As this long and exhausting year finally draws to an end, it is time for one last moment of joy and hope. To keep this holiday spirit up, today we are releasing version 0.3.2 of Identity for you all to enjoy!

Story Changes

With the previous release, we talked about having to re-plan the structure of our story and fix many of the content issues that have persisted throughout our development. This build handles most of these and way, way more. We have reworked the entire dating framework, and as such you will now be able to spend time with the characters only during the mid-day section of the game.

Previously, the content was split weirdly and it allowed for two separate free time activity slots per day, one during the morning-midday and one during the afternoon-evening, but this added a lot of unnecessary complexity to the story and artwork with trying to connect and manage these interactions in a way that made sense for the flow of the story. The reworked system is vastly simpler while still keeping a coherent structure of "morning story - afternoon free time / story - evening story" that we had so far. This structure may not be the same for every day going forward, but that remains to be seen.

On top of this, we have yet again revamped the first day in the game as our writers reassessed the style they use. Everything so far has been using a mix of 2nd person storytelling and 1st person monologues for Yarin, but these two styles do not mix well together. Monologues ended up requiring italics within each text block to differentiate the styles, which has confused some players. We went in and rewrote all of these monologues into proper 2nd person narration. We also added more details to the very beginning of the game and other bits during the first day to align them our current story direction and hopefully add more context and meaning to the actions presented.

Another thing we decided to remove was the choice strike system. When we created it, we wanted it to be a way to warn players who enabled the option of choices that could influence the outcome of the game and also to scenes that contained uncommon kinks or stuff that may disturb some players. But this clearly did not pan out the way we anticipated it, and we did not do a good job of explaining the system. We also ended up not really feeling the need to use it and with our development direction strengthening, we ultimately decided against using it.

Speaking of choices, we have also removed all but a couple of unnecessary "fake" choices that you would see in the game. These pretty much acted just like a dialogue block that you'd click through to progress. They had no real purpose other than to try to make progressing through the game more interactive, and became very annoying very quickly, particularly when skipping. We did keep a few fan favorites though, like the "CONSUME" choice and the more impactful ones that happen during Brym's dating segments.

Artistic Changes

This version also marks another milestone: as we detailed in our 2020 retrospective post, we're finally beginning to plan out sprite and side image expressions throughout the game. Currently we've added quite a few new sprites for Kovle and Brym during the first few days, as well as the side images for Yarin that we teased some time ago. We also replaced the sprite of Kovle's assistant receptionist. He's now no longer OKI (a shy, small, pink dragon), but rather a literal "gentle giant" called Zaran.

We also added the illustration piece for Mindalu's bad ending during day 4 which we teased in a previous post, complete with all its alternative versions. And we ported the title screen animation from a video file to run in-engine, with the help of Wattson. This allowed us to add tweaks and details to the animation, including randomized blinking for Yarin and custom amulet pulses. (Can you guess the easter egg we hid in the animation?)

Audio Changes

Another thing that changes starting from this version is proper audio support! It has been a long time coming, but we are finally dedicating time to implementing the 20+ music tracks and dozens of ambience and sfx tracks made by our musician Sampling Kid over the past year and a half. The game will hopefully feel less empty now, or at least the first 3 days for now with the rest coming soon.

In addition to this, we have now added an "Extras" menu which you can access from the title screen, where you can view our newly implemented (and very rudimentary for now) music room! It allows playing back all the music tracks currently implemented in the game. We will expand its functionality in the future, of course.

Programming changes

Besides the lots and lots of small fixes and additions for both the framework itself and the story handling, we've now dedicated a lot more time to addressing some of the issues concerning audio playback and we brought a lot of optimizations to how inputs are being handled throughout the game.

We're also making it easier to view the whole changelog within the game itself. Head to the same "Extras" menu that has the music room and you will be able to access the changelog as well as the credits menu which we also moved there.

It's important to note that, because of all these changes as well as other changes we've made, all of your previous save files and persistent data will be incompatible with this new version. They will be automatically removed when the game starts up if you have previously played it. This will prevent game crashes and future problems with compatibility. A popup note will appear on screen notifying you when this happens.

Wrapping up

All in all, this should be a pretty feature-rich update which will enhance the game experience despite not continuing the story. This year was pretty much about playing catch-up with the pre-production stage we unfortunately never got to have.

For 2021, we want to commit to offering more frequent and more significant updates again and to finally move the story forward. And we're far better equipped to do this now than we were even half a year ago, so here's hoping that things go well. Until then, have a Happy New Year, everyone!

Changelog

- Revamped day 1 with almost 300 dialogue changes and additions.
- Added side images for Yarin and more sprite variations for Garreth, Brymror and Kovle during the first few days.
- Replaced the old receptionist sprite (OKI) with a new character and sprite (Zaran).
- Added full audio support for days 1-3.
- Added Mindalu's bad ending scene illustrations.
- Added a way to visualize the changelog within the game.
- Added a rudimentary music room with play/stop controls for all available music tracks in the game.
- Both the music room and changelog can be viewed by selecting the "Extras" menu button on the title screen. The credits menu was also moved to the "Extras" menu.
- Ported title screen animation from a video file to run in-engine. Also added tweaks and details to the animation, including randomized blinking and custom amulet pulses.
- Removed choice strikes system as it was confusing for players and rarely used. Also removed tutorial section, which mainly tried to explain choice strikes.
- Vastly reduced the amount of one-off choices that appear through the game.
- Changed core game file structure and reworked internal story content systems.
- Added keyboard and controller navigation support for the options menu.
- Tweaked the game's input system and changed how UI focus is being handled as an experiment.
- Fixed an audio-related problem where audio fading would still occur during skipping when it shouldn't.
- Updated game engine to Godot v3.2.3.stable.
- Many other small fixes and improvements throughout both the engine framework and story content.

Notes

- All previous save files and persistent data are incompatible with this version. They will be automatically removed at startup if players have previously played the game. This will prevent game crashes and future problems with compatibility. A popup note will appear on screen when this happens.

Known Bugs

- Mash clicking through text (not using skipping) can cause audio to be muted at certain points (will be fixed in upcoming refactor).
- Some side images and sprites were added to some scenes to fill the blanks and will be replaced in the future as we get more sprites made.
- Sometimes loading a save will cause an audio pop.