August 2024 Newsletter

Long time no see! After a brief hiatus amongst the larger 0.9.19 update and the Steam Summer Sale, I am back with a new developer newsletter!

🚨 Reminder 🚨 Tales from The Dancing Moon has a free demo! It includes the first Act of the main story including all relevant side quests. You can get a feel of the game this way before purchasing the Early Access version. All saves and achievements will carry across!

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

As always, if you've played the game and feel like leaving a review, head over to the Steam page and write a few words - it always helps!⭐





The next content update should be a large one. For that reason it's taking a longer time to put together. The game as of right now is what I call "story-complete", but I'm happy to say that with this update I will consider the game to be entirely "feature and story complete".

After it is released, the plan is that the updates following will purely focus on polishing and tying up loose ends to bring the game over into it's 1.0 release.

With that all said, I have a little sneak-peak to show of what will be included in this update - procedural dungeons!



I've always been interested in procedural generation in games. There are already zones in Tales from The Dancing Moon such as the Dewiland Meadows, Noneye Desert, and the Stoknel Swamp that are procedurally generated.

Procedural dungeons will be slightly different to these zones as they will be entirely interior, with procedural layouts, puzzles, lore, and rewards.

These dungeons will also be the final part of Skye's quests, and allows the player to discover more lore about the Shadow Beasts and their involvement with the village. See the update recap section below to learn more about the recent additions to Skye's questline.

It's all still very early days (as you can see from the gifs above and below), but I'm quite happy with the direction it's going, and will hopefully add even more intrigue and replayability to the game.







[h2]Patch and Updates Recap 🛠️[/h2]



Here's a little recap of the most recent updates!

[0.9.18] brought a whole wealth of new updates touching many areas of gameplay. A new late-game quest can be started from Skye at her new work station in the Worm's Tail Region. New rewards, craftables, buildable items, and a bunch of "quality-of-life" features can also be found in this update.

[0.9.19] expanded an entirely new questline to Skye, with a new "hide-and-seek" gameplay mechanic and a series of mysterious quests involving energy swords! Plus a bunch of new features like water sprinklers, recipe books, and more!



[h2]Steam Walkthrough Guides 📚[/h2]



As new players trickle in, it's worth reminding that there is an official guide you can follow right here on Steam, written by yours truly. It's a great resource if you get stuck, or just want to know exactly how to move the story along in the game.

You can also access this guide straight from the main menu in-game (as shown in the screenshot above!)

Please Note: Tales from The Dancing Moon is a game with an emphasis on quests and figuring things out for yourself. If you need help it may be better to ask for hints on the Discord or forums before consulting this guide.

The guides focus on gameplay actions rather than story, to keep them as spoiler-free as possible.

[Click here to access the Official Tales from The Dancing Moon Guide on Steam]



That's all for this months newsletter, thanks for tuning in and playing!

- DjMonkey

Enjoy reading my dev diary newsletters? Then please consider downloading the demo or trying the Early Access of the game, you can even just Wishlist if you like! 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/