Report article: May 2023

It has not been an easy month for the Tenebrae team. We were swamped by the daily routine unrelated to the project. Important life events and various activities distracted us from our work. Several artists went on extended leaves for various reasons, and some were on sick leave unable to carry out their tasks. Undoubtedly, all this will have an impact later, closer to the game's early access release, when deadlines start to loom.

But despite all the challenges, we're still on track to meet our goal.

Characters

At the beginning of May we finished working on Walter's sprites. Patreon subscribers, to whom we have already shown the result, are lamenting the fact that a handsome older man is not a romantic interest in our game. But we do have a great series of stories on his behalf as additional content to the game.

Right now we're drawing sprites of Jane Holland – the mother of our protagonist. We've already shown her sketches on Patreon and hopefully in the next report we'll be able to show you the results.

Backgrounds

In May, we managed to put together a 3D model of the new background and furnish it beautifully. It's going to be a cosy kitchen, which we hadn't originally planned at all. But the plot inclines us to believe that this location is very important and we can't do without it.

Unfortunately, at the moment we don't know what to do with finalising the backgrounds. The drawing of the location with the gazebo has been put on hold and we don't know if the artist will be able to come back to work on the project.

Illustrations

At the very beginning of the article we mentioned the leaves and the problems with free time of our artists. This month we have written three technical tasks for the game illustrations, but we have only drawn three sketches for one series and started work on another one.

But look how cool it is!

This is the sketch for the illustration that will go into the updated Tenebrae demo.

Programming

After getting a lot of feedback about players wanting to see a more explicit difference between the heroine's thoughts and direct speech, we have implemented two ways:

• Highlighting speech in bold.
• A slight darkening of the text during internal dialogue.

We don't know yet which of these we will choose, but technically we like the second option better, as it doesn't affect the text size and outline in any way, and we won't have any problems with text-box overflow.

In the meantime, we've implemented a notification to the player about losing unsaved progress when exiting the game to the main menu. It was supposed to be included in the demo version, but something went wrong and we forgot to implement this feature in a hurry.

Storybook

• All month we've been publishing one story per week, written on behalf of Friedrich, to Patreon subscribers. There's one last story left to come. His early series reveals a lot of lore and backstory, but there's no room for romantic experiences.
• The early series of stories on behalf of little Beatrice has undergone revision and been translated. A couple of illustrations are already finished for publication in June.
• The stories on Charlie's behalf have been completed. This series includes fourteen short stories in which the reader observes the emergence of a person in a difficult life situation.
• A late series has begun from the perspective of Jane Holland. The focus group has already appreciated the ambiguity and unpredictability of the plot. They liked the metamorphosis that happens to the characters and the way they transform over the course of the narrative.

Apart from the storybook, we managed to progress with one scene in Silvan's storyline. It was a heavy scene emotionally. The screenwriter reread the lines hundreds of times, writing a little bit at a time. We try to work for quality rather than quantity, and avoid watering down the lines and engaging in graphomania. We strive to check every frame so that it carries something meaningful and important, not forgetting about the emotion and rhythm of the text.

Thank you for following our project.
See you next month!