DTWM Route Progress and Spooktober Announcement

Welcome back to Devlog Day! If you read last Devlog Day's announcement but haven't been following my other socials, this might seem a little out of the blue. But essentially I wound up changing my plans for this month due to a bit of a scheduling conflict. That conflict being I didn't want to miss Spooktober Jam next month! So I've switched gears to finish DTWM this month and do that next month, then continue In Your Nature's demo after that.

I'll talk about that first here in case anyone would like to avoid being spoiled on the new character showing up in the DTWM good route. So if you don't want to see him, don't read past the end of this section of the Devlog. I'll put a divider so you know when that is!

So what is Spooktober Jam?

Well you can learn more about it through the link I just put in that question but mainly it's a month long visual novel jam based around creating visual novels of the "spooky" variety. That can include horror stories, Halloweeny themes like ghosts, or stories that actually take place on Halloween. Don't Toy With Me started as a game jam project that got way out of hand so this time I'm looking to finish something within the deadline. Due to the rules of the jam, I can't start working on anything beyond the "planning" stage before September, but since I am allowed to plan I can announce my game now!

Just a filler logo for the announcement since working on the logo this early would also not be allowed, haha.

But yes, next month I'll be working on a visual novel called Cockroach Boy, about a service worker who discovers a strange, insectoid being in the storage room of their workplace late one night.

Concepts

Final-ish Design

My hope is to keep it within the jam's time limit so this story will likely be a lot shorter than Don't Toy With Me's was even initially, since I went far over the time limit with that one.

There will be elements of body horror, of a more gooey variety than the toy body horror, so there will definitely be content warnings on this one.

Planned features include a nameable main character with selectable pronouns and a little experimenting with movie files as CGs and sprites.

I hope you guys will enjoy this story as well as anyone else perusing the Jam submissions! Fingers crossed I make it in time!

Don't Toy With Me "Good Route" Progress

Progress so far!

The current writing for the new route is at 5k words. About 1k of that is editted from an old version of this route that was left in the original game's script. I know it's old because it refers to the owner as "Observer" instead of "Owner" haha. There's still quite a few things to cover in the new route including one scene that's going to be a little experimental. I hope people like the direction I take this.

And in order to cover some of the events in this part of the script, there will be a small flashback scene, which requires me to bring in an old toy mentioned already within the other routes.

Now who could this be?

There is a chance of another toy's appearance being revealed but not guaranteed as I don't want to load myself down with too many CGs to draw, especially since this sequence will involve some things I haven't tried doing before. But I thought it would be fun to share this one now since I know he'll be staying in the final draft.

Next to the other sprites, for anyone curious. I do make both Huxley and Wisker artificially taller when placing them in screens.

Work on In Your Nature will resume in October, as well as the fanpack, so while I hope to release this update at the end of this month, it might be a little longer before we see a Steam release.

In the mean time though, Waffle has been hard at work on character theme tracks for In Your Nature! His work is really beautiful and I look forward to sharing it with you guys later on.

That's all for this update! See you in the next one!

-Karma