Forest Sanctuary

 

I don't have much to post this week, and I know I didn't last time either. I've shifted focus to the dungeon maps now, making sure all the puzzles and gimmicks in each dungeon work can be kind of laborious, but designing new enemies and H scenes to go with them helps alleviate the tedium. This dungeon in the screen shot is the one from the first demo that was only there as part of the challenge mode and is mostly finished now, save for the boss here which I just started yesterday. I'd like to put it in the next demo update but I'm still deciding how to do it since I want to save some parts inbetween this area and the current areas for the finished game. So I might change the way the demo is structured so it's more like a scenario selection type of thing instead of a single slice of the game up till a certain point, but I'm not sure yet, let me know what you think.

Seafaring

 

New things added this week: 

 -Mostly finished with the row boats used to get around the sea. You can find one just about anywhere where there is a dock, you can use guns or fishing rods while in them but not blades. 

 -The ocean wyrms that appear in the gif I also added this week but they still need some more work. 

-Made a bunch of edits to the overworld area just outside the main village. 

 I may update the demo to fix a few bugs soon before I release the newer build with more changes and content. I want to put up the newer build in mid January but it could end up taking me a little longer since I'm prioritizing finishing other parts of the game before I get to it.

Tea House

This week I pretty much just spent finalizing the look of the village area and doing work on the insides of the houses and shops. Not much else besides that. Here's a look at the Tea House, I won't say too much about this spot, but the owner is very good at brewing things besides just tea. So long as you bring the right ingredients.

Naga's Bay

I'm now just about done with the collision map for the overworld, mostly all that remains with it is just polish and design tweaking, which I'll save for when I go through and play test each area. Every location is at least explorable and you can go from one corner to the other with no real issues. However this right now is by walking and swimming, which in the actual game you would need a boat like in the screenshot to get through some areas. Plus there are some paths connected by caves and dungeons I need to start working on soon. Not really much else to say at this point. In case anyone wants to know, I'm aiming to update the version 2 demo sometime before mid January with some more content, any further updates to that version will likely be bug fixes. 

I've been posting devlogs every other week for a while now, but I'm going to try doing a normal weekly schedule again now that the map is pretty much out of the way.

Sasha in a Bind

 

I got many things to report from the past couple weeks:

-The collision bounds around the world map are about half way done, which means about half the map is fully explorable without any serious issues, though I still need to start making the methods of transportation for getting around the ocean.

-I redesigned the Ship Graveyard/Shipwreck Grotto dungeon heavily, many of the rooms are the same but are connected differently and there are a lot of new rooms added. However the dungeon is overall more straight forward now, I thought it relied too much on finding keys and backtracking across the map which made it feel kind of a slog to complete. 

-Reworked the music for the overworld and Ship Graveyard and added more ambient sound effects for the different environments in the overworld.

-The H scenes now regularly play as soon as you run out of SP. I went through and made a looping version of each one done so far, so when and enemy restrains Sasha, instead of the screen fading black it just goes straight to the H scene which plays for a set amount of seconds instead of depending on the HP left. There's also a little more...audio now for the H scenes. I'm sure the changes will make some people happy.

-To add to that I made a longer H scene(above) that's going to be hidden in the Ship Graveyard via a special scenario if you get unlucky, or lucky if that's how you interpret it. I want to have multiple similar situations like this scattered throughout the game.

That's about it I guess, I'm thinking about updating the demo with the new content and other changes at some point, but I don't have a solid time window yet. I want to get some more dungeons finished before I  really focus on it because putting it together and making sure it's relatively bug free could take a couple weeks whenever I decide to do it.

Overworld Nearing Completion

I know it's been a while now since I did a proper update on Moon Rhapsody, but I'm nontheless making good progress. Graphically at least, the overworld map is now at around 90-95% complete, just a few more areas need some added details then I'm going to go through and make sure all the collision bounds and interactive objects work, which shouldn't take nearly as long as the designing part. It's funny to think how that I was planning on having the map done early in the year, but I ended up rescaling and redoing everything about a million times before settling on the current layout. As far as dungeons and other areas go, most probably won't be as big as the one in the most recent demo, but there will most likely be more than 12. Some parts of the overworld also function like a dungeon and just lead to a boss area.

