December 2023 Newsletter - Happy New Year!

🎉 Happy New Years Eve! 🎉

First of all - I'm so grateful to everyone who has bought and has been playing through the Early Access for Tales from The Dancing Moon. A game I've been developing in my spare time for 3 years now, with a story that's been in my head for even longer.

I'm happy to report that some players are managing to get through the entire game, and the reviews and feedback so far have been positive!

If you've played the game yourself, and fancy sharing a few words, feel free to leave a review on the Steam page - even if there's room for improvement! It really helps me a lot!



[h2]Current State of Things[/h2]


If you've been playing along so far (or have seen the amount of patch note updates), you may have noticed that I've been heads down with providing daily patches to the game to squash bugs and address low-hanging fruit features that are benefitting the current players.

Most of the patches have introduced bugfixes and quality of life updates, but the most recent patch brings in more craftable items that can be placed in the world (shown above), I can't wait to see what players do with them!

The Discord server has started to gain traction with active players discussing the game, reporting feedback and issues, and helping other players figure out some of the mysteries.



If you have Discord, feel free to jump in and join the community of players!



[h2]Retrospective[/h2]



The end of the year is a time of reflection, and if you're interested in how things got to where they are now in Tales from The Dancing Moon - consider looking through my monthly developer newsletter.

I recently reached a milestone of providing a whole years worth of newsletter every month, and it's a great way to look back on all the progress that was made this year.

You can find them by scrolling through right here on Steam.



[h2]Demo Update[/h2]



Most of my attention this month has been on the Early Access patches, so understandably the demo hasn't been updated during this time.

That being said - I'm happy to say that I've just rolled in a bunch of fixes into the demo!

This will make sure anyone transitioning from the demo to the full game will be as seamless as possible, and anyone still playing the demo will have a much more stable experience.



[h2]Community Spotlight[/h2]

I'd like to start featuring more content from the community of players in these monthly newsletters now that the Early Access is out there.

If you're playing the game and want to be featured, make sure to post your stuff on social media or on the Discord server for me to notice them!

Shout-out to Izzi over on the Discord server for being the first player to get through the main quest (that I know of!). This image below is them starting to build up and decorate their player home.

Izzi also took the time to take some photos during the Winter season at night. It's always interesting to see how players have laid out their village and seeing them from a different view.


Indie game streamer Nookrium played through some of the opening moments of the game and has uploaded the video to YouTube. Check it out if you've yet to jump into the game yourself just yet!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



That's all for this months newsletter. I think it's finally sinking in that the game is finally out there and people are playing it!

Until next time, and happy new year! 🎉

- DjMonkey

Enjoy reading my dev diary newsletters? Then please consider giving me a Wishlist & Follow! I'd greatly appreciate it! You can do so from the the Steam page.

If you’d like to join the community and discuss the content of this post, please visit the Discord or make a comment on Threads or Twitter!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782420/Tales_from_The_Dancing_Moon/