The newest addition to the world of Alaris, aka Chapter 2, officially has a release date! This chapter, with new story content, game mechanics, and art, will officially release February 18, 2022!!!

For those of you who have been following me since the start of the year, you’ll know this year has been absolutely brutal to me. What started off as burnout and lots of anxiety turned into having to manage and navigate a lot of personal/ family struggles. So the development of this chapter has been a journey. If you’ve been following the recent devlogs, you’ll also know that because of everything I’ve had to manage in my personal life, this chapter release will be the slightest bit incomplete (aka no new Free Time date). But besides that, I’m unbelievably proud - and slightly in shock - at what this new chapter has to offer. If you’d like to know more details, feel free to read on! 

In this new chapter, there will be new story content to explore that will add on to the introduction to Alaris we saw in Chapter 1. Overall, the plot is 20k+ words worth of content, putting the game at a total of 40k words now.

With that being said, this chapter should feel like it plays out a little differently from the first. About half of the content will be relatively linear in the way Chapter 1 was, but the other half (which is interspersed throughout the chapter) will be like expanded choices. You’ll get personal, more intimate scenes between four of the LIs based on the choices you decide to make. These choices are not influenced by personality, so you don’t have to worry about stats (again personality stats are meant to be a fun addition not something that gravely influences the story and feels burdensome/ anxiety-provoking). So it’ll be easy and simple to go back to certain choices and choose the other option to see how the story plays out with alternative LIs. All in all, I’m hoping this makes the chapter feel like there’s a lot of content while giving a little replayability so it’s not as linear as Chapter 1 - you can explore the content a little more :) 

On top of that, the content will include personality results, which I’ve talked about previously. So the choices you made in Chapter 1 and in this chapter will start to influence the types of reactions you see in the MC and dynamics they may have with different characters. Hopefully this will help the personality feature start to feel more alive. The main way I’ve done this is by coding a personality profile into the game that picks up whatever your dominant personality trait is. I know most people probably won’t care since that’s really technical and logistical stuff, but I was really proud of myself for being able to code that in and figure it out so I’m including it here anyways LOL \o/

Another big, main feature that is going to be added to the game in Chapter 2 is the use of Dragon Energy Vision. For those who’ve played Chapter 1, you’ll know why this is applicable to the plot, and I’m hoping having this feature will make the world of Alaris feel that much more immersive. Dragon energy vision will allow you to see the unique dragon energy makeup of the LIs. Chapter 2 will only feature this function for the LIs and not supporting characters, mainly because of the personal circumstances I alluded to earlier. But I’m hoping to eventually be able to expand this to other characters in future releases! 

Basically, the way this function will work is players will press a specific key that activates it or deactivates it. This feature quite literally took me forever to code. At first, I wasn’t even sure if it was feasible and had to get really creative to find ways I could accomplish this. After I finally found a way to actually execute it and bring it to life, it took another eternity to find ways to get the feature to work how I wanted it to. Basically, I had to use a learn a lot and use a lot of different coding functions together to bring it to life, and I’m really really really proud of being able to do it, so I really hope players like and appreciate it q.q 

Other than the two main features (personality results and energy vision), the chapter will include new art like sprite expressions, BGs, CGs, etc., building off the content from the first chapter! I’ve also made small writing edits to Chapter 1 based off people’s feedback on the first chapter so hopefully that feels like an improvement as well. 

Finally, I just want to say I really appreciate all the support you’ve all given to me this past month, all things considering with my personal circumstances. It’s been unbelievably helpful. And for those of you who’ve played Chapter 1, are interested in Chapter 2, or are in any other way invested in the game (e.g., donations, comments, shares, etc.), I appreciate everything so much <3 I’m honestly awful at... basically being perceived - all comments positive or negative make me want to vomit. But knowing that people actually care about the improvement or final product of the game is crazy and I’m really honored by all of it. 

I hope you all enjoy this new addition to Alaris - I’m excited for people to see it! Join us for the next step of Alaris on our official Chapter 2 release date: 2.18.22!

As always, feel free to follow us on itch.io, Tumblr,or Twitter for more updates or donate at Ko-fi to support development <3