Hello!

It has now been exactly 294 days (and 34 days since I started writing this Devlog!) since the release of Coria Nights Version 1.2 and the announcement that Chapter 2 was now in development. Ever since then, the game has gone through many numerous developments and improvements since the last update. 

Now the news that you've all been waiting for... It is with a great heart that I announce that Chapter 2 is still under active development! I cannot give a release date at the moment but Chapter 2's roughly 60% complete. Please look forward to it!

...

Oh! You're still reading! Since you're still here. Let me show you what's been going on these past nine months of development. Keep in mind that there is a chance that not all these changes will make it into the final Chapter 2 release!

These past nine months were not spent only working on Chapter 2 but in improving the game in general. While I do suggest that it would be better to experience these changes in game... I can't help myself and want to ramble about all the changes that were made these past months.

Character Portraits!

In the demo version, there was only one character that had proper portrait. This was because the portraits of the other characters had not existed yet! This is changing in the new version and currently five out of eight characters have proper face portraits that you can see throughout the game! The rest of the portraits are expected to be finished by the time Chapter 2 finishes development. Look forward to our new expressive cast!

UI Improvements!

One of the criticisms I got was that the current HUD UI was too big, especially since the game was already in a small resolution! Since then I've redesigned the UI to appear more sleek and less intrusive while still providing the necessary information I want to provide to the players. The textbox UIs have also been completely redesigned to accommodate the new character portraits! There are now separate textboxes for each type of text displayed; whether it's dialogue, a thought from the protagonist, or a tutorial, the new textboxes will make it clear to the player.

Sprite Redesigns!

In the demo, all the characters only had one spritesheet to reference from (with the exception of a few sprites that only appear during certain "events"). The original plan was to have these sprites mostly static and have all the emotions expressed via character portraits. This was incredibly limiting and it felt made the sprites feel "dead" at some points. This was an issue I wanted to address before the release of the full game and have now redesigned the sprites to feel more "expressive" and characters now have multiple "emotion" sprites that you may be able to catch during story events! (Do note that these sprite redesigns are largely under development and it is very likely the final design will be very different.)

So so so so so many text....

Coria Nights is mainly a visual novel, you will be spending roughly 90% of your time in this game reading dialogues. So it is important that the dialogues maintain a certain level of quality all throughout the game.  Thanks to the amazing work of @Inzurego who painstakingly wrote down all the dialogues from all the interactions in the game, made it easier to spot and correct typos, and made a universal document to propose changes and revisions (seriously, I owe you my everything for that @Inzurego, and I know you're reading this right now.), all the text in Chapter 1 has been fine-tuned and revised. This includes everything from the story, the dialogues of each character, down to even the most mundane things like the dialogue you get from flushing the toilet! (Yes, you can flush the toilet. Don't waste too much water though.)

Right now, Chapter 2 has roughly the same amount of dialogue as Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is expected to have even more dialogues than Chapter 1 at the end of Chapter 2's development.

Game inside a game inside a game inside a game inside a

Apparently it's called mini-games. The last 10% of Coria Nights is actually a game! (wow!) In the demo, most of the "gameplay" consisted of managing the main character's free time and the intense discussion that happens in the middle. I felt that this was seriously too lacking for a "game" and have added a few mini-games at some parts of the story to make them much more interactive. For spoiler reasons, I can only show a concept art of one of the mini-games. Once again illustrated by @Inzurego!

(I'm actually running out of things to show...)

That's it for this update report. I will be honest, on my calendar Coria Nights Chapter 2 was scheduled for release on October 31st, 2024. This date was not made public but was always the planned deadline for the game. In the scenario that the game would not release on that date, this post would go live instead on that day. Chapter 2 development is going full steam and there are no plans for project cancellation in the foreseeable future. This game will finish development whether the world likes it or not (threat). Until then, I hope everyone can patiently await as Chapter 2 completes its development.