Welcome to The Dancing Moon! The cosy inn found in the fantasy village of Ïllisor.
Inspired by life-sim games and portal-story novels. During your stay you will meet various villagers who have remained in town after a deadly invasion of an enemy known as - the shadow beasts. All whilst discovering your own purpose for appearing in town.
Starting from October 9th (Steam Next Fest) you can now play through the entire first act of the main story and partake in up to 20 side quests.
During your stay you will discover a blocked cave in the Illisor Steppes region, where your goal is to find a way in. How will you do that you ask? Exploring and interacting with the villagers of Ïllisor is your key!
With this goal in mind, you can also do a variety of activities in this new and improved demo experience!
Here's a little summary of what to expect.
📖 Start your journey and complete Act 1 of the main quest. ⭐ Gain a Steam Achievement for figuring out how to unblock the cave. 🎭 Over 20 side quests to follow. 👩🏻🌾 Meet an assortment of villagers and get to know them. 🎣 A fishing mini game with an unlockable fishing boat! 🌽 Prepare land and grow crops with farming gameplay. 🎲 Explore both handcrafted and procedural zones. 🛹 Find and collect museum artefacts. 🥔 Cook and brew food. 🏗️ Craft and build with a free-form building system.
View this previous post for a more detailed breakdown of the features listed above.
Live Streams
As part of the Steam Next Fest event I have arrange 2 developer live streams where I personally will guide you through the opening sections of the game and answer any questions that viewers might have.
The live streams will appear on the schedule found on the Steam homepage, and on the Tales from The Dancing Moon store page.
Mark your calendars and feel free to join during the times allocated below!
As always, feel free to continue reporting any bugs via the many social media links below!
Discord: https://discord.gg/kpGVRKPn5W
Threads: https://threads.net/dancingmoongame
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DancingMoonGame
Thank you so much for playing! -DjMonkey
Demo Live-Stream with the Developer!
Mark your calendars and set a reminder as I'll be livestreaming Tales from The Dancing Moon during the October Steam Next fest.
There are two featured streams to look out for!
10th October at 8:00pm BST 11th October at 8:00pm BST
Tune in, kick back, relax, ask questions, grab a tea or coffee, and let's have some fun together!
As we approach the Extended Demo release (27th September!) and Steam Next Fest in October I thought it would be a great idea to lay out some bite-size insights to the many things you can do within Tales from The Dancing Moon.
So without further ado - let's dive in!
Developer Let's Play 🎮
For the ultimate quest gameplay breakdown, feel free to watch this 30 minute developer "let's play" where I go through one of the quests early in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc8rTVsf4SY
Read on for more bite-size gameplay details!
Discover your Purpose 📖
Follow the main quest and read collectable diary entries scattered across the land to fully understand your place in this world.
Unravelling the mysteries behind the disappearance of four teenagers who lived in the village before you arrived.
Explore with Changing Weather & Seasons 🌸❄️
Play at your own pace through an ever changing backdrop of seasons and weather effects in the village of Illisor, a place recovering from a recent invasion of a threat known as the "shadow beasts".
Meet the Villagers 👮🧑🍳
Each NPC comes with their own beautifully drawn portrait and unique personality and traits.
They are the driving force of all quest related gameplay in the game!
Here's just a small sample of the people you'll meet.
Fishing 🐟🎣
It wouldn't be a casual life-sim RPG without its own fishing mini-game!
Match the controller/keyboard inputs to the fishes swimming direction in this tricky but fun mini-game!
Farming 🚜👨🌾
Prepare land, plant seeds, and nurture your crops to help provide income for yourself and the struggling village.
The changing seasons provide a different colourful theme to your farming aesthetic!
Explore procedural zones 🎲
Just east of the village you can explore procedural zones, where you can practice sword skills, find rare artefacts for the museum, and find valuable loot.
Find Museum Artefacts 🏀🛹
Speaking of the museum, on your travels you will find rare artefacts that the local curator will be interested in.
Learn stories and explanations of the various items you find.
Cook and Brew 🍲
Experiment with a food ingredients to cook meals that buff your health, or mix liquids to create drinks with special enhancements and abilities.
Craft and Build 🏗️🛠️
A robust crafting, construction, and free placement system allows you to build and decorate the village to your heart's desire.
And that just scratches the surface of the gameplay, without really going into the story or quests! (unless you watched the 30 minute video above. If you did so - yay!)
- DjMonkey
Enjoy reading my dev diary newsletters? Then please consider giving me a Wishlist & Follow! I'd greatly appreciate it! You can do so from the the Steam page.
