Greetings weary travelers, I hope you're faring well on your journey.
It's been a few weeks since the successful KS campaign for CoTTR's expanded edition, and we've got some updates to keep you sated until the new edition comes out!
Since we're most comfortable with art, we decided to get into some re-works of existing artwork to get us into the mood for the whole project.
We noticed that Ilar's face looked somewhat...varied across different illustrations in the game. I would like to blame it on the nature of magick, being based on Waters and fluid and all that, but it's actually just because we couldn't quite get their likeness from different angles right.
To remedy this, we asked them to sit for a few portrait photos so we wrap our eager tendrils around their illusive anatomy.
(Translation: we created a 3D sculpture of Ilar's head so we can see it from various angles.)
With this, we can adjust the existing illustrations, here are a few in progress.
And a few that are finished.
And when it comes time to make new illustrations, we'll have an easier time of it. We've hit the funding goals for 2-3 reworks, but with this workflow, we could squeeze in several more reworks where the only thing to be improved is Ilar's likeness, so you'll have those to look forward to.
The next steps will be to begin editing the text, sketch out new scenes to be added, and producing the writing and art for those scenes.
You can rest assured we'll be throwing out updates whenever we have something appetizing on our hands.
If you've been to our discord server, you'll know that we have a horrid time keeping anything to ourselves, and are constantly filling the servers with a deluge of updates, chitchats, and general good-natured nonsense. So if you'd like to really get into the thick of our development, then that's where you'd want to be. Here's a portal: https://discord.gg/PgZASVhN7E
That's it for now, take care and we'll talk again real soon.
Ze Arch Magus Square Weasel Studio
The Remainder Expanded Edition Kickstarter is live
Weary travelers! Yes, that's you. You probably already know, but our kickstarter is live! Help us make The Remainder even better than it already is, and get some unique physical rewards like hand-written letters from Ilar, linocut prints, even original ink drawings of scenes from the game.
Greetings everyone! We are working hard to prepare the Kickstarter for the expanded edition, and now you can follow our page so you don’t miss its launch.
There will be lots of physical art rewards, but one of more unique ones will be traditional ink drawings of the scenes from the game.
Examples of the ink drawings. 💜
We will reveal more rewards and details about the expanded edition as the stream of time flows toward launch date!
Join us on one of our social media channels and stay up to date!
The Remainder: Expanded Edition Kickstarter Coming Soon
Expanded Edition
Greetings Weary Traveler, have a seat, sip some cactus juice, we have news to share.
The Remainder might be getting an Expanded Edition soon.
Since making CoTTR, we've learned much and improved as writers and story-tellers, so an edit of some text will make it a better narrative experience without altering the plot. We would also like to add content that were left out of the current release due to time constraints, to make it a more complete and thoughtful experience.
This edition, if we manage to do, it would be free for everyone who already owns the game.
Some artworks will also be re-worked to achieve the same level of quality that we have for most other pieces of art, with the possibility of new scenes or character art, if we hit our funding goals.
What We Want To Do:
General text re-write and editing.
A new intro scene to set the mood and lure players into the narrative.
Alternative True Ending(s) for those who prefer a purely emotional connection or for those who prefer to not stay together after the ordeal is done
Extra surprise endings where the story goes into other weird but characteristically Tal'Dun directions.
An extended epilogue hinting at the life and challenges characters might face in a future game in the same universe.
More ways to die. (Is there ever enough?)
More enlightening conversations with the sage.
How We Want To Do it:
In order to fulfil these goals, we will most likely run a Kickstarter campaign with a conservative goal, just enough to give us 1-2 months of time to work on these changes. We will start it sometime in July.
Naturally, we will create some interesting rewards for our backers to show our thanks.
Physical hand-written letters from the game.
Art prints from scenes of the game.
Limited run A3 lino block print of Ilar’s sigil.
Very limited physical CD release with the game, soundtrack, and post-cards.
The game itself for those who haven’t ventured into the world of Tal’Dun yet.
If you already love CoTTR, now's the time to tell us what you'd like to see added to the expanded edition! Leave a comment below and we'll collect it to be considered for the kickstarter.
Waters keep you, Square Weasels
Story-Teller's Festival Developer Hangout
Join Ze, the lead writer and half of Square Weasel Studio during the Story Teller's Festival on March 27th, where he will hang out with COTTR fan and game design guru Nich @Furidashipod, showing the game, and talking about the story, characters, and other insights about the process of creating The Remainder.
