Awful Emblem Act 1 Demo
Hi there, it’s been a while since we last posted about this on here. Turns out, we’re still on our bullshit. But this time we have a new demo for you so keep reading! I asked the other project leader, Artix, to put together an effortpost detailing what we’ve been up to and what’s in the demo:
Guess what boys and girls? That’s right, it’s time for another ~Awful Emblem demo release~! After a year and a half of long, hard work, we’re proud to present the next checks notes four chapters of the game.
Wait, come back! I’m serious. This release covers the complete Act 1 of Awful Emblem, prologue through Chapter 8, plus an intermission chapter to close out Act 1 and do some setup for Act 2. It is, admittedly, a glorified cutscene, but we let you skip it so we can indulge a bit, right?
There’s also a bunch of under-the-hood changes and updates that you may or may not notice as you go along. The biggest and most important one is Tequila’s Text Engine Overhaul which allows us to do a lot of text-related changes like 1- and 3-line text boxes, personalized text boops, adjusting text speed and formatting on the fly, etc. We also have an overhauled magic system, inserting a bunch of new spells to flesh out all three schools of magic, and the customary new classes, units, etc. We’re really proud of the work we’ve done, and I hope you guys enjoy as much as we have making it.
It is highly recommended you make a new save file if you still have an old one lying around.
A lot has changed under the hood, we’ve taken feedback from the previous demo to adjust Chapters 1-5x, and in general you never know what’s gonna go wrong with old saves. Use an old file at your own discretion.
What’s new in this release
Chapters 6, 7, 7x, 8, and the Act 1 Intermission
The magic expansion, featuring new spells in all three families
Tequila’s Text Engine Overhaul
The Halberdier class makes its debut, one of the promotions for Soldier.
You can press select on the stat menu to see people’s growths. No more blind guessing at who’s good!What’s coming down the line
Act 2 (Part 1) will (hopefully) not take another year and a half to put out! We’ve done a lot of work in the downtime before release to reduce that workload now, the largest chunk of it being supports. Did you know Supports are a fuckton of work to write? It’s true! If you want a point of comparison for just how much work, the entire Act 1 script, start to finish, is 80 pages long. The complete Act 2 script (which is also 12 chapters, including an intermission) is 118 pages long. Our master support file, which is ~90% the Act 1 characters? 120 pages and counting. :shepicide:
As always, a special thanks to everyone who plays the demo. When you’re done, we have a survey to get some quick feedback, although we appreciate posts, tweets, and everything else as well. Thanks for your time, and I hope you enjoyed it!
Demo staff (in no particular order):
FPzero, Artix, Tyty, PoorlyWrittenNovel, ddinkins, nine-gear crow, BlastinusSpecial thanks:
2wb/Eliwan, Arch, Blind Sally, Circles, Cirvante, CanOfWorms, Captain Fargle, Faerie Fortune, Kirb, Leonarth, Luigimariokog, Mysticblade, Onmi, Ryushikaze, SCBracer, Shiny777, Smiles, Tanks, Temp, Tequila, TactHack, VennoBennu, vilkacis
Here’s a few screenshots from the new demo:
Download the Demo by clicking here.
There’s also a proper readme that goes into a bit more detail included in the archive. And like Artix mentioned, we’ve made a feedback survey like last time to get feedback from players on how we’re doing. If you can spare some time to fill it out after playing, that’d be great.
Hope you guys have fun with it!