Happy August! We hope everyone is handling the heat wave well. Here’s what we were up to the last month~

Cutscene Completion (For Now)

We are happy to announce that (for now) all of the Main Story Quest (MSQ) cutscenes have been added to the game! This is a big hurdle we’ve now passed so let’s go over what this generally means and next steps for cutscene work!

The MSQ is the main content that anyone needs to play through to get from the start of the game to the end – and for cutscenes that means they’re mandatory. Having them all added means that you could theoretically play the narrative from beginning to end – a big accomplishment! For a lot of games this means that the beginning of the end is coming. Although we would love that, we aren’t quite there yet. BUT! It’s very nice to have happen and a big step in that direction.

So why aren’t we there yet? A few reasons.

MSQ in Gataela are a little dynamic. Beta testers may be aware of this with the first Lord debate – but if you got certain facts earlier on certain quests become side quests. If you didn’t get those they become main quests. For speed runners or others who hit certain conditions through exploration and so on, they can get rewarded by skipping ahead, but people who hadn’t found these won’t get locked out. We mention this because right now our debates are being rewritten. Once completed their facts will be extracted and matched with side quests and other gameplay mechanics for gathering them. This means that some current side quests may also be main quests. So we’ll have more main quests to add.

Another factor is that the cutscenes and story has been added, but little details to the world such as NPCs, enemies, animals, etc. haven’t yet. This means that a cutscene previously added might suddenly have elements appear in undesired locations, or maybe we need to fill in more NPCs to make the scene feel better. Then you get into all the little things like music and SFX cues and so on.

So all of this is to say the first pass is done! We have a second pass to do and that will be coming along a little later. This is why our big concern for the next 6 months will be adding NPCs, animals, etc. to maps as well as rewriting the debates.

Though… we did figure out a good stopping point if we were to do early access… so perhaps that might be a thing… or not… we will see… no promises.

Battle VFX

Another big effort this past month was adding in all the lovely VFX work that has been done over the past year as we mature the turn-based battle system. We still have a fair amount of work to do but most of them are complete so let’s highlight a few!

Here is our fave DDR Boar showing off their dance skills with “Crush” – a high damage skill that crushes anything in it’s way.

Our dear wolf friends can use a skill called Endure which will allow them to survive a hit that would normally kill them. They won’t give up that easily!

Our animal friends like a nice little Hibernation every once in a while to recharge and refresh – though they may be a little out of it once they wake up.

And y’know what? If you’re having a bad day just seek some Refuge inside your shell. The problem will go away… probably.

What’s Next?

Next month we’re going to be focusing on:

• Wrapping up the Battle VFX
• Adding fish to oceans and rivers
• Some bug fixes & improvements

See you in September!