Story-Teller's Festival Developer Hangout
Join Ze, the lead writer and half of Square Weasel Studio during the Story Teller's Festival on March 27th, where he will hang out with COTTR fan and game design guru Nich @Furidashipod, showing the game, and talking about the story, characters, and other insights about the process of creating The Remainder.
Chronicles of Tal’Dun: The Longing
We are happy to announce our next project Chronicles of Tal’Dun: The Longing! It is a kinetic visual novel. The story takes place several millennia before The Remainder, in the time of Lura.
The world of Tal'Dun is shaped by mysterious forces of the Seas, a power that gives and takes life. Touching its Waters brings death to most people, but in rare cases some survive it and become magi. Evin and Near come from very different circumstances, one grew up in a tiny village and stumbled upon magick by accident, and the other was born with it and spent their life locked away in a temple. Despite this, as if pulled together by the currents of the Seas, their paths cross, and now a storm is brewing.
The story features things you already know and love about CoTTR: -Deep and Expansive World Building -Gorgeous Hand Drawn Art -Mature, Emotional Story -Complex Characters -Tangible Mood and Atmosphere
We are currently releasing one free chapter every other Sunday on itch.io - you can find it here. Once the game is complete, a paid version will be published on Steam as well. For those who want the story early and to support our development effort, we are publishing one chapter every Sunday for supporters who pledge $5 and above on our ko-fi and patreon You will of course also receive all the other benefits of being a supporter, so go ahead and check out our patreon or ko-fi if you haven't.
Update #15
Happy Holidays weary traveler! We've fixed a few more bugs for your narrative pleasure.
List of fixes:
-Overlapping sprites that suggest Ilar to be even more mysterious and non-rule-abiding than they're supposed to be. -An error introduced in a previous patch that caused the world(Theirs, not ours) to abruptly come to an end. This is unintentional.
Thanks to everyone who left lovely reviews and comments, we appreciate each and every one! <3 We almost have enough reviews to be featured on Steam's Hidden Gem 200 List, so if you played and enjoyed the game, please consider leaving a review, however long or short it might be.
Take care!
Update #14
Greetings weary traveler, CoTTR is receiving a minor update with some new content and fixes.
List of changes:
-One new artwork -Two new endings -Rewrote Ilar’s journey to the black mountain -Made some changes around the part where they talk about being two fish in a pot -Added a message after the first two deaths to make it more clear you are supposed to keep playing. -Increased the number of save slots to 30 -Fixed an instance of two sprites overlapping -Fixed a few small typos -Made a change with the black mountain death so it can be accessed after being sublimated -You can now choose to see the shiny memory whenever you trade for the two smaller shards -Added explanations of a few keyboard controls in the options menu, for those who are not familiar with ren'py control schemes
We hope we didn't break anything accidentally, if you catch any errors or mistakes please let us know.
Thanks to everyone who left lovely reviews and comments, we appreciate each and every one! <3 We almost have enough reviews to be featured on Steam's Hidden Gem 200 List, so if you played and enjoyed the game, please consider leaving a review, however long or short it might be.
Take care!
Devlog #1 for Chronicles of Tal'Dun 2: The Hunger
Dear weary traveler, in case you were stuck in the Near Shallows for the last few months, CoT2 had been in development for the last few months!
Art
The artstyle will be a Retro-inspired side-scrolling pixel RPG look. That's a real mouthful, take a look at the screenshot:
We've developed and tested some art styles and code for the exploration mode of the game, including: -an environment design -sprites for characters with animation -rendering and lighting systems
One thing I always found wanting in a retro pixel game is the lack of detail on the portraits, which is why we're going with highly detailed portraits during dialogue, like this:
Characters
There will be 6 main characters in total, and potentially more minor characters to come later. While the player will take control of Lura, every characters will be a Dyed magus who plays an indispensable role in the story. There are no pure comic-relief and side-kicks, no jar-jar binks here, even if some magi could act like clowns from time to time. After all, they are made out of meat.
Gameplay
So far we have started prototyping the following: -player movement -dialogue system based on ink, which is used in many massively branching narrative games.
Story
The game will still be all about stories that will try to devour your heart, but make you whole again, and to do that we need characters who live and breath and exude humanity, so we began to write back-stories for each of the characters. Lura, who is a sort of magus detective specializing in magick anomalies, will be traveling to a Temple of the Deep where the Order conducts advanced research into magick. An accident had occurred there and one of the magus had disappeared without a trace. Lura will be tasked with solving this mystery while trying to come to terms with the whispers and shadows that had haunted Their own heart since They were separated from Their parents as a child. It doesn't help that in the depth of the Seas, the whispers worsened, threatening to push Lura over the edge of sanity.
