Hello and welcome back to another dev log for Divine Doubt! I just got back from a month-long break from the project so I’m very excited to get going again! I wanted to take a break because I had a lot of personal things to get done before Christmas this year and I didn’t want to overwork my fellow developers during their finals. Besides, the holidays are no fun if you spend that entire time behind a computer screen! I’m sure many of my fellow game devs understand.

Regardless, since the demo released in November and I took most of December off, not much has been done since then. So this log will mostly be focusing on how the beta went, critiques I got, plans for the future, and just overall how my team and I are feeling about the project. So that’s enough tangents, let’s get to it!

First off, as of writing this, Divine Doubt’s demo has approximately 50 downloads! I know that may sound like an insignificant amount to some, but I’m pleased with it. Divine Doubt has had a much smoother, yet slower development cycle than my previous games. Because it’s the first thing I put out in a while, I really wasn’t expecting much attention from this project’s demo. But to my surprise, I got some very nice reviews and even some let’s plays on Youtube! I guess it really does pay off to take your time and practice healthier work habits. I think if I rushed it like I did with my previous games, I wouldn’t be nearly as happy with where the project is going.

I didn’t get many critiques, as most players seemed to like where it was going. People overall seemed to have enjoyed the story and the concept. That’s probably the most important part to me, so I’m glad that’s where the game shines. I did however get some comments on the sound design. Which yeah, I can fully admit it’s not the best. I’m not too great with sound mixing either. It’s definitely a major weakness of mine with game making. So I plan on handing the game off to my friend Vistram to redo all the sound in the game before its final release. She went to school for sound design, so she’s far more qualified for the job than I’ll ever be. Another thing I got some comments on is the varying quality of the cgs. Which yeah, that’s also a completely fair critique. Honestly, I’m not too great with backgrounds and I feel the game suffers a bit because of that. I feel like my character art is up to a certain quality I’m satisfied with, but my backgrounds definitely are lacking. This issue I think is a little less major than the sound, but still something I plan to address. I have a few options for this. I could ask another artist to go back and fix up some backgrounds for me. Or I could go back and fix them myself while using 3D models as mockups. I may end up doing the 2nd option because I really do need practice. It really depends on how much time I have. It may not be something that’s complete for the final release, but we can always go back and patch it up in updates. But we aren’t close to completion, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

Speaking of completion, I’m hoping to have this game done and sent out by December 2024- February 2025. That’s in about a year. I think that timeframe is definitely realistic given nothing major comes up in my personal life. I don’t know what the future holds for me yet, so I ask you’re patient with me if things don’t pan out this way! Regardless, I want to release this game during the winter or end of fall because the plot itself takes place during the colder seasons. So we’ll see what happens!

With all things considered, I’m really happy with how Divine Doubt is going so far! This isn’t my first rodeo in the rpg maker scene, but having experience definitely makes the process a lot more fun. I think my team is having fun too, and are really excited to see where this goes. But that’s all I have to say for now. See you guys soon in the next dev log! Peace!