Once I get the the overworld fully taken care of I'll try to post updates more frequently again as I'll be able to focus more on the gameplay and the more interesting stuff.

Nocturne First Stage

I spent the last couple weeks pretty much doing nothing but work on the side project I'll just call Nocturne for now. I'm going to try and get some more done on Moon Rhapsody this week so I can have an update for it next time. Anyway, here's an image of what the first stage for Nocturne looks like so far...

Side Project Update

 

Sorry to say I don't have an update on Moon Rhapsody this time, I've been working on a side project as I mentioned before, though I had a change of plans on what it should be. For this game I don't really want to into much detail about it until it's close to being finished, so don't expect to see any demos or gameplay gifs/videos for a while. But I do got some enemy sprites to show off so you can probably guess from looking that it does have a horror theme like Moon Rhapsody does in a way. However this game won't be survival based, or open world, and it won't have any RPG elements whatsoever. Instead I want to try making something short and simple, but still feeling high quality. As for erotic themes like MR has, it probably won't be on the same level though it will still have some softcore stuff, expect the tone to feel alot like the first demo of MR, just not as a survival game.

I don't know if I'll update on MR next week or not yet, because I would like to get at least decent amount of this game done by Halloween. Either way the stuff I'm doing in MR right now isn't all that worth discussing as I'm still mostly just building maps. Well, I hope people look forward to both this game and Moon Rhapsody, that's it for now.

Shotgun Added

 

I took a break from finishing the overworld map to try implement some other stuff namely the shotgun and starting another dungeon area. The shotgun makes it much easier to handle groups of enemies but ammo for it is scarcer than the rifle, it is however very powerful even at a distance.
I previously said I would probably be making around 5 main dungeons and having various smaller ones scattered around, but as I'm getting closer to finishing the map I'm thinking I should probably make more larger ones afterall. I feel like the map, while I'm mostly satisfied with the layout, it isn't that great for fighting enemies in with the way the combat works, and since it's designed to be open ended, I feel like it ends up really only being good for getting the player from point A to B, and hiding secrets. So in it's current state while it's still pretty big, it's a little smaller and denser than what I had started with, but I think that's for the best. So I'm going to instead try and put more focus on the dungeons and similar areas from now on.

Also somebody had made a list of suggestions and asked for more minigames, I do have ideas for more and some of them are perverted, but that's all I can say for now.

I always neglect to update this blog, I always post on Itch, Gamejolt, and Discord in case there's people who've missed the previous posts.

Steam info/Discord server up

I had to take a break for a bit to re adjust but I'm back working on the game as usual now. I hope people enjoyed playing the second demo even though I had to cut some things I wanted in order to get it out. While I want to update it and fix some stuff like the memory usage later on, in the mean time I have to focus on finishing the main game, anything I add to the demo version would have to be remade in the current build so I have to be pretty selective about what I update it with. I can't say if there will be another demo version but if there is it will be along side the finished game.

Also there will also be a Steam release for the full game in case anyone was wondering, however, I'm still deciding if the game will have the explicit scenes fully intact or as a separate patch, it would still be free of course. I know it sounds lame, but I say this because anyone who has been following this game long enough would know it wasn't fully an H game initially, and having the game marked as adults only would likely severely limit any attention it gets, which means I have to rely almost completely on people stumbling across it...and to be honest, with no income, no publisher, and not much desire to do crowd funding or patreon I don't want to hinder the game's chance of success too heavily if I can help it. I know there's a lot of adult games now that generate sometimes massive amounts of money, but it's usually through other means of funding than just direct sales(often times these games are also never even completed for this reason), and I'd much rather fully devote my time towards finishing the game instead of resorting to that. I may release still it on Steam with the explicit content without a patch(depending on the amount of support for it, though not likely), but I still had to let people know the situation regardless.

