Jessika's Diary #10 - July Development Update

Hello everyone, and welcome to our tenth development diary.

Things are progressing really well here at Venus Noire. The public demo was, for the most part, a success, and while we didn’t receive a large funding bump, it has gotten a lot more eyes on the project, which is always a good thing. Hopefully we can build on that with future releases.

Since then, we have been working on the first three things we mentioned in our roadmap last month (if you haven't seen it, you can see it here). First up - the girls. As you can see in the video above, both Amalia and Melaina have been partially added to the game; Jr. X is just currently finishing implementing them into combat. 

Since it has been a while, here’s a little refresher on both of them:

Amalia

Amalia is a devout Priestess of the Order of the Rose, but has been sent abroad due to some ‘peculiarities’ in her appliance of the faith. As Amelia's Goddess is one of love and compassion, the priestess has aligned with the idea that monsters only act the way they due to a lack of loving care. She has made it her life’s mission to give monsters what they are so sorely lacking

In battle, her role is that traditionally given to holy magic users - she can heal, and buff, but the tradeoff is she does less damage than the other party members. 

Melaina

Melaina is a respected sorceress that is part of Venkmar’s upper-class. While her manners and speech are impeccable and she is not without funds, the reason for Melaina’s inclusion in the city’s inner circle is one a darker one - rumor goes that the sorceress uses forbidden demonic magic. 

In battle, her role is that of a traditional spellcaster type, a mix of a glass cannon that deals high damage and can also debuff, but is by far the weakest of the party members when it comes to survivability. 

Objects of Interest

Moving on, we have also begun designing new objects of interest that will appear in the Wyldwoods. As you can see, Sommy has been hard at work with concept designs. Jr.X has also done a little work on the programming side, and has begun to code the feature that will allow you to choose which girl interacts with the object. This will become important in future releases, as with our planned expansion, many objects of interest will be getting both positive and negative outcomes, that will be selected at random

Map

One feature that was not mentioned on our roadmap, but is nonetheless a very important one, is the introduction of a world map system. We have also been working on this, as you can see above, using placeholder art for the time being.

The game will use a node system, whereby each area (in this case, the Wyldwoods) has a number of nodes that become available as the player progresses. These nodes will consist of two types; mandatory nodes, story based nodes that must be defeated to complete the area, and optional nodes, ones that can be visited for additional content such as side quests, but do not need to be completed. Since this system is modular, it will allow us to keep the number of story nodes small to manage scale, and add more optional ones later if necessary, depending on player support.

That is all for today, we’ll continue working on all of these, as well as the other features mentioned on the roadmap, and as always, keep you all updated. For the backers, Sommy is now starting on the lust break animations, and you will be seeing Amalia’s first one in the near future. The next build will be available when it is ready, and at this point I am not confident enough to say when that will be, but as soon as I am, I will let you know.

- Lord A.