What else is there to say? Thank you to every one who played the original Prologue demo, left feedback, and kept an eye on this project over the years. This game wouldn't be what it is today without you. I hope that the rest of it can eclipse your expectations!
Join the Discord!
Oh, I made a Discord if you'd be interested in chatting with me and the other players. It's a good spot to leave suggestions, ideas, and feedback or report bugs too. See you there!
About The Soundtrack!
Also, in case any of you are looking for the soundtrack: that will be available on Steam in a few days on October 10th.
Until then, I encourage you to check out the the pages of the game's musician, Me and My Kidney: Bandcamp & SoundCloud. The soundtrack is actually available on Bandcamp right now, so you could grab it there if you'd like!
A Couple of Personal Asks:
Once you have a chance to play the game, please leave a review! Be honest, of course! It really helps me out and I'm also just genuinely curious to hear what people think!
To anyone who's played new demo from June 2022: can you comment here and let me know if "importing" your save into the full game worked? I'm pretty sure it's fine, but I've seen Steam Cloud do some really weird things... so it would put me at ease to hear that it's working.
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Thank you for your playing, shru ｡*:★(´・ω・人・ω・`)｡:゜★｡
The Full Game comes out Tomorrow!!!
Gamer Greetings!
I'm just popping in for a quick reminder that the game's coming out tomorrow! (Or if you didn't catch the last post then... surprise!)
It'll go live at about the time I'm posting this now. So like... 6:00 AM PST / 9:00 AM EST / 1:00 PM GMT / 3:00 PM CET / 10:00 PM JST ... -ish. I have to manually click the release button, but around this time if nothing goes wrong!
That's all for now! I'll leave you with a comparison of one of the earliest gifs I took of the game, and a more recent one!
See you again soon... hope these announcements aren't getting annoying, （⌒∇⌒）ﾉ""ﾌﾘﾌﾘ
The full Vacant Kingdom releases on October 6th!
Gamer Greetings!
You've seen the title, the full version of Vacant Kingdom is almost upon us! October 6th is the release day! Wishlist it, mark your calendars, and let your nephew Graeden know!
The game will be priced at $8 USD, or your regional equivalent. It'll launch at a 10% discount, as games on Steam often do.
Lengthwise, the full game should be about 4-6 hours long, although some people may take a fair bit longer. If you've played the new demo, that's the first 40% of the game or so.
And a reminder: if you haven't played the new demo yet, you can do that now and your progress will carry over into the full game when it's out!
I won't say much else, but here's a quick peek at a new weapon I added recently.
So excited for everyone to play it, shru (U・ω・U)ノ
The Vacant Kingdom Store Page is Up
Happening holidays, Gamers!
I'm sorry that it's been a quiet year from my side, but I have some really good news today!
The store page for the full game is now up! Vacant Kingdom is not actually released yet, but you can add it to your wishlist so that you find out the exact picosecond that it is!
I'll try to keep this update brief and let the store page speak for itself. There's one screenshot in particular which shows a little hint at a new game element which I don't think I've talked about yet. Have a look!
I've been ridiculously bad at time estimates so far, so I'm leaving the release date as an open "2022" for now. But I promise you that it's pretty close to being done. I think I'll be ready to start beta testing a few months from now at the latest. (By the way, if you're reading this -- please feel free to leave a comment saying that you'd be interested in beta testing -- and I might reach out to you later. No promises that I can get back to everyone though!)
Anyways, that's all for now. Thanks to everyone who's still looking forwards to the full game. Please have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Cheerful Koliada, and a Bountiful Steam Sale!
Don't forget to wishlist and tell a Gamer, shru *.ﾟ+ヽ(○･▽･○)ﾉﾞ +.ﾟ*
Dev Log X
Greetings to the gamers of the world,
I just thought I'd stop by and share a little peak at some of what I'm working on.
In addition to working on new areas, I've also done a fairly extensive reworking of the start of the game. Perhaps some of you will recognize the area pictured above.
There's now a good amount of combat with less intimidating enemies before you have to face off against the first boss. So new players will get into the action sooner and have a chance to get familiar with the systems under less pressure. (Probably not a great concern for the audience of this post, but I think you'll enjoy fighting the new enemies too.)
That's all for now, shru ε=ε=ε=ε=┌(;￣▽￣)┘
Dev Log IX
Seasonal Greetings Everygamer,
Sorry for the long silence, please rest assured that I've been quietly working on Vacant Kingdom this whole time. I've come to share some more details of what you can expect in the full game.
The area I've been working on lately is the Neptune Bath House. Neptune is a formerly-lavish site which was once a popular destination for those in the kingdom to relax at. These days the bath house has fallen into disrepair; all of the baths have frozen over, the power isn't running, and nobody can even get the front entrance to open.
You'll be able help fix those issues and restore the Neptune to its former glory. There are a few characters who have their own agenda around what they'd like to do with the bath house. You can choose to help them out... or not. :)
Another thing which I've been focusing on is making the combat more dynamic, and giving players more opportunities to pull off some skilled feats once they're comfortable with a certain boss's attack patterns.