If you’d like to join the community and discuss the content of this post, please visit the Discord or make a comment on Threads or Twitter!
Mark your calendars because I'm happy to announce that on the 27th of September I'll be updating the demo version of the game to a brand new "Extended Demo" experience!
This version of the game includes brand new zones to explore, new NPC's to interact with, over 20 quests for you to follow AND an achievement for getting through it all!
The Extended Demo will be uploaded just in time for the press-preview event for the upcoming Steam Next Fest - occurring between the 9th and 16th of October!
So what's new in the Extended Demo?
Your ultimate goal is to figure out how to reveal the entrance to the mysterious cave in the Illisor Steppes region. Exploring the town and interacting with it's various villagers will help you with this task.
Along the way you will encounter various new things compared to the current demo.
An achievement for finding out how to access the Illisor Steppes caves.
New NPC's to interact with and get to know.
New museum artefact collection gameplay.
New fishing boat gameplay in the Illisor Steppes lake.
2 new zones to explore, including the Illisor Docks and Worm's Tail Island.
Over 20 quests to follow.
What's Next?
As I mentioned in August's newsletter, I'll be provider more short-form news posts (this one included) leading up to Steam's Next Fest.
I've laid out a rough plan of things this month which you can see below!
There will also be two live-streams during the event where you can tune in to watch me play and answer any questions you might have. Look out for future posts of when they will be!
This may be subject to change as we approach the end of the month.
As always, feel free to continue reporting any bugs via the many social media links below!
Discord: https://discord.gg/kpGVRKPn5W
Threads: https://threads.net/dancingmoongame
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DancingMoonGame
Thank you so much for playing! -DjMonkey
August 2023 Newsletter
Greetings Travellers!
I'm going to try and keep this months newsletter short, as I would like to build up momentum to Steams Next Fest in October. I'm hoping to publish multiple smaller posts up until then!
Reminder! October 2023 Steam Next Fest!
This is just a reminder to keep your eyes peeled for Tales from The Dancing Moon during the upcoming Steam Next Fest in October!
The event is being held between the 9th to the 16th, and I'll be hosting various live streams and Q&A's about the game during that time.
Look out for announcements leading up to the event for more details!
Extended Demo Announcement
I'm happy to announce that I'll be releasing an "Extended" demo in time for Steam Next Fest!
This is an all new public demo that includes a core set of quests during the first "Act" of the story, where your main goal is to figure out how to reveal the entrance to the mysterious cave in the Illisor Steppes region.
If you've played the demo already, your progress should carry across to the new extended version.
Not only that - but anyone who manages to complete the new extended demo will receive an Achievement!
Look out for a post in the future that highlights all the new changes.
Achievements Sneak-peek
Wait a minute - did I say achievements? That's right!
The achievement in the new extended demo is just part of a larger set of achievements you can collect in the full version of the game.
Here's a little sneak-peak at what's in store!
New Logo and Graphic Art
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a fresh lick-of-paint recently on the store front!
Signing up to Steam Next Fest meant I wanted to revisit to the logo to really make things pop - and I'm actually really happy with how the new version has turned out!
I wanted to highlight a few key villager NPC's you'll be interacting with during the game, and show them front and centre on the logo.
I'd love to hear what you think in the comments below!
That's it for the August developer newsletter! Once again - look out for more updates during September as we lead up to Steam Next Fest!
- DjMonkey
Enjoy reading my dev diary newsletters? Then please consider giving me a Wishlist & Follow! I'd greatly appreciate it! You can do so from the the Steam page.
If you’d like to join the community and discuss the content of this post, please visit the Discord or make a comment on Threads or Twitter!
I have so many smaller bit-size updates this month, so let's just jump straight into them!
Steam Next Fest - October 2023
It's still a few months away, but I've officially signed on for the game to be featured in Steam's October Next Fest which will be held between the 9th to the 16th!
Over the next few weeks I'll be formulating a schedule of fun developer and community activities such as live streams and Q&As!
Look out for separate Steam news posts about this in the future!
Demo Update
Earlier this month I provided another patch to the demo! This includes a bunch of new things from the full game that I've been able to roll back into the demo.
Highlights include some new helpful UIs, environmental and map updates, and a bunch of bugfixes! You can read the full details here or by clicking on the GIF below.
Now is a better time than any to jump in and see what the game is all about!
New Trailer
This month I put together a new trailer for the game, the last time I created one was nearly a year ago, and there's been so much work done since then. I've tried to cram in as many interesting and relevant gameplay footage as possible, to give you a general insight as to what you can do without spoiling too much!
The trailer is now live on the Steam page, or you can view it on YouTube right here!
