Hi everyone! Here we are with the very first devlog of the year!! This is more of an introductory post/ small update post since a lot of time between now and the last devlog was spent on break. But with the new year, I want to talk about exciting updates/ announcements for this year and where everything is at with Alaris! So without further ado...

For those of you who follow our Twitter, you’ll know we talked about some goals we have for this year! Last year, we officially began our journey as game developers in the summer, so we’ve really only been around for about half a year. Within that span of time, we’ve managed to release our first chapter of Alaris, complete with MANY game mechanics we never dreamed of coding (i.e., Codex, Personality System, Free Time) and a Winter DLC! This year, we have a couple more goals to really expand on this. Many of these goals we hope to achieve within the first half of the year. What the latter half of this year holds will hopefully come more to light as we continue on this developer journey <3

Some of the goals we talked about were: 

1. Release the entire demo for Alaris (the first four chapters of the game aka the common route)
2. Create a trailer for the game
3. Run a successful Kickstarter for the full game
4. Collaborate with other artists in the community for fun promotional materials for the game! 

We recently outlined our goals and timeline for these goals and hope to complete everything within Q1 and Q2, leaving the latter half of the year to work on the full game or evaluate what needs to be done based on how we’ve made progress during these first couple of months. 

Right now, we are back to work on the main game and are currently editing Chapter 2′s script. It’s sitting at 20,000+ words, not even including Free Time, so it’ll hopefully be another big update! With this chapter and the first chapter, Alaris is already sitting at 40,000-50,000 words, which is kinda crazy and means the demo is going to be quite big (lol). It’s hard because I want to give people enough content that they’re happy with the current state of the game, but I also know having the common route be so long could be bad for the overall game. Right now, I am planning to have a lot of choices and game mechanics introduced for the common route so it doesn’t feel repetitive or excessively long, but we’ll see based on feedback, I guess? Either way, progress on chapter 2 and our first goal of the year is underway, and we hope to have more concrete updates/ pictures in our next devlog! 

Regarding everything else, I think a lot of exciting news will hopefully come from these goals, like collaborating with voice actors for the trailer, other artists for promotional materials, potentially other creators for Kickstarter-related merchandise, and more! It’s difficult to say concretely what will happen, but these are mainly hopes and aspirations for this new year, especially as a thanks for people who have supported us <3 Here’s to a new year and more to come from us and our little world of Alaris!