Hello again!

Here is the first new alpha build of the year, Alpha 18, which brings a lot of cool changes as a result of the past few months developing a lot of the critical parts of the story. But before I get in to the details, I'd like to remind that we are working hard to bring an original, handcrafted game and storytelling experience to you; a game whose goal is not to exploit or extract money and abuse your attention, but to provide a positive, creative, and most of all, comfortable social environment. In a way, it is a return to what the internet used to be: personal, unique, and simply interesting.

If you miss it as much as we do, consider supporting us on our ko-fi to become a funder. Not only are we eternally grateful and will remember this support so early on; but because this project will last a long time, your early help will be hugely appreciated. For example, as a thanks for funders who supported us last year, I have sent out a discount code to get the new Kemoverse Online posters for free. I mean, just look at it, it's gorgeous.

Anyways, speaking of, funders got a new shiny thing this update. Let's go through it!

Story updates: This is a big one. After months of collaborating with a friend and receiving guidance and assistance in shaping the story and planning how to tell it; I have decided on lessons to be one of the main ways to carry the main storyline forwards. The question is then, what is the main storyline all about? You are clearly woken up as a new member of the campus, but questions still remain of who you are, why you were sent here, and what you need to do to continue. And who's Sera, your new friend/mentor, anyways? It seems like you two may have a common past... only that she's more rebellious.

It's not only Sera too, but other campus members as well. Takar and Lorah are two students who now also appear in your introduction class, which is a new solo storyline that you can continue after leaving the sanctuary (existing players from before Alpha 18 will have skipped it, so to retake it, speak with Sera at the Pagoda near the campus pond). Sera's waiting to mentor you through your intro class, which is led by Onrakh to explain the basics of Lessons and the lesson stones. (read more about when I added in alpha 17). Lessons are still a work-in-progress, but the idea is to also offer some story developments in-between the lessons led by the student characters. Thus, you will see Takar and Lorah stand after your introduction class.

This is only the beginning of adding the story! I  have also spent some time thinking about a much better structure of the gameplay to make the story and online features play together in harmony. I will talk about it in an upcoming post talking about the roadmap, so stay tuned for it!

Environment updates: As part of the story developments, the environments have received a face-lift. Most notably, the road-side of the campus was polished, and several entrances to neighboring areas (which are yet to be made) were added. It may seem like subtle stuff from a regular player's perspective, but there is a lot of planning, reasoning, and careful consideration behind all of this. I won't spoil any of it to anyone, of course, because the goal is to tell it all through a purely immersive experience - of playing the game, of becoming an educated Kemonae, of experiencing the world through the environments, characters, and story. Anyways, that's the tunnel, which replaces the weird empty area that was before - an entryway that lets suppliers come through and trade the food for materials. You knew there was a town, right? The campus is just a small camp for the rest of us...

The forest also received a comfy little cottage, that's meant to house the latest teacher character, Anjraz. She is modelled, but does not appear in the game just yet. But her house is here, with some suitable garden plots. Oh, also, noticed anything different, yet? Yeah, the environments all look pretty frosty. In fact, there's frost and ice all over the lake and grass in the outside areas! But anyways, as for this cottage... she may be gone and locked the door, but that doesn't limit you.

In fact, you can even own an instance of this room if you are a Funder. This is what I call a funder club room - a bigger customizable room, unique to you, that you can access by clicking the bike lock and entering the room code. Anyone can enter it, and the idea is to eventually add a club room browser. Every funder gets their own room code for the cottage, and can hop in, and start decorating right away. It's treated separately from the dorm rooms and is meant to be more for a gathering of many people - like for club gatherings. If you are a funder, you can check your current room number by typing "/funder" in the chat on Alpha 18.1.

Character stats: Your character can now get sick. How does one get sick? Well, if you go for a long time without eating... you will eventually feel faint and sick. And wobbly, stumbly, and dizzy. To heal, you should eat! You can snack on bugs that you've caught or cook some soup in the kitchen (I made it work offline now too). Your health should then be recovered fairly quickly. Your health stat can be checked using the "/stat" chat command. It might get some tweaks down the road, but for now I am finished with the three basic character stats: hunger, energy and health. Oh, and if you're sick, keep your social distance.

Gameplay updates: A lot of interface and gameplay changes has been made to make it less confusing for the new player. For example, the target menu (that pops up when you click on something you can interact with) was changed in to a radial menu. I've further improved the interface for both touchscreen and gamepad, which means the game should be very playable for devices I haven't had in mind, like Steam deck. Popups can now be dragged around and in general, it's just more predictable and comfortable. I also added an option to enable the on-screen joysticks for non-phone devices and added a way to flip axes, reduce first-person camera motion, and a lot of other things. Just take a peek in the settings tab in the escape menu!

The planner has also gained a host of text tutorials called "guide books", which are accessible in the "Help" tab and finally explains a lot of common game mechanics. This used to be hosted on the wiki, which, well, was confusing at best... so here it finally is, built-in tutorials.

Creative activities: Fun new things to do for online gatherings! I'm trying to move away from leading online events so I don't feel so stressed out. That meant I had to refine what activities I want players to gather on, which ended up being focused on creative things, some of which were already in the game, but unpolished: painting, writing, and playing music. Painting used to be done by finding the spraycan in the art room, but that has now been replaced with a paint bucket. Similarly, books used to be only rewarded by Merka every fourth week, but they can now also be traded with tokens by Ikt at the library. Similarly, writing books or painting on walls now require ink, which you can also trade with tokens by Onrakh. Lastly, what you see in the picture are cymbals, as one of the introduction of musical instruments! There's a snare, drum, and cymbals. They're pretty simple right now, but you can get them by Retakatekt for a hefty sum of tokens. Then you can play them whenever you wish! In the future, I'd like to add a notation system so you can make patterns or even play with others.

Text-to-speech (TTS): This was a spontaneous addition, but it turned out to be extremely fun and adds a lot to in-game conversations! The addon page now features a TTS module that you can install, which then automatically converts your chatted text in to your character speaking it out. Other players who have installed the addon can also hear your speak! Even more, you can customize the voice you want by changing your text color hue, and the pitch of the voice with the brightness of the color. Text chat special effects also affects how you speak it, so emphasizing adds a missing dimension to text chatting. Honestly, there's something magical about attaching voices to other players you've met - it feels like something I never even thought about until now. So go crazy with your Moonbase Alpha inspired songs! (yes, you can actually do songs as you can even type individual phononyms. You can read more about it in the guide book "TTS").

Offline mode / Android updates / Linux build: Besides all the fun new features in this update, there's been some technical improvements - performance ones (as always) when it comes to loading and playing, improving offline functionality as a result of adding story content that should be playable solo, and improving the android build by adding the on-screen joysticks for walking around and moving camera at the same time, and also making the game work in portrait mode, which may help with chatting. Finally, I'm also going to upload a Linux build soon, as the number of linux players have steadily increased.

And that's it, there's a lot of little fixes, tweaks, and improvements as each alpha is a big step further in to shaping the ideal game I have in mind. And speaking of, as I mentioned, my next devlog will be a roadmap for this year and a big, pretty chart explaining what exactly I want to see at the end when the game is "finished". It's a lot of exciting stuff that I can't wait to share, but it's also for the long-term development of the game - when I have said that I'm in it for the long haul, I mean, I am in it for the long haul. Because I love working on this stuff. It's fun. And I genuinely hope that you have fun time playing this game, too.

See you in the Kemoverse!