Demo version on Steam!

We've prepared a progress report for December 2022. The main event for "Tenebrae" was the release of the game's demo. This was followed by working on bugs, optimizing the project and predicting further development. Now let's go through it step-by-step.

The content of the demo:

• Three to five hours of some light detective story with varying narrative dynamics.
• One full-fledged, albeit dead-end ending. Four paths of varying difficulty to different story branches which will be available in the full version of the game.
• Six phone calls and 90 text messages.
• Getting to know most of the key characters.
• Fourteen illustrations and original soundtracks.
• All dialogues voiced in English with subtle animation.
• A bit of satire, irony, all sorts of humour, aesthetic eroticism and suspense.

What we have done since the release of the demo:

• Fixed a lot of bugs found by players and testers.
• With the gradual display of the text we added the ability to quickly display it after a second click on the text box.
• Changed the way images and sounds are stored, thus accelerating the game's loading speed, and optimized RAM consumption.
• Significantly reduced the game's weight by finding optimal settings for 4K images.

Our bug list isn't empty yet, but we will continue to improve the demo, without delaying bug fixes until the full game or an early access release.

How the release of the demo helped us:

• We were able to go through all the steps of publishing a full working build of the game, which gave us tremendous experience, knowledge, and feedback.
• We realized that we need more technical documentation to ease the work of testers and make it more efficient.
• We now have an optimized project which has passed all the stress tests, in which we are confident and know precisely what we need to improve in the technical part.
• We learned about all our mistakes in creating game UI, as we watched dozens of streams with the playthrough of our demo.
• Now we have the confidence that we are making an interesting product for the audience we originally had in mind. Many thanks to everyone who gave us feedback, shared their emotions and opinions on the game. You have no idea how important it is when developing such a complex and voluminous project.
• We have closed the first gestalt. Our team can finally show off their work, participate in various events and declare their serious intentions.
• It became easier to plan our work and calculate the budget.

Plans for the coming year

In 2023 we plan to finish working on an impressive portion of the game to open early access with two full routes from the orange branch. This will help us monetize our work and invest in further development not from our own savings, but from the revenue.

Early access

By the worst case scenario, we'll be able to finish the "minimum" plan closer to the end of 2023. What will be included in the early access:

• A reworked central route that was part of the demo. We want to change a couple of scenes, making the branching between the blue and red routes more logical.
• All of the content from the orange branch. It's a small block with choices between William and Silvan, as well as their personal routes with two endings each. In terms of length, this will add up about 5-10 hours of reading.
• Additional scenes on behalf of other characters of the visual novel.
• Improvements to the game's UI and mechanics.
• A gallery of illustrations/characters.
• A map of plot branching so that the player can learn about possible forks in the story.
• A setting to keep track of reputation points to make for easier playthroughs.
• Controller support and rebinding keys.
• Environment sounds.

A little bit of numbers

What we will need to do to release the game in early access:

• Reworking about 2/6 of the text from the orange branch. It will take about $350 and 2-3 months to finish.
• Voicing the entire orange branch. Preparing the necessary documentation, working with the actors, listening to all the recordings, choosing the best takes, cutting, putting together. A huge amount of labour that will require about six months of gradual work and an investment of $5,000. The processing of the finished tracks will cost about $500.
• Drawing six characters. A total of ten different poses. About ten months of work and $800.
• Drawing nine backgrounds for the locations. A year's worth of work for sure, and the cost will be about $300. Have not yet considered how much the simple animations and effects might cost, but there are plans to work with that.
• About twenty new illustrations. On average, we draw two or three illustrations a month. They will cost about $700.
• Directing the scenes, if we have the content ready, will take two to three months.

About $13,000 of the author's personal money has already been invested in the project over the course of two years. New funds that can be allocated to the project are very limited by monthly earnings, so early access would be a great option to recoup at least some of the investment and order the very expensive voicing for the blue, red and purple branches as soon as possible.

Full Game Release

After the early access release, we will focus on adding the rest of the content. By then we'll have almost all of the characters, most of the text, a lot of illustrations and backgrounds ready. The work will go faster, and the hardest part of everything is working with the voice acting. It's hard to give an exact date for the full release yet, we will be able to predict it after the early access is released. Right now you can support the game's development by sending us feedback on our social networks, donating on Twitch channel or subscribing to our Sponsr, Boosty and VK pages, where we post a lot of interesting content about the game, the universe and publish stories about our characters once a week.