As for what I'm doing on now, I'm back to working on the overworld map which I'm still around half way done with. The full size as you can see in the demo is pretty big but I may have to resize it a bit. The way the second demo is laid out is very different from the first and a lot more enclosed overall, but I had to change the area for the demo. The island in the main game won't have the rocks blocking off the ocean and no other way to get in the dungeon area except to find the scope. Like Zelda BotW the main dungeons will all be optional but doing the last one before completing them would be extremely difficult, and while the world won't be nearly as expansive as that game I want to try and make it more dense with more rewarding stuff to find. At the moment a lot the overworld areas excluding the ocean I think are a little too corridor like(which I know contrasts with the first demo which dumps you in a huge field full of nothing), the fixed screen nature of the overworld makes doing wide open spaces a little more challenging.  Also if you managed to find the fishing rod in the demo and caught some fish with it, you might have noticed you can't cook all of them over the campfire. That is intentional, some of the edible items you find have to be cooked in different ways, but I won't talk about that just yet. I'm also slowly trying to translate the game into Japanese with my frankly still beginner's knowledge of it, I want to do other languages as well later on but right know that's the only one I have any sort of understanding of so that'll be priority. Also in case anyone is interested, I got a Discord up now courtesy of Travelling Merchant's help.

Link: discord.gg/K8EFDAq

That's all I got for now, I'm also curious how many people who played the demo managed to find the area above.

Demo Walkthrough

*Note this is slightly outdated since version 1.3.

Since the demo has been out for a while and I don't think many people have figured out out how to complete it here's a walkthrough of it.

Spoilers obviously:

1. From the start of the game you wake up in a underground lake. There's a chest all the way to right but you can't get it yet. All you can do is go south until you find a passage that leads up into the next area.

2.  The next area is an alleyway with a door you can't enter if you check it. When you leave the alley you'll find a save point. You have to check the Take Items function, you'll find there's 3 weapons and a seabream in it.

3. When you leave the city area there's a large field full of fog you can't see well in. If you just keep going straight you'll see another chest in a graveyard surrounded by block but you can actually break these ones to get 5 matches.

4. If you keep following the path in front of you. You reach a deadend with a save point and a campsite. You can light the campfire with the matches to restore HP when you sit next to it. The campfire can also cook items like the seabream.

5. The building next to save point looks empty but if you check the blocked doors a couple undead break out that you have to kill. There's a bladebug in the corner you have to kill as well which is best done with the rifle since they have very high defense. Killing all the enemies yeilds a an apartment key that goes to the building in the city area with the first save point.

6. When you get back to the city you should save immediately because you won't be able to inside the building. The save room inside has ghosts around it making it unusable, the door across from it has a bunch of pits a couple bladebugs and a TV with static on it. You can knock the bladebug in front of the TV in the pit with a couple shots or if you are carful with the machete. Breaking the TV gives you a 2F key.

7. If you go into the other rooms you'll see one is flooded and has a chest you can't reach and the other has another chest surrounded by blocks, with wyrms sleeping near it. The only way to break the blocks is to use fire magic which the wyrms have, so you need to alert one and let it shoot at you to get the chest which just has money. The gold blocks in the room you have to leave for now.

8. If you go up the stairs there's the 2nd floor which you can enter with the key and the 3rd floor which is open and leads to a statue you can only check for now. When you exit the 3rd floor a ladder appears that leads to the 4th. If you go up to the 4th floor there's more gold blocks in the rooms but if you hit them all they won't do anything, the door in the middle room has to be unlocked first.

9. Going to the second floor there isn't much on it besides enemies, and a room with 4 clocks. Take note of the times on each one. The room with the 3 bladebugs has a pit but if you fall in it you'll just go down to floor below which has the chest in the flooded room. Don't bother attacking the slugs in this room because they will kill you very easily.

10. Back to the room above you'll notice there's some crates around that if you break one the other can be pushed into the pit. If you then fall down the pit the crate will be in the flooded room and you can push it up to the platform with the chest and then jump on it in order to get it. The chest contains an Aurora spell that lets you harm ghost temporarily.

