⍰ Making Reverie - Dev Log 0.3 ⍰

It's been 111 days since my last update and nothing has really changed. The goal was to initially have Reverie finished by the end of December 2024, but as you may be aware, that did not happen. Instead the hope is to have it done and dusted by July 2025-- six months from now. The reason for the delay is that things just sort of... happened. Dealing with life's cruel demands came first, and it was only more recently that my affairs have been put into order, so I can continue making this game.

And so to that end, I thought I'd done enough recently to justify another update.

To summarize, the whole story has been rewritten. Not the important parts, but mostly the gameplay itself. Before it resembled more like your average RPG Maker horror game-- a exploration heavy, step-by-step puzzle game. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I wanted to pay closer attention to what I enjoy most about game development-- the story.

And so I tried to keep a clear story going, that keeps with the player the entire time instead of, "find this key", "find this code", "hint of narrative", "now, unlock this door", rinse and repeat.

The reason I decided to do this was because I recently played "The Crooked Man" by Uri Games, and thought had a great story, but it was very hard to complete. Some puzzles were borderline impossible (but I'm a clever cookie so I eventually figured most of it out). And although I love the game and want to emulate what I love about it, it also kind of taught me what I didn't want in Reverie.

But I won't get too deep into that since it'll spoil Reverie and talking about it more would make me sound like I didn't like the game.

Other than the story being rewritten, I've also decided on an art style and color palette. I don't know if I'm going to keep the signature sickly green that the launch page has yet, but time will tell.

If you're reading this after the game has come out... why? But also, as a thanks for caring, I'll let you know that I plan to have a handful of easter eggs and hidden secrets that you can find. Some will be very easy to miss, some will not be. Either way, have fun and thanks for playing.

- Zero