Night Loops News

Hi there again!

I'll keep this one short and sweet – I’m delighted to say that we’re about a week away from ending the final polishing and debugging stage. Version 1.0.0 is very very close now (I can almost taste it). This past month, I did one last pass over all the dialogue. It was pretty interesting, since at this point the story wouldn’t really allow itself to be changed much. Many of the edits that were made, I ended up having to revert. I guess this is when you know you’re nearing final form, when the game itself finally says enough is enough.

Last month I also mentioned we were updating our icon so here is that finished below!



Aside from development, we’re ironing out a few exciting things behind-the-scenes, so I hope I’ll be able to share those with you next month… ‘til then!

- J

P.S. Also looking forward to spooky season and crunchy autumn leaves with each footstep

Hey there!

Today we have a rather unique update ~ I’m pleased to let you know that we’ve officially completed the process of redoing all our key art! If you’re a fellow lurker like myself, you may have already noticed a few of the changes on our outside skin.

Here’s what our new full key art looks like:



And for comparison, here’s our old one:



The idea came a few months ago. It started with a bit of soulsearching on how we could better speak to the story/VN qualities of the game, as well as to its pixel art style. We really wanted to feature Rin, the MC, and naturally the mirror image of Myne fell quietly into place. Let me know what you think too!

And, until August 10, we’re thrilled to be taking part in Yogscast’s Tiny Teams 2023 festival, which also includes a bunch of other wonderful games from either solo-devs or micro-studios. If you haven’t already, check them out!

On the dev side, I’m doing one last pass over all the dialogue + story. That’s still all in progress, so I’ll keep you posted on how that goes next month. Much much more to come, see you then ✰

- J

P.S. we’re also planning an update to our icon too! Will show you that in September as well (would you already happen to have an idea of what it might be? A small hint is that it’ll be one of our masks…) Stay tuned!

Welcome again!

A lot happened this past month, so I’ll try recapping the best I can without making this too long :P

First off! We attended our first ever in-person event, the Delta H Con 15th anniversary anime & gaming convention in Houston, TX! Just want to say, thanks to all the folks there and I truly enjoyed getting to hear your live feedback/critiques. Our game was actually initially developed with only playtesting with just a few friends & acquaintances out of a small Chicago apartment, so getting some outside critique (along with the playtesting help from our publisher!) I’m sure will certainly improve the final experience in the end. So alas, here’s a few pics of our table and STICKERS!!



Next up, I was hard at work at the ol’ desk fixing more bugs and making some QOL improvements. I figured it’s best to just compile these in a list:

• Snow Woman mask now will not activate off tilemaps and on certain areas where it can appear buggy
  
• Standardized reset behavior for Labyrinth puzzle in Celestial Gardens
  
• Fixed shadows in special intros for the three “New World” canvases
  
• Fixed screenshake on XXX World & Underworld maps
  
• Fixed Default Ending message randomizer
  
• Fixed camera snapping on entrance for a few maps
  
• More fixes to sorting order of sprites
  
• Fixed remaining music & sfx clicks
  
• Deleted unused sprites & art (now the game is under 2GB yay!)
  
• Other small fixes
  

Actually a lot of these are hardly noticeable when playing the game, but I still think valuable fixes nonetheless.

One thing that is pretty nifty to show though is some new tile art! (I included what the original tile pixel art looks like too)



And finally, that is all from last month.

See you around the corner in August!

- J

Hello again!

Can hardly believe it’s been a month already. Last month was AAPI month and now happy Pride month from the U.S.! For the wrapping up of AAPI month in May (and being Asian-American myself), we wanted to dedicate an artwork that illustrated this concept of the “psychic nowhere,” one of the many key themes that inspired the game way back when. The story we hope to one day tell though, is not being forever stuck in this labyrinth…



And for dev-related updates! We’ve been head down at the desk putting some final touches on more cutscenes and additional art + animations. Here’s one of my favorite one’s from this past month and probably also one of my favorites thus far. Besides that my focus has been on fixing visual bugs like sorting issues but that’s no fun to show :P



In May, we also hit our 3rd anniversary of working on this game. So just want to say thanks for sticking through with us all this time.

Onwards! See you next month and best wishes for summer!

- J

Hi there!

This past month, I decided to work on a few details like further fleshing out some existing cutscenes. Here’s an effect from one that turned out pretty nicely ☾

A lot of the inspiration for this came from a particular scene in the manga Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto. Basically in the scene, you get a closeup view of sand only to realize the pulverized rock is made of symbols, so this was a take on that. I was introduced to the manga back in the winter of 2020 and would highly recommend it…although, it’s very very twisted in a number of ways and actually quite disturbing.

Anyways, besides that, if you played an earlier version of the demo, you may have noticed movement feels slightly different now. I actually tried making it feel a bit heavier to lend more to the atmosphere. For example now you’ll automatically stop when walking into wall or objects.

So basically just a compilation of small things this month! But I really do think they help add to the overall feeling.

More to come next month!

- J