11. You can now use the Aurora spell to attack the ghosts in the save room so you can use the save point. But you still need it to kill some more. On the 2nd floor there's one room that only has ghosts in it that if you kill them gives a chest with a balcony key. Take the key back up to the 4th floor and make sure you bring the aurora with you or else you will have to reload after the next step.

12. Unlocking the balcony you'll see there's a 4th gold switch that has to be hit along with others in the right order, so make sure they are all off before hand. The order is what the clocks earlier where showing you. The hour hands on the clocks point in the direction of each switch that needs to be hit.

13. Once you hit all the switches the gold blocks on the fist floor will disappear revealing a chest but you won't be able to go back down stairs because other blocks will appear blocking the exit to the first floor and the room that lets you fall back down.

14. If you walk around for a bit you'll notice there's footsteps in the background. But before you do anything else go into the room full of books on the 4th floor and get the chest that appeared which contains a taiyaki which can fully heal you. Once you did that if you go into the 2nd flooded room across from there you'll notice you can see where the ghost walking around is positioned. With the aurora spell on you can attack her which you should do using a pistol so she can't hit you right after.

15. The ghost is the boss of the demo named Mizuki. But if you try to fight her she won't flinch much and you'll most likely run out resources before you can take even half of her HP, so your only option here is to run. If you go back to the second floor, there's one room with a large table and some books you can't get by, on the other side is a passage blocked by a cabinet. Mizuki will follow you everywhere once she is attacked and you can bait her into attacking the table so you can get by. Push the cabinet out of the way without letting her hit you and you can go into clock room from the other side.

16. The clock room now has a red switch you can strike only from the side you entered. Hitting it lets you leave the room and opens a passage in the room that only had ghosts in it before. Going through that room takes you into the room with the pit that lets you reach the first floor. You can try and grab the item in the chest that appeared earlier but if you wake up the wyrms Mizuki will put both them and you to sleep with her singing so it's best to wait. You can't enter the save room so for now should just leave the building and save immediately once outside.

17. Once you've escaped if you go anywhere else Mizuki will still be following you but she is less hostile and will only throw fireballs/cyclone spells unless she is attacked. If you go back down to lake area with the first chest you can bait Mizuki into using her cyclone spell to break the blocks yielding an elixer which increases your HP by 100.

18. If you go back to the field and walk back to campsite a character named Satcher will be sitting there who sells items after you talk to him. Unless you did a lot of exploring though you most likely won't be able to buy much, but he does give away a few items for free.

19. The area you have to go to next is a labyrinth hidden in the woods west from the campsite. If you went here earlier you could find a bunch of items that might be useful but hitting the purple crystals will just take you back to the campsite. There's one wall in the south parth of the labyrinth that can only be broken with fire magic. So you nee to lure Mizuki there and have her break it in order to leave the area. One of the harpies in the field tells you about it if you can get them to speak.

20. The next room is an area full of crates which if you break you'll find a potion hidden in the corner. The next room has an alter with a sword in it, but you should leave it for now and just exit the building.

21. Once you leave you'll be back outside near the start where you first entered the city. Go back to the save point and put one weapon away that you don't think you'll need, probably the machete. Make sure you still have at least one full healing item or 3 ideally and then go back to the alter and get the sword. Once you leave with it Muzuki will appear and block the exit forcing you to fight her.

22. Mizuki has 20,000HP and only the Sanzu Blade or an aurora spell will allow you to hit her. The Sanzu Blade you just picked up is obviously the best option to use because of the damage output, if you try using the rifle you can do a lot of damage but unless you found all the ammo it won't be enough to kill her. Mizuki can kill you very quickly in just a couple attacks but she isn't very aggressive, if you stay close enough she won't use her fireball which will force you to dodge and waste SP. If you attack with the Sanzu Blade you can defend if you keep the button held down and she won't be able to do much, but she will eventually change tactics if you rely too much on turtling.

23. The best option I've found is to slide or jump > attack 4x with the Sanzu blade until you run out of SP and need to recover it with a potion. If you get hit too much though you might have to use the potion earlier which will make the fight more difficult but it's possible to beat her without using any other weapons this way, if you get grenades from Satcher they will do 500 damage with aurora on so they can also be very useful.

