Islands of the Caliph News

I fixed a couple text errors in the game today. One of which would qualify as a genuine bug. After certain major quest lines are completed, a pop up panel appears with a short synopsis of what happened. That panel had a text that said "Press enter to continue."

However the enter key was no longer being used, and it was instead changed to the "Y" or approval key.

So the new version should sow "press 'Y' to continue" or whatever key you may have assigned as the approval key.

In this build I have added a small change. When you view the Quest List (Q) you can now see information on the current phase of the moon. The moon phase changes every morning after sunrise, and it will stay that way until the following morning.



It was an oversight not to include this in the game from the beginning. Thanks to the player who suggested it! It should make certain quests a lot less confusing I hope.

Several ideas have been suggested by players recently and I have been inspired to address some of them in this update. In Verison 1.2.5, the main difference has to do with the map in Mount Naar, on Asad Island.



You can see here that there are several key changes to the map.

• First, the tiles the player can actually walk on have remained dark, where other tiles on the tops of cliffs, that are unreachable are a lighter color, to make it easier to see where you can go.
  
• Lava also appears slightly differently on the map.
  
• Two other issues on this map were addressed. A certain cliff was somehow passable and allowed players to exit the map in an unintended way. Also, the small stairs had a faulty collider which has been addressed.
  

[h3]Location Text:[/h3]
The game now displays the characters current locations right at the top of the screen wherever they go, as well as on the map panel.



I hope it helps!

[h3]The Diving Helm:[/h3]
The Diving Helm has been reduced in defensive qualities. It was making almost every other helm almost useless and this did not seem right. It is still a decent helm, but not nearly the best helm in the game. (Players who have already found it will not see this change)

Aberration Analyst is a game I started working on before Islands of the Caliph. It is a text-based monster hunting game where players have to use unreliable and inconsistent information to determine whether and whither a monster, or "aberration" is active. Players must deduce from newspaper tabloids, police and coroner reports, and evidence gathered by investigation teams, the location and type of monsters in an area, and send in the right kind of team to take care of it.

Most of the information in tabloids is useless, but it can provide a clue as to where to start a search.


If you think there might be some truth behind the headlines, check the police and/or coroner reports to find corroborating data.


Sending an investigation unit will verify whether an actual aberration, like witches, ghosts, vampires and more, has been active in the area.


Use the map and city folders to keep track of what you've discovered and where the likely aberration is hidden.


Finally, send in a team of specialists to shut down the dangerous creature(s) where they are hiding.


I am still working on refining the gameplay and struggling with the monochrome, Apple IIc inspired graphics. However, this is a broad representation of what the game will look like and how to approach the goal.

If you're interested, check out the Steam Page (which I will be updating shortly) and follow or wishlist (or why not both?)...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1721180/Aberration_Analyst/

It's just a looped video ... not a big deal really. But it took me a while to figure out how to get it to work, so I am excited about it!

Thanks to Blind, the streamer for his great commentary and thoughtful way of expressing his thoughts about the game.