Developer Insight - How I write and create quests!
This ultimately comes down to the fact that I have been developing a "companion tool" to the game that allows me to write quests, dialog and books away from Unreal Engine, and import it as a separate process.
Guildford has a thriving game developer culture - being the home of studios such as Hello Games, Supermassive and many more.
Being a local developer to the Guildford area myself, I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to visit the ACM university and talk about my game dev experience and provide a playtesting session for the students currently studying there. Unfortunately I hadn't take a photo during my visit, so this picture of Guildford will have to do!
It was nice to "pay it forward" in a way by providing my insights of my career to upcoming talent, and a surreal experience to watch in real-time young people playing my game and providing feedback on the spot!
Let this also be a reminder that YOU TOO can playtest the game, by either downloading the demo or signing up to become a beta tester. This is especially appreciated as I lead up to the Steam Next Fest in October this year!
Check out these Threads
Just a small social media update to say that I'm now representing the game (and myself) over on Threads!
This is Meta's new social platform built on top of Instagram, and I've honestly found it to be a bit of fresh air compared to Twitter.
If you're on that platform then do feel free to give me a follow!
That's it for the July edition of my developer newsletter! I hope you enjoyed, and please feel free to get involved in all the demo and playtesting opportunities!
- DjMonkey
Enjoy reading my dev diary newsletters? Then please consider giving me a Wishlist & Follow! I'd greatly appreciate it! You can do so from the the Steam page.
If you’d like to join the community and discuss the content of this post, please visit the Discord or make a comment on social media!
Some of these problems were brought up in a recent live playtest at the ACM university in Guildford. Thanks a lot guys!
Feel free to continue reporting any bugs via the many social media links below!
Discord: https://discord.gg/kpGVRKPn5W
Threads: https://threads.net/dancingmoongame
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DancingMoonGame
Tutorial
Added some environmental debris to block access to areas not significant during the "Introduce Yourself" quest. This should reduce wasted time when searching for the villagers.
Changed the pathing schedule of Lyka and Dion during the tutorial so they are much easier to find.
Adjusted some minor dialog to reflect the new changes above.
UI
Selected category headings in the character creation screens are now orange, making them coloured consistently with other selected states in other UIs.
Added a UI hint and button to cancel any emotes being played.
Revised some of the fishing mini-game UI, and added a description to help guide the player.
Fixed an issue where the map was not re-centering on the player token when loading.
Bugfixes
Lamp posts will no longer have a selection highlight when using the Left-Alt hotkey.
Thank you so much for playing! -DjMonkey
Demo Patch 8 - 17/07/2023
Hello everyone, a few updates today to make the demo experience a bit nicer!
Feel free to continue reporting any bugs via the many social media links below!
Discord: https://discord.gg/kpGVRKPn5W
Threads: https://threads.net/dancingmoongame
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DancingMoonGame
UI
Added a new menu access bar at the bottom right of the HUD.
Player Menus (Inventory, Journal, Crafting, etc) have been promoted to a consistent variable kept in memory which should improve loading times and responsiveness of those particular menus.
Various subtle animations have been added to some UIs.
Changed Quest Tracker HUD to show the title of the current quest step, rather than the quest title.
You can now interact with items on the HotBar but right clicking directly on them, without switching to that item.
Added a new UI overlay to show available actions on the currently equipped item.
Changed the fishing alert fonts to be more consistent with the games theme.
Slight load optimisation on crafting screens.
Updated the social media bar on the main menus with a new Threads button and Report Bug / Feature button.
Environment
Various walls in interior maps have been adjusted to provide better visibility of the environment.
Foliage assets have been improved and adjusted in the Illisor Plaza region.
Added interaction animation to The Dancing Moon sign.
Graphics
The Retro Mode toggle in the settings menu now has a pixilation amount slider.
Player
Changed the default character appearance on the character customisation screens.
Bugfixes
Fixed a UI text display issue on the build mode camera.
Fixed an issue where custom storage labels were not getting saved.
Fixed an issue where the storage text field were still listening to keypress hotkeys, causing friction with naming storages.
Fixed an issue where jumping whilst in combat stances would stop the motion prematurely.
Fixed a UI size setting on the craft bench UI.
Fixed an issue when transitioning from the Town Hall Ground Floor to Illisor Plaza.
Some minor dialog fixes.
Thank you so much for playing! -DjMonkey
June 2023 Newsletter
Greetings Travellers!
This months newsletter will be a bit different - I'm going to start with a gameplay insight, but towards the second half of the newsletter I will go into some nitty-gritty details about game development.
The reason will be come clear if you read on, (and will also explain why the banner image for this update is cracked and corrupted!).
