Hello folks! A stable version of Eve of Echoes has finally dropped!

So what's in version 1.2?

This build is very close to the version of the game that we had finished during the completion of the jam. Aside from fixing a domino-like series of bugs and optimization issues, there are only 