You'll notice in the above GIF that whenever the player "grazes" past a bullet little white sparks shoot out. Whenever you see those sparks, that means that you've gained some sub-weapon energy. Sub-weapons are powerful combat abilities, but you can only use them if you have enough energy.
So, once you're familiar with a certain attack pattern, you can play more aggressively and deliberately graze past bullets. For your effort you'll be rewarded with the ability to use your sub-weapons more often, letting you take out bosses more quickly and more stylishly.
I think all of you are surely wondering when you'll be able to play more of the game. Unfortunately, this won't happen until next year. I do have a lot of new areas which are playable and nearing completion. However the next act of the game is more non-linear than what came before in the Prologue. So the rest of the game isn't going to really "work" until all of it is in place -- hopefully that makes sense.
I'm sorry if that's disappointing, but please just know the game is still being actively being worked on, and is getting closer and closer to completion with every week that passes. Thank you for your understanding and patience.
And with that, I'll wish you all a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Joyous Kwanzaa, a Mirthful Yuletide, and a Shining Steam Sale! Overall I just hope you have some Happening Holidays!
shru (ᆼↀᆺↀᆼ)
Dev Log VIII
Happy Easter, Gamers! It's been a while!
You might have noticed that I haven't posted one of these development logs in a while. There are a couple reasons for this:
Firstly, it's a reality of life that one needs money to live. I had a certain amount of money set aside to survive off of so that I could work on Vacant Kingdom full-time, but that ran out. So, since December I've started working part-time at a "day job" so to speak, which has slowed development to some degree.
Don't get it twisted though, Vacant Kingdom is still a major priority in my life and I have dedicated time set aside every week to work on it -- It's just not as much time as it used to be.
Thanks for your understanding and sorry to those of you who were hoping for the game to be finished sooner than later. I'm still working very hard to try to have some more content for you all to play this year.
The second reason why I haven't posted an update in a while is much more simple. I've just found myself wanting to leave more elements of the game as a complete surprise until release. It will still be fun to give a peak every now and then, of course.
I do have something a bit fun to share though. I developed a simple enemy AI system that I'm going to start using for certain enemies and bosses. You'll see in the GIF a little debug overlay I made so that I can see what an enemy is "thinking" at any given moment.
Oh yeah, I wanted to showcase of some fan art that some of you lovely people have made.
Thanks for checking in, sorry that this post was heavy on "life updates" and light on "game updates".
Thanks for reading, stay safe from the big bad COVID, shru *.ﾟ+ヽ(○･▽･○)ﾉﾞ +.ﾟ*
Dev Log VII
Gamer greetings!
I just wanted to check in and share a little peek at a boss that I'm working on at the moment. As you can see, his gimmick is to cover areas of the floor with acid. He'll keep you on the move and make you think carefully about your positioning, as getting boxed into a corner is always a threat.
Besides that, I've been working on a lot of engine optimizations and am very pleased with the tuning that I've done. Not that Prologue was especially choppy -- but all of the problem areas which would sometimes drop frames now run at a buttery smooth 60 FPS on my machine; even on Masochist difficulty, where the screen is utterly littered with bullets. I think that those of you with lower spec rigs can definitely expect a smoother experience when the full game comes out.
Remember to always drink GamerFuel in moderation, shru ε=ε=ε=ε=┌(;￣▽￣)┘
Dev Log VI
A special Friday Gamer Greeting to you!
A common suggestion I received from those who played Prologue was the wish to have some lower-tier enemies to fight while exploring the overworld, instead of just being bosses only. I agree that it's a good idea and have gotten to work adding enemies into the game.
The goal here is to give the player a bit of a break from boss fights, and to let them experiment with any sub-weapons or other equipment they've obtained in a lower-pressure environment. So I'll be aiming to have rooms with enemies be a bit challenging, but have them be the kind of thing that most players can get past on their first or second try if they're playing patiently. (I'm not sure if the GIF I've attached is consistent with that description?!)
I'd also like to go back and retrofit the first act with some regular enemies. Especially before the first boss battle with the Mandrake, as a fair number of players thought it was a quite abrupt introduction to the combat.
Also, sorry for the lack of updates, August was a busy month for me life-wise. And then once September came around I just fell out the habit of posting these. Rest assured I've still been working hard on the game. I'll try to keep these updates coming out a bit more regularly now.
Game hard, game safe, shru (≧ω≦)ゞ
Dev Log V
What it do, what it does, gamers!?
In the past month I've been hard at work on the 2nd act of Vacant Kingdom. A fair amount of the NPC and dialogue work has been finished, so I've been able to start working on some of the "gamier" elements.
One thing I've been working on is a new puzzle mechanic where you place pieces of pipe to redirect water. This is similar to the puzzles in the Spectral Suites Courtyard where you use valves to manipulate water through pre-set channels. However, I find this new mechanic a lot more flexible for design, and I'm much happier with how the puzzles are turning out this time around.
Of course this footage is not final, I'll be adding some animations so that the pipe pieces don't just appear floating above your head.
This time around, I'd also like to have some optional extra-difficult puzzles which grant you some form of equipment if you're able to complete them.
Another big thing I'm working on is having non-boss combat with lower tier enemies during exploration. This is coming along nicely, but I'm not ready to share footage yet because I'm still using a lot of placeholder art.