24. Once she is defeated all the purple blocks in the area will disappear so you can now get the Observer's Stone from the wyrm's room and go back to 3rd floor of the apartments with the statue and place it there. This opens a portal back up to overworld so you finish the demo.

25. You can explore the overworld a bit but there isn't much else to find here right now except some items, Satcher also shows up here near a campsite once Mizuki is defeated.

That's it, I left out how to get a lot of optional items but the demo can be cleared pretty fast if you just follow those steps and you learn Mizuki's attack patterns.

New Style

Recently added:

-Changing head gear: In the demo you can't take off Sasha's headphones because I drew them as part of her sprite before I figured out out how I was going to handle different equipment. There ended up being way too many sprites for me to make a whole bunch of variations just for headgear but I managed to find a easier way to do it using only a handful of sprites. I can't use the same method for outfits though so expect there to be less of those. I might post a tutorial on how to do it at some point if there's enough interest.

Being worked on:

-The overworld map(45%)

-Training room

Will work on soon:

-Other weapon types

-Weapon upgrading

-Fishing

-Water transportation

Spring is Here

Recently added:

-Rainstorms, it will sometimes get dark and start to rain in the overworld at random times. I don't want to say too much how much it effects the gameplay yet but tall structures like the spear shaped rocks around the ocean and mountains attract lightning.

Being worked on:

-The overworld map(40%), I put off finishing it because I wanted the demo out sooner and I wasn't satisfied with the intro areas yet. I want to finish it before most of the dungeon and interior locations so that it's easier to figure out how the player progresses through the game. The demo posted here only features a little bit of the overworld, most of it is actually in a dungeon like area though it's much bigger than a regular one.
-Fishing, I wanted to put this in the demo but I thought it would be better for a later update.

Will work on soon:

-Training room, someone suggested adding this as I know it takes some getting used to the combat. It will probably be added to the extras menu.
-Weapon upgrading, while the weapons in the demo have different stats and levels already implented there's no way to actually upgrade them yet. I was thinking of having an item that you can use to do it but I might use another or multiple methods.
-Gear, there's only one extra piece of gear you can find in the demo and another oufit that I decided to save for later. You can't take off Sasha's headphones in the demo but you will be able to equip other headgear over them in the future.

Things to fix:

-Mist Field layout, this area is easy to get lost in by design but there's a lot of parts to it that are unfinished and parts I'm not sure I'm satisfied with. It'll probably receive some heavy changes in later versions.
-Enemies dropping items, if you play the challenge mode you'll notice the enemies drop ammo and money here, and they also do this in the overworld.  But they do it the form of a chest that can sometimes get the player stuck in some places or not able to open them since they can only be opened from the front, so I'll probably just make it a regular item drop from now on.
-Potential lag for low end computers, since I'm using Game Maker this always going to be an issue I have to think about. The overworld is in one very, very large room with thousands of objects so it's by far the worst offender. I'm still working on ways to optimize it further.

Demo Released

If you haven't seen or played the demo for Moon Rhapsody, I hope you do as I could use the feedback to improve the game.
As I've said on the download page it's not set at the beginning so it doesn't explain a lot and is actually a little different from how the rest of the game is structured, it might feel more like a walking simulator at first. The reason I put out a demo showing off this part and not the earlier parts is because I was still ironing out a lot of aspects in the game's overworld and didn't think it was ready to show off but I wanted to put out a demo so people could actually try the game. The first dungeon I had made I basically completely scrapped as I didn't think it utilized the game's mechanics well enough and was overall kind of boring in design.
While I had the basic layout for demo done a while ago, I had several systems to implement and bugs I still needed to fix and the whole process ended up taking weeks longer than I anticipated it would. Although now that I have most of that taken care of, I think finishing the rest of game won't be quite as difficult(Hopefully). Below are the initial concept sketches I used to make the demo, some areas have been changed around a bit and not everything is marked.