After releasing first demo, covering most of the content from first Divinity Fatum game, released around 2008, i took a break, gathering opinions and sugestions about new version. Later, many different things popped up, distracting me from working on the game, thus for about 3 months, I haven’t really done much with it. However, few days ago I get myself together and once again started working on that production.
First thing was getting rid of all bugs pointed out. That thing was moderately easy to accomplish, as there was not all that much of these. Just correcting spelling here, setting teleport there… stuff like that.
Next thing - mayor one - was to come up with idea to make the game more… playable, if i can say so. There were many complains about it being a wander-fest, getting lost easily, and clueless of what they should do next. At first I was very hesistant in changing that aspect. ‘Feeling lost’ was something, I wanted to convey in this game. It seems that I kinda overdid it, thought. Still, I was looking for a way to make game easier, but avoiding leading player by hand, from point A to point B. I had various ideas, but none of them were quite good. Then, I decided to check how that problem was solved in some other games. I picked up Silent Hill, as Divinity Fatum was somewhat close to that. Protagonist was putting marks on his map, showing his next destination. I decided to try something like that. Just letting player knowing his destination, but without actually leading him to it. It gave player freedom of choice, whenever he should go up, down or anywhere else. But the next problem was executing that idea. I didn’t want to fuck around with map in the game, as it was cryptic enough, anyway. Also getting it was just optional. I could of course make a cutscene, where protag goes straight for map, but that would be just strange. I could give player map from the beginning, but there would be too much free stuff given to protagonist right from the start. I just wanted a simple navigation, showing player his destination from the beginning of the game. I thought, maybe I could make her sword speak the directions… but sword has a different purpose in this game, and that would be quite silly actually. Being exhausted with trying to figure this stuff out, I somewhat came up with idea, of protagonist’s Intuition, leading her. How it works? In top left corner, there is a small sphere, showing a part of next important location. It doesn’t always show something, as her intuition doesn’t have to let her predict all kind of stuff. Anyway, this way I can control difficulty of the game quite easily, and apply Intuition, when there is possibility of getting lost.
And the last thing. I menaged to implement few new locations. First is ‘The Tower’ - basically the final scene. In later versions there will be a proper cutscene, explaining a bit. For now, it’s just walk to the throne room. Next - probably more important implementation - is the first scene from -Birth-, which means beginning of second chapter in the game. Getting into second chapter is quite tricky, thought. To get there, player needs to get all clues possible to get at that point, and near the end pick the right choice. Then a little walk to certain alley, and there it is.
Now, I have to think how exactly should I execute this second chaper. I could make it either straightforward - one location after another, or add something like ‘keys’, laying around the city. However I think, I’ll pick the first option, and make third chapter going simultaneously. That alone should be enough of reason to keep walking around the city, after getting to second chapter.
And in the end, i present you with new demo, with mentioned content:
http://www.mediafire.com/?7m3d1cujxn31iu3
Hope you’ll enjoy this little update.
As bonus, picture of main character, drawn by desude
Damn… so much text…
