Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's developer's diary with a lot of doom and dark stuff.
The title is a quote from the famous Japanese writer Haruki Murakami which is also used as the description of a new faith tenet added this week:
Many religions have their own visions of the end of the world scenarios. Thus, we shall not let the followers of Nihilism have all the fun even though they do have a discount to add this tenet. With this tenet, everyone can show visions of doom to cause fear in their enemies.
Of course, Aten Cultists have their own version of how the world shall end in their Prophecy of the Black Sun, an event known as the daybreak. During this week's update, we are getting closer to what exactly it is as we got quite a bit of the progress of our main story this week. However, unlike the story in Queensmouth, the story in Egypt is much darker. After all, it's a potentially world-ending scenario with a mad cult.
Decrypt the book. Go through the portal in a branched ancient tomb. You will reach somewhere else.
Somewhere, the Black Sun reigns in the sky.
That marks the end of the first part of the main story in Egypt.
Yet, the journey ahead will be even more exciting.
However, that's not everything. When you step into the portal for the first time, you will appear in Somewhere in Between, where you can see echoes of others. If you search that location thoroughly, you may find something disturbing enough to cause you to lose some sanity. As you may start to question your main character's true identity, knowledge may come with a price.
Now, let's talk about sanity. We get a bit of rework of this system this week as well. Previously, some characters may intentionally just reduce their sanity to gain more magic power. Now, we got some negative effects if your character's sanity is low. In the most extreme case, when your main character's sanity reaches 0, it's now a game-over scenario. They may still be alive while they are no longer themselves. (Just like when they lose all their souls.) A character with 1/3 of their max sanity may now also start to experience temporary insanity during battle, causing quite a bit of inconvenience. Thus, it may be important to keep your character and your allies with a healthy mind unless you really enjoy a mad Nihilism magic user build whose magic power grows when more and more of their sanity was lost.
On the good side, a good rest may now sometimes recover 1 sanity. However, the chance is quite low. More methods to restore sanity will be added in the future. But, they will not be cheap.
Although it has not been decided yet, certain food may potentially be a way to restore sanity in the future. Thus, our cooking system also received more content this week. Sunflowers can now produce Food Oil. Food Oil can then be used to cook French Fries, British Fish&Chips or make Molotov Cocktails. (Historical fact: the name Molotov came from Finland soldiers who fought the Soviet invasion about 80 years ago to mock the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov back then. Although previously we have other liquid materials that can also be used to make Molotov Cocktails, sunflowers are a symbol of Ukraine which is now also bravely fighting an invasion from Russia for almost a year. So, Слава Украине!)
Next week will be the one-year anniversary of this war. Thus, I may add more related content about it in the game. But, this week, we also got a "Records of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine" button added to our title screen.
A side project that I have been working on for about 11 months now, fully integrated within the game's files to combat censorship, to bring the latest news of what is happening to people in China and other censored nations. The change just makes it much easier to be found.
The world as we know it has many flaws. There are tyrants, dictators, and madmen waging wars still around. It will end one day eventually. It's upon us to make sure a new world reborn afterward will be something better. I thank everyone who is working on that goal at this very moment.
Today's changelog:
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[Furniture]New furniture: Statue of the Sphinx (1x3 size. It's sold by Saad)
[Setting]When starting a new game, you can now select a preferred combat difficulty at the very beginning of the game. (You can always change it later.)
[Setting]Added voice-over for this new dialog.
[Lost in the Sand]New location: Desert of the Trapped (The otherworldly version where you can see the pyramid and the black sun in the sky.)
