Hi friends!

I'm writing this blog post as I'm still trying to digest the last of Thanksgiving dinner, several days after the fact. For those who celebrate, I hope you had a wonderful holiday!

This past week, the nominees for Playcrafting's annual "Bit Awards" came out, and Vidar is nominated for Best PC/Console Game of the Year!! Which is really just pretty dang awesome. The award show will be on December 15, and if you're in the NYC area, it'd be great to see you there. Tickets are on sale here.

On the development front, this week we launched the 3rd of 4 "pre-Early Access" content patches designed to get the game to tip-top shape for our Steam debut. Beyond the other big ticket items I've discussed the past few weeks, Vidar got a few more particle effects and bug fixes over the long weekend. You should also see more stability throughout.

The final content patch before Early Access will come out in late December, as we try to cram as many possible bug fixes in as we can. There may be additional patches after that for still more fixes, but it's unlikely any new quests etc. will be added until February (although never say never!)

Better get to it!

- Dean

Hi friends!

We are on an unstoppable crash course with Early Access in January, and there's so much left to do!

This week I managed to get a ton of the upcoming patch in. The biggest mechanical change is the addition of three patients that Gusztav will be treating at the beginning of the game. I don't want to get into the nitty-gritty of the ratios and things, but on a broad level, these patients could potentially serve as additional bodies for the Beast. In practice, it's at most three extra lives, but you'll have to be both skilled and lucky to capitalize on all three.

The patients mechanic is core to Gusztav's quests lines, and we'll see more improvements as the game charts a course through Early Access. Speaking of Gusztav, a bunch of cutscenes were added for him this week as he reckons with the loss of his son. There are some particularly touching and troubling ones involving Sandor (who can relate, and who may or may not be a religious man by this point in the game) that are worth trying to reach in New Game Plus mode.

A new quest was added for Dani, but it's pretty deep into the game and requires a lot of stars to align to get it. If you do, it's a quest that's made directly easier by being nice to people in town, and the reward is pretty desirable as well. 

Little orphan Tomi was a little concerning, particularly standing outside mourning his parents with no chaperone. A caretaker system has been added, so that if Tomi is in the poor house by himself, someone in town will take care of him, make sure has some food, etc. Right now, the caretaker's own lives aren't really changed by this role (they each have some dialogue about it, but that's about it). I'm hoping to change that post-Early Access. I hate to come back to Sandor again, but even he'd admit that taking in Tomi feels like he's doing some weird replacing in his life.













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Finally, over the past several patches I've reported on Mushroom Identification, how people in town can tell you what kind of mushroom you've got in your inventory. Now, it finally matters - every mushroom you pick up can have different effects. Some are good, some are terrible. It's a gamble to eat a mushroom you don't recognize, but if you can get someone knowledgeable to help you, then they're a good extra resource to have. Particularly if you no longer need them for a quest.

With both the patient and mushroom mechanics, I'm hoping this eases some of the difficulty in the Dark Cave. By that point, there's a decent chance that some core Dark Cave quests aren't available to you, and so neither are their rewards. The nice thing about the dichotomy I've introduced here is that, if Gusztav is alive, you can turn in the mushroom to activate the patients-as-rewards. If he's not, then you can keep the mushrooms, and use them to give yourself meaningful boosts through the cave. 

Some feedback that I'm mulling currently is:

• It's hard to keep the NPCs straight, particularly on a first play, particularly at the beginning
• Navigation (both in and out of the cave) is tricky
• The game is (still) too long to justify quick repeated play

On the first, I think a journal look-up is in the cards. Also, the upcoming patch introduces SFX for each character, which might help a little bit. On the second, while there is a map, the functionality needs to be improved, and it's not even available until the Water Cave. An earlier quest to give you the map seems prudent.

The last is the most difficult design question. We have 24 NPCs, and their lives set the entire pacing and balance of the game. Everything is written for these 24 to form a very interdependent,  interconnected web - removing just one from the start of the game will throw a lot off. At the same time, if the game is shortened, then the threat of death is less meaningful. There's a lot to think about here, and some possible solutions are:

• Increase movement speed, which will up the tempo at the margins (it may throw off the balance of some of the Dark Cave puzzles in particular)
• Shorten the day (this will make the game significantly harder, and from what I've seen, that's not ideal)
• Cut one room from each biome (this will make the game significantly easier, with 12 rooms to clear instead of 16, but from what I've seen that's the right direction in terms of difficulty; this will also require a reconfiguration of a lot of quests)
• Condense the town, so there's less time spent walking from building to building (the most difficult to do on short notice, and may throw off the aesthetic) 

I'm working with all of these ideas and more, and will likely implement some kind of combination of all of these. Depending on the scope, it may not happen until after Early Access launch.

That's kind of how things are going these days, trying to prioritize what needs to be in pre-EA, and what decisions can be made post-EA. 

Catch you next week, when the Bad Trip patch finally launches!
- Dean

Hi friends!

This week was candidly pretty rough. Like a lot of people around these parts, Wednesday and Thursday were both filled with a thousand-yard stare and unfortunately not a lot of good, honest work. I've made my peace, said what I had to say to friends and family, and it's time to roll up my sleeves and get back into Vidar.