Gameplay Insights - The Loop
For this months newsletter I'm going to delve into the core gameplay loop of the game. I'll be touching on some story things - so let this be a warning that there may be some light SPOILERS in this newsletter!
If you have wishlisted this game and intend to play blind - then turn back now! (and thank you for wishlisting!)
Anyway - some quick context! You spend your time in the game in a village called Ïllisor - a fantasy seaside town that is recovering from an invasion of deadly shadow-beasts. You arrive to the village as a stranger, where you spend your tutorial time familiarising yourself with the area and the different gameplay systems.
One of the first things you will learn during this time is that you're not actually the first stranger that has come through the village recently. In fact - four teenagers mysteriously disappeared around the same time you arrived, and you suspect that their disappearance is the reason why you're there.
One of those teenagers is called Andrew - and during your explorations around the game world you will encounter diary pages written by him that give you gameplay clues and a "meta" story to follow alongside the many quests that drive the overall narrative.
You can think of these diaries as collectables that enhance the story-telling and your understanding of what is happening in the game.
So what do these diaries have to do with the gameplay loop, I might hear you ask?
As I've mentioned in previous newsletters - one of the themes of the game is discovery. You may be following a series of quests with a simple goal, but eventually there will be points in the game where it won't "hand-hold" you into solving a particular task.
I'm calling these moments "knowledge walls" - for the lack of a better term.
This is where you'll need to rely on your own intuition to figure out what to do next, but many of the answers here can be figured out by reading the diaries or remembering things like recipes (just an example) that you've discovered previously in the game.
To recap - the main gameplay loop consists of...
Interact with NPCs and pursue quests.
Collect diaries and other bits of lore.
Reach a "knowledge wall".
Figure out how to proceed based on your knowledge.
Get past the "knowledge wall".
Go back to step 1 and repeat!
Progressing through a knowledge wall essentially passes you onto the next "act" of the game, this will unlock further quests from NPC's and new locations to explore via the procedural generation zones! All of which is supported by the many gameplay mechanics like combat, crafting, cooking, building and fishing!
I hope that gives a little insight into what you'll be doing in the game. If you've played the demo then you may already have an idea of what the first "knowledge wall" is in the game.
The first thing you'll be figuring out is how to get past the blocked cave in the Ïllisor Steppes region.
Oooo mysterious!
Hardware Failures
So the unthinkable happened - I had a failure with one of my hard drives that resulted in some lost work. It’s incredible to think that after all the years I’ve had a computer in some form or another that this is the first time this has ever happened - and so close to getting this damn game finished! Ironic right!?
The good news is - it’s not as bad as it sounds. I already have mechanisms and extra back up drives for the really important game dev files. But the particular drive that broke kept some of my quest stories that were version controlled on GitHub, and unfortunately I didn’t check-in most of the work I had done over the last month or so.
Regardless, it was a bit of a wake up call to put in place more failsafe measures in case this happens again in the future.
For anyone interested, I’ve drawn up a diagram of how things looked before, compared to how things look now with the extra backup measures I now have in place after the incident.
I highly suggest for anyone working in game-dev or (any large project) to think about your backup processes. I was already leveraging tools like Perforce and GitHub, but the key difference is that there is now an additional drive specifically for holding image backups for ALL source files and content.
Anyway, all good success stories come from these sort of hardships right? … right!?
Notion Templates
During the downtime this month whilst I figured out how to recover from the above hard-drive failures - I was trying to think of other ways I could be productive. Short-term goals for long term gains.
I came up with the idea of "open-sourcing" my project workflow.
I've tried many project-planning tools in the past, and towards the start of this project I settled on using Notion as the 'be-all-end-all' tool for managing Tales from The Dancing Moon.
It's difficult to talk about this without coming across like I'm being sponsored by them - but Notion is great because you can package things together and provide it as a template that other people can leverage for their own projects - and I did just exactly that!
It's a first pass which I intend to adapt and evolve over time, but the first version includes template for writing this very newsletter, things like change-logs for game builds, card-based task management (think Trello), and more!
If you're a developer who struggles on focusing on your tasks, then you might find it useful. Click here to check them out!
That's all for the June edition of my developer newsletter! I apologize for the lack of game content in this one, due to the hardware issues, but hopefully I'll have lots of exciting updates in July, including more information about testing and Early Access!
- DjMonkey
Enjoy reading my dev diary newsletters? Then please consider giving me a Wishlist & Follow! I'd greatly appreciate it! You can do so from the the Steam page.
If you’d like to join the community and discuss the content of this post, please visit the Discord or make a comment on social media!
