.
In-Game Wiki (Notes).
Revised/expanded story content. I'm planning a more cohesive, engaging story. This includes unlocking mechanics as you play.
New enemies.
And here's the list of features I had to cut to make sure I don't run out of money again! I may reconsider some of these but as of now they are officially dropped from the Backlog.
Transcribed Dialogue.
Named Character Bios (Associates). May contain links to associated adventures' records.
Named Character Disposition.
Underground Biome.
Lastly, I'd like to elaborate on a couple of things regarding the demo and pricing.
Price. The demo (and App Store intro version) will always be free. The full version will always be a one time purchase. There will never be any in-app purchases. There will never be any adverts. There will never be battle passes. There will never be Web3 technology.
Support/Patching. When the full version is released, the demo will continue to receive patches at the same rate as the full version. This will include new or changed content in county one and two, as well as any upgraded/new systems and mechanics available in those hubs. The demo will also get bugfixes in parallel with the full version. In reality, the demo will stop receiving content updates once county one and two are content complete.
Before I go, if you'd like to support us, please check out our Ko-fi page! Any donations towards MoonWard development are greatly appreciated!
Thank you all so much for your continued support! It's very humbling to be able to do what I love!
As always, you're all awesome!
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