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 November 2024!
Before I begin, please make sure to check out the MoonWard demo on the Google Play Store and our Discord Community!
With that out of the way, let's get to the new stuff!
I'm focusing on the following in this month's MoonWard Going Forward.
Next Patch
Patch v0.9.1 (last big version jump before release) for the MoonWard demo should be out on Android on the 21st of November. That's Thursday next week. There will be a post on socials announcing this properly. Just giving YOU a heads up. You awesome people reading this. Cause you're my favourites.
And a quick disclaimer. I'm pushing this forward by 2 days to try and get more done, but even doing that, this patch will have less new features in it than last time. Last week I did mostly admin and business work, the week before I was ill and this week will be dedicated to getting MoonWard ready for a live demo. Speaking of that!
GaMaYo, November 21st 2024
I'm going to be demoing MoonWard on the 21st of November at a local industry event! In front of people! And get this - they'll play it too!
This came out of the networking event at EGX (the one good thing at EGX24). I spoke to some people, found out this was happening and decided to give it a go.
The only thing is that to demo MoonWard at this event I'll need to convert it to be played with a controller, as well as adding some limitations specific for that demo. I've got a solid plan how to go about doing this and honestly I'm not that worried. Just the normal amount. Of worry.
Controller Support
Yes. Finally. To think, all it took was a demo opportunity at an event! Joking aside, I've been meaning to add controller support for a long time. I even played around with it a while ago to see how viable it was. To my surprise, I found it was very viable... then ignored those results and focused on critical features.
For this live demo It'll be limited to brawls and a few screens, but after that I'll add it to the entire game. For the patch coming on the 19th I'll most likely only enable brawls, since that will be the only part I will be able to test out properly, but full support shouldn't be far behind.
I mentioned above that I played with the idea a little bit in the past. I hate exaggerating so please believe me when I say - brawls specifically felt very good. I mapped the controller to the Dark Souls 1 button scheme and the muscle memory came straight away. I know there aren't very many mobile players with controllers, but if you try MoonWard like that I think you'll have a good time.
iOS Release
Oh boy! As you could probably tell the iOS release hasn't happened! Once again, out of my control. In all fairness, there was some progress on the enrolment 3 weeks ago but I've heard nothing since.
At this point I have no indication from them as to when I could begin work on the iOS non-demo release. Or the full release for that matter. I haven't announced anything on socials because I keep hoping they'll ring me back and tell me it's all sorted. I should probably stop hoping and just drop the news, though.
Either way, 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. Especially if there are so many obstacles. Granted, the full Android release will be awkward too, with their new policy of requesting 20 testers to test the game before release. At least Apple isn't doing that. Rant over.
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 as small as 1 hour. For example, "New Enemies" is actually 4 separate tasks of varying duration and can be done in any order. So with that in mind...
Enough rambling! Here's the current approved major feature list:
Approved TBD: In-Game Wiki (Notes). It's in scope again. Hoping to be able to finish this by next MGF.
DONE: Aspect introduction.
DONE: Auras. These will be abilities that enemies will have or have a chance to possess. Some will be innate like a fire elemental's passive "Fire Cloak". While another could be "Backup" where the character would be attacked by allies of their bandit opponent in random intervals but will be alerted to the attack and could dodge them if timed correctly.
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 20 and that should be the end of content updates for the demo.
WIP 30%: iOS Build. I cleaned up the iOS version and finished the content blocking logic. Still having the same 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) 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 1 and partially (side stories and bounties) 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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