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 December 2024!
Before I begin, please make sure to check out the MoonWard demo on the Google Play Store and our Discord Community!
Before anything else...
From myself, Mr.Slate, and my crew at Slate Games:
Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year everyone!
We'll work hard to make 2025 a better one!
With that said, let's get to the new stuff! I'm focusing on the following in this month's MoonWard Going Forward.
Next Patch
Patch v0.9.29 will come out a week late on 7th of January. I'm taking some time off with the family. I'm sure all of you will be busy doing the same so I don't expect any riots because of the delay!
Wiki/Codex Feature
Finally got to it! It's called Notes in the game and it shows you multiple categories with many entries in each category. Well, there will be many entries. So far it's several entries per category. I'm aiming to add around 10 or so entries each patch for a while.
As an aside - I'm planning on adding usable books to the game. They'll be sold in markets and you'll be able to read them to get some XP. You can then sell the book back at a lower price. The important information from the book (mainly the item description but I'm wondering if it should be more) will remain in your notes so you won't need the book anymore in your inventory. Books may unlock other notes as well. Things like information on opponents. Their strengths and weaknesses, for example.
I'm not very into the idea of books giving you flat damage bonuses but it's not out of the question. Perhaps especially expensive books.
Finishing the County 2 Demo Stories
Speaking of more content. I'll be finishing the full game outline for side stories soon and this means I'll have what I need to make the last couple of stories for county 2. I'm aiming to have those done by next release.
Both stories I'm planning are about the recent rebellion in the neighbouring province. Never thought I'd be writing about subjects that are this heavy. I wanted MoonWard to be light-hearted and adventurous but the more I flesh out the world the darker it gets. Whether that reflects my own growing cynicism or the real world's messed up state, I find it difficult to stop and return to the original intent.
iOS Release
Still not much happening here. They did get in touch about moving this another step forward but they're taking their time like before.
Which is unfortunate because I got MoonWard working on iPhone and iPad last week. As in fully working, without any serious issues. In fact, I might be underselling this, the only issue I had was a graphical problem with a set of 3 textures. Everything else ran great. Framerate was surprisingly excellent too. If I could, I'd have very little hesitation to release the free version within a day or two. That's how confident I am in the port.
Either way, at this point I have no indication from them as to when I could release the free iOS version. Or the full release for that matter. All iOS releases are pushed back indefinitely. My original plan was to release the full versions in parallel with the one on Android. I'm not so sure about that anymore. Maybe a staggered release would work better.
Features
Here's a list of done, approved and work in progress features as of writing this. The WIP percentages are all over the place, that doesn't mean I've started and stopped work on these, or working on them in parallel. In games development larger features are broken down in standalone tasks that can be as small as 1 hour. For example, a "New Enemies" task can be 4 separate tasks of varying duration and the tasks can be done in any order. So with that in mind...
Enough rambling! Here's the current approved major feature list:
DONE: In-Game Wiki (Notes). It's finished! It's called 'Notes' and it went up with v0.9.19. There's a lot more notes to add but the feature itself is complete. I'll be adding more notes in coming patches!
Approved TBD: Boss fights. I want boss fights to be a bit more involved. I'm thinking multiple stages, dialogue, custom musical tracks, more and special moves, maybe even custom brawl screens! This should be fun :)
Approved TBD: Increased hex variation. This won't affect the demo as much because I'm fairly happy with the hex variety in County 1 and County 2. You'll be able to see the new hexes on the map but the counties will still be locked.
WIP 90%: More County 2 content. There will most likely be one or two more side stories for county 2 and that should be the end of content updates for the demo.
WIP 70%: iOS Build. I cleaned up the iOS version and finished the content blocking logic. Builds to iPhone and iPad work 99%. There are some minor texture problems that I'll be addressing before v0.9.29. Still having the same apple developer account issues as before.
WIP 10%: Long term Save Game. Currently all of your characters are deleted forever when the game is uninstalled. This is obviously not ideal. Modern games save these in the cloud. I'm not interested in that. So I'm looking into options to let you save/load a character locally. I also have no interest in encoding those files so you could in theory just open them up and cheat. Wouldn't that be cool?!!
Pricing and Support
Lastly, I'd like to elaborate on a couple of things regarding the demo and pricing.
Price. The demo (and App Store intro version if that's even happening anymore) will always be free. The full version (on Android and iOS) 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 1 and partially (side stories and bounties) in county 2, as well as any upgraded/new systems and mechanics available in those hubs. The demo will also get bugfixes and balance updates in parallel with the full version.
Before I go, if you'd like to support us, please check our Patreon and Ko-fi! Any donations and patronage towards Slate Games and 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!
Like always,
stay awesome!
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