I'm back! Sorry for the almost 8-month break from my last post about this project. I had a stagnation of ideas of where to take this project next or whether just to release it and get it over with, combined with some whacky work stuff. But now the end is near, at least for the release of this project, and I'm excited to share with you some of the updates about development:

Sound Design

As per my last devlog, I've started collaborating with the very talented Ryan Hartigan to improve the audio and boy has it made a difference! Ryan completely replaced the audio system throughout the game. I found myself trying to properly sum up everything that he has improved but there are so many, I'll just put them in a big list:

• 3D spacial sounds for things like the buzzing on the neon 'reception' sign and the generator humming 
• Background ambience, if you listen closely you can hear bits of metal squeaking and the occasional frog which really helps build the environment of an abandoned caravan park
• UI sounds on interactions
• Wayyy more impactful opening sequence audio 
• Different sounding terrains as the character walks over them i.e. ground, wooden steps, metal
• Fantastic angel sounds (I'll let you find this one out for yourselves) 
• Probably a lot more that I'm forgetting but those are what stood out to me the most 

Preparation for demo

Before taking our game to demo, a lot was done (mostly the week before) on getting it ready for human consumption: 

• Slow the rate of torch depletion because I think it's gone too quickly 
• Adjust the lighting and fog 
• Some nice post processing to look a little bit more dithered 
• Redo the video that plays (from the VHS tape puzzle) 
• Move the statues into a separate area to hopefully prevent the flying statue problem
• Fix some materials and textures 
• Playtest and fix a lot of the interactions that were causing soft locks 
• Changes to how angel spawns in 

Playtesting

On  Wednesday 16th April this year we took the game to NI Game Dev Network's 'Play my demo' event where people could come and playtest it. We got an opportunity to show off the work we'd done in the last few months, talk to some local creators and get some fantastic feedback from play testers! As I'm reading off my notes app, we got some good feedback about the codex used in one of the puzzles - it should be available to view in your inventory so you don't have to go back and find it. Some people got stuck in a certain interaction so that's on the bug list and we got one play tester who said it needed to look wayyy worse to be PS1 style: more dither, more vertex jitter, more pixelation, more scan lines! This way my favourite piece of feedback, I was quite conservative with the post processing because I was worried it would put people off, but now the people have spoken and I can go crazy!

The future of Be Not Afraid

I know in my last devlog I talked about the possibility of another level, or an underground area to explore. I really did give this a good try but it just wasn't adding anything to the game and I think this project is short and sweet and for this instalment I'd like to keep it that way. I really have enjoyed working on this project and it's fantastic to see others that are really passionate about PSX games. In the future, I would really like to do some more PSX projects and hopefully improve upon what I've learned in the project. 

That's all for this devlog, our plan is for the game to be out in the next month or two, and good news, it'll be 100% free. As always, thank you for your support and I can't wait for the game to be out!