This week flew by like it never even was there. I could swear to you that it feels like it was only yesterday that I was writing the previous devblog, and now I am already here doing another one of these. Sadly, it seems that weeks like this will still be an entity in our development cycle as as long as this is a passion project and not something we are doing full-time. But even as is, there was some work that both me and Shady Character Two managed to complete.

And besides finishing and adding the sprites for Bassant and Thorgny into the game, tweaking the balance a little here and there, finding even more bugs, and starting to work on the expansion of the "Prefect Baths" activity, I finally decided that it is time to dedicate some of my efforts to the implementation of music into the game.

We have been working with a composer on a soundtrack from a couple of months now. One of the main complaint from the early players was the absence of music in the game, so this was one of the first things we set out to fix. We spent a lot of time trying to find stock music, which not only had us listen through dozens upon dozens of tracks, all of them ranging from sounding bad, generic, or already used by the other games which we didn't want the players to associate us with, so we felt like our only option was to seek out someone who could write us new music. Commissioning music is not only costly, but also requires a lot of time, so it is only now that I was able to start trying to put the music where it belongs.

This turned out to be a challenge in itself. Choosing the appropriate moments to switch the tracks. Fade-ins and fade-outs. Finding out that the track that sounds great by itself might not be the best fit for the scene. Or doesn't mesh well with the tracks which preclude or follow it. These are all the things that I have encountered, and the things that will need to be solved in the future. So there's still this task in front of me, which I plan to solve in the next few upcoming weeks, and hopefully present you all with a game that is not so eerily silent.

Shady Two is continuing to work hard too. After finishing Bassant and Thorgny's sprites, it is time to return to some artworks again. Next in line is the introductory image for Violet,

as well as remaining placeholder backgrounds (yes, we are still not even done with placeholders!), and the rest of the items for the current iteration of the town store.

Till next, hopefully less hectic week!

Shady Character One, out!