This week, we fixed a handful of bugs related to some of the early quests ("A Brighter Tomorrow", "Dr. Spore", and "Residue") and some nagging crashes that were coming up. I'm excited, I think we've cut these crashes down to near non-existent, and while yeah there are bugs, there are quite few progress-blocking bugs these days. Compare this to where we were when the Alpha started in May, and I think, well, that the Alpha served its job quite well!

The Water Cave saw a lot of love this week. There was an issue  with vines bugging out and occasionally causing serious errors, so they were completely reworked. This also has the added benefit of drawing them in a more pleasing way. A new mechanic was added to the Water Cave as well, and 13 puzzle options were added to that area so that you can experience all of these new changes.

Finally, SFX have been added to each of the 24 character's dialogue. This has imbued them with a lot of personality, and personally, I think it adds a lot of dynamism to the town, which was still feeling a little static. 

This past weekend, Vidar was at GaymerX East! This was the first time this con made it's way to the better coast, and it was a welcome celebration of inclusivity in games. Like Stardew Valley, Vidar's populace is pretty diverse, and represents good and bad people from all walks of life. Celebrating our differences and commonality felt particularly necessary last weekend; I'm glad I was able to go.

In response to observing some players at this con, I made a few quality-of-life changes as well. Barrels are activated with the lantern tool instead of interact button. Switches that cannot be used more than once now telegraph that better. Gates have been added to make the shortcut function more clear. The purple lever is purplier. That kind of thing.

With the conclusion of GaymerX, that's the end of the show circuit for me until Early Access on January 31. It's full steam (no pun intended) ahead now!

The next patch, "Bad Trip," will be coming out in two weeks on Nov. 29, and it'll include all of the above and a lot more. See you next time!

- Dean

Hi friends!

Man, what a week. This week involved a ton of QA (important, but man it's like pulling teeth) along with adding a bunch of additional content for the game. 

By and large, this was a Groa/Csaba/Tomi patch, bringing them into a really good place with their storylines and their quests. The patch adds a new quest - "Hunting Party" - that Groa can give you. "Giving Back" was actually already added in a separate patch a little while back. In addition, we're now tracking Csaba and Groa's marriage by a relationship meter, and you'll see their dialogue change as their marriage unravels. 

The big improvements in this patch are also to the other quests for that family unit - "Bring Him Home," "Man's Best Friend," and "Boy's Best Friend." Bring Him Home had dozens of bugs that made it likely it would crash the game unless you did it in one very particular way. It's been heavily reworked. As part of it, a lot of extra dialogue has been added.

Another quest, "Family Time," was added in this patch. I talked about it last week, but what I didn't mention is that it's a way to get the pocket watch. The watch is a pretty valuable tool; in case Sandor dies on the first night, or you fail The Second Son, I wanted to give you another opportunity here to get it.

A handful of people reported some confusion with the UI, since the tool window assumed you were using a controller. It will now correctly detect if you're using a controller and update accordingly. Key bindings will come eventually, but it's a slightly bigger project for me. (RPG Maker doesn't make it easy, short of the F1 menu, which I hate). 

As always, a ton of extra bug fixes. We're narrowing down hard toward Early Access. 

​This weekend, we're headed to the first ever GaymerX East! Come get your diversity-in-games fix and play the latest Vidar demo. If you plan to attend, make sure to buy your tickets in advance, as I've been told they will not be selling tickets at the door.

Additionally, the Linux build has been uploaded to Steam! Keys are going out to Kickstarter backers this week who specifically told me they wanted Linux. After that, we'll be done with all keys to Kickstarter backers, and will move on to Direct Download links. 

Onward to the next patch, which will give Gusztav a little bit of extra love!

Hi friends!

What a fun and strange week this has been. After the last content patch went out, I focused on fixing additional bugs in the demo that I discovered back in Austin. The demo is ever-more-stable, and those fixes made their way into the main game as well, including various rare crashes and bugs, text fixes, etc. These were all made because I was showing Vidar at yet another event, Playcrafting's Halloween Expo!

Sorry for the blurry picture, I only had my phone!
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This time, Vidar had its own entire room. We had a spooky set-up replete with blacklights and cobwebs (to celebrate the addition of Spiders in the last patch, of course), big banners and plenty of candy. Still more bugs were discovered (of course, right?) but the demo was so delightfully stable! And my favorite thing, instead of people asking "when is this going to be released?" the question instead was "is this released?" That gave me quite the confidence boost, to be sure.

Next week we'll have the "Union" content patch which has three pretty unrelated quests (plus a reworking of one quest), and that's slowly driving me crazy. One of those quests - "Family Time" - is already done, and I'm glad to have it, because it fills an interesting roll in the game. Assuming the necessary conditions are met, "Family Time" is only available for one day; if you don't receive it then, you'll never get it. Once you receive it though, you can take your time to complete it. It's an interesting mechanic that I think encourages repeated exploration of Vidar, which is something I want to encourage. Expect more of these types of quests to come in future content patches.

​We've given out Steam keys to nearly everyone who got one through the Kickstarter. The only ones left are the handful of Linux users, and I think we'll be able to get them taken care of next week. Then onwards to those who requested direct download.

That's all for this week - make sure to get your tickets for GaymerX East so you can play Vidar with me!