midautumngame

[midautumngame]

Dig around town for items!

One of the things you can buy in Candlewick’s shop is a trusty shovel, which is great for digging up secrets! In a game where you unearth a town’s history, a shovel can go a long way. There are dig spots around town to discover, right now most of them have small permanent resources inside them, but in our 1.0 release, some of them will have some optional items that are relevant to the narrative.

Certain dig spots in the spirit world will also respawn in predictable locations, so a clever player might be able to use them to more reliably retrieve the necessary resources to spend in spirit world shops. This is one of the ways you can use strategy to take some of the randomness out of the rogue like elements of the game.

[midautumngame]

Candlewick Store!

Candlewick’s store is one of a number of shops we’ve added to the game. We’re still adding some of the animated shopkeepers to some of these, but Candlewick’s is an example of how the final versions should look! The goal is to have pixel art versions of the shopkeepers that have a little animation to give them some extra personality outside of dialogue. The previous types of shop you would see in the beach area would always give you three random options to choose from, and those are designed to play into the roguelike elements of quickly making a choice and continuing with the gameplay. These shops, which start appearing a bit later into the game, are designed to make you stop and think a bit about what seems useful to save up for in the long term, and to remember to come back and pick it up at some point. They are much more tied to the long term progression of the game.

[midautumngame]

Sushi Restaurant!

The Sushi Restaurant is one of the new stores in the Sakurafest area. Right now you can access all the types of sushi but we’re planning to have it start out a bit emptier, with you helping the shop get access to a larger variety of dishes. If you have the cash to spare, it’s all-you-can eat so Robin can eat a bunch of sushi to stack some temporary buffs for their next visit to the Spirit World. If you’re stuck on a hard boss and willing to push your luck, you might just get the boost you need. Or you might end up getting food poisoning!

[midautumngame]

Museum Area!

The museum comes into play in the fourth act of Midautumn. Certain items in the museum with strong spiritual presence are having an impact on the spirit world itself. The various exhibits can be interacted with to learn more about the town. However, as someone with knowledge of the spirit world, you might know a thing or two that the museum curators don’t!

[midautumngame]

If you're looking for more narrative roguelike games like Hades, but with an Asian diaspora story like Butterfly Soup check out Midautumn!

Midautumn is a roguelike dungeon crawler about blasting evil spirits, saving your hometown from gentrification, and Asian diaspora culture. For Robin Lam, crashing at Grandma's was meant to be a break from their responsibilities. But relaxing might prove hard when the Spirit World is real, its entrance is in their basement, and they're its newest guardian.

It's out now in Early Access on Steam and Itch.io with a free demo!

[midautumngame]

Dialogue Cutscenes!

The Temple District has a couple examples of our new Dialogue cutscene system. We're building this to allow for more complex story events where characters can move around, play custom animations and make them feel a bit more alive. Right now these are pretty simplistic, just sliding the characters to different places, but it's designed to be able to do some fun stuff in the future so I'm excited to start putting that to use for our more intense story moments!

[midautumngame]

Folks who wanna follow along with Midautumn's early access updates, we're a part of the Game Devs of Color support bundle and it's in its final hours. You can pick up an Itch.io copy of Midautumn plus 100 other games for $10 and support GDOC! This is a great way to support more events, grants & scholarships for gamedevs of color! Check out the bundle here

[midautumngame]

Gardening Mechanic!

The Temple District now has a flower shop where you can buy seeds to plant in patches of soil around town. By returning to water these plants in between visits to the spirit world, you’ll be able to permanently improve some of Robin’s abilities by eventually harvesting them!

Compared to other ways of making the player stronger, you could potentially use this gardening mechanic to raise Robin’s starting health as high as you like, given enough time. What other ways of upgrading player abilities should we add?   

[midautumngame]

Hub Progress

The biggest addition the Midautumn game build are these interior areas we’re adding to the hub. The goal is to have the town feel large and full of little areas to explore with a lot of personality to each one. We’re trying to find a balance between making each space feel unique without having to make bespoke art for each of them so things don’t take too long on our end. Some of these areas are purely decorative for now, but the goal is to have them be potential locations for narrative events and have a shop, or some kind of optional activity or interaction that can take place in those areas.

[midautumngame]

Alexia sent me some lovely photos Midautumn being showcased at AnimeNYC last weekend as part of the Game Devs of Color booth there.

[midautumngame]

We have a new Build & Kickstarter Update!

We put up a new KS update last week for Midautumn folks! This update's gonna be focused on plans for our hub areas! 🌖We've been adding shops in the hub (Bike Shop, Bait Shop, Flower Shop, Sushi Restaurant) 🌗New Museum Area! 🌔You can give gifts to townsfolk! 🌓Dig for secrets! 🌖Sidequests!

Give it a read!

[midautumngame]

Hello! It's been a while since you've last posted here. I'm not asking for update, but rather sending the entire team well-wishes for their well-being.

Thank you for the wishes! We've definitely been posting more sporadically here but mostly just trying to be strategic with our bandwidth as we get closer to our 1.0 build! You can expect some catch up posts and then some posts around the progress we're making to the hub areas in the coming weeks!

[midautumngame]

Game Devs of Color Expo is next week and we're participating! We'll be doing a Final Boss Reveal!

[midautumngame]

Meet Ravana!

Deep within the Qilin Peaks, the enigmatic king of Lanka arrives in the Spirit World, thousands of years after his storied defeat. Widely feared as a cruel and terrifying demon, he was also known as a devout scholar and warrior. Which of these faces will he show you when you encounter him?

[midautumngame]

If you live in Nambo Quay, you have to get really into cycling. I'm sorry those are the rules.

Midautumn is going to be 20% off tomorrow for Ludonarracon! Please go buy it and write us a nice review, we'll have some cool new content for y'all to check out in early access!

[midautumngame]

Sherveen's doing a panel this week at ludonarracon! Thursday 9th May @ 1PM PDT!

LudoNarraCon is in a few weeks and we're doing a big content drop to celebrate one year of early access! Midautumn is gonna be 20% off, and there'll be a number of other story-rich games, demos and panels to check out! Sherveen's also doing a panel about designing meaningful combat in action games with a bunch of really cool folks!

[midautumngame]

The Sakurafest area is looking very lively!