Poll that I think we’ve done before on Discord, but please, vote for the system you intend on playing Dark Dimensions on! 

Hello, friends and fans, one and all.

I have a little video to showcase to you some of the new Battle System features and progress. This is the latest example that is still a WIP, so you'll have to ignore the GUI and icons and even the ghost monster himself, as they're all placeholder. But we're showing off the spinner mini game, a spinning orb, and SFX for both. There's even a new stepped degree of difficulty in the randomized slider game. As well as a "Victory" screen at the end that I really like, with the Loss and Fled alternatives implemented but not finished.

But that's actually not the purpose of this post today. What I'm about to talk about will be.

I'll start with some history.

Back in the year of our Lord 2017, I was a Junior in college. I was spending my time not drinking with girls, scraping by in my exams using quizlet and calculator apps, as well as perusing the porn sites and forums for good material. One day, I stumble upon a forum where a bunch of devs and their supporters talk about these things they devised called "Porn Games". Actual adult grade art and content that involved animations, 3D models, interactive games, and things I never imagined.

One of these games, was a relative newcomer to the scene, but had a lot of great look and promise. It was called Summertime Saga, and it made me a super fan of the genre, but even more than that, it made me want to make adult games of my own. And for better or worse, I knew that I eventually wanted to make a game just like that one.

So, fast forward a little bit in time, skipping over the odd job here and there, or what happened to make SDG form itself, but here I was: in a position to make my own game. To work with some great talent to make something that I'd be really proud of later. And I felt that the best way I could make a great game, would be to take the things I've loved the most in other adult games, and piggy back off what I enjoyed about them. Seemed only the smart thing to do, right?

One of the best things about "StS" as a game is that (at least, back in the day) you'd be able to play whatever content you wanted to interact with in just about any order you wanted, for the most part. Sure, there was some linear storytelling at the start as you settled into the town, but after that, it did a decent job of actually opening up to the player and give them some exactitude in choice. Was it a perfect system, no. Plenty of rollback issues and previous saves not loading in correctly. But for a new player, for every new installment of character story and content, you could kinda progress at your own pace and choose your preferred storyline to explore.

That's what I've always wanted to do with a game I made one day. Open ended mechanics that allowed for story to branch and weave in and and out like a spindly spider web, without too much reliance on straight forward, episodic content. That's what we did previously with Amity Park, and I never was sure that was the best method of making a game like what I wanted. I've often previously mentioned that I've desired to make an actual original game of my own vision and story. I think I've always envisioned and planned for that game to have a much greater focus on multiple paths to explore and play with.

But the issue that I've had pointed out to me, and something I've had to come to grips with personally is that... I've never even completed *one* game yet. Any game that I have ever had my credited name attached to, has never been seen through to a final product. Not one. Even games where I did a small weekend job of correcting some taboo name files for Patreon approval, in the years since, nothing's ever reached that proper "v.1.0" status. Which is just to show you how difficult independent game development can be for a lot of people, and what lengths and difficulty it takes to get a game out there. I have a great deal of respect and admiration for people who have done it, and the freedom they then give themselves to move on and work on something new.

So with all that being said, the SDG Team has convinced me in the process of outline some of the future updates following the "Launch" update storyline, that content will be dolled out in an episodic and linear fashion. Meaning, that following the Launch Update, we will have the Sam Manson Focused Update, following that, the Desiree Update, and then the Ember Update, as illustrated in last week's roadmap.

New content will follow after each preceding story update, meaning that the order of events of Dark Dimensions will in fact go linearly, from start to finish.

This wasn't what I envisioned doing from the beginning, and a great deal of time and effort was spent trying to convince me, the overly enthusiastic visionary. I've often joked with the rest of the dev team that I'm the "Steve Jobs" of the SDG Team, in that I often have a specific vision in mind, and then I bark at the other members to make it come true. "Get to work, code monkey!!", has often been my sarcastic term of endearment whenever I've come up with an earnest suggestion for Epadder to implement into the combat or navigation system. He'd then often respond with a tired anime girl emote giving a begrudging thumbs up, which I always found funny.

In this specific instance though, enough of the staff that knows what they're talking about has insisted to me that making a game reliant on non-linear story elements would make an *already* big and thoroughly polished game all that much bigger and tricker. We don't want to spin a web so intricate that we end up getting caught up in it with our legs and hands pinned. Finishing a game is difficult enough as it is, and having branching and weaving story elements will just mount on top of that. I want to make certain that Dark Dimensions is seen through to the very end, and make it known that this team is a reliable and talented dev team, well worth investing into and providing financial backing to. Moving to a more linear method of storytelling will remove a great deal of work and number of hours in game dev.

I feel that eventually, one day, I'll want to get to making my desired game that is more open ended in its presentation. But I'd rather actually get through this first one that we're making more than any kind of feature we might have wanted to put in it. So that's why we've decided to move forward with linear storytelling and let people know that content will be designed like that.

We may have (meaning I may have) previously mentioned or suggested or even promised to a number of you in casual conversation in the discord a more open storyline and gameplay style than Amity Park. We as a team have decided to, for the sake of increasing the game’s likelihood of eventual completion and reduce the scope of difficulty and challenge, make the game more linear in its storyline and story delivery. We think this is the best course of action in order to give our game the best chance of thriving and succeeding as this game studio’s first proper venture.

So with that, you might assume that the game will take a drop in quality or lack of other previously mentioned features. Not so! The game will still have a number of new and improved upon features that make it more involved than the previous DP inspired game. 

Features including:

So, in short, our plan would be to still expand and go bigger than the previous project. It’ll just involve a more streamlined “left to right, top to bottom” style of storyline. Sorta like the show itself, minus all the time shenanigans that would sometimes pop up. Given more time, we believe this decision will ultimately be for the best. The last thing we’d want is for us to have to go back again and again to fix or change the game’s direction or formatting because of our own hubris. That is the main killer of interest in these kinds of projects, so we wanna nip those potential issues in the bud before they ever become an issue after our launch update.

We hope that a majority of you will understand that this decision will prove to be a smart one. We apologize if this disappoints or bothers any of our supporters. It was a bummer for me as well, but I don’t want any issues complicating the games future. And as we said, it’ll still have a ton more variable features and content. Just maybe not the whole enchilada we (me myself and I) once envisioned it could be.

I know it’s been awhile since we had a big update or announcement like this, so I hope you’ll be happy to have hear from us, even if it's telling you we're having to "remove" a feature.

I missed last week due to some last minute stuff, but I’ll absolutely be streaming this weekend! Maybe late in the evening as my gf’s car is currently being looked at so I’ll have to drive her to work, but I’ll keep the discord informed and abreast! I had a ton of fun last time chatting with you all.

Happy Hump Day, and enjoy the combat preview!

-Morah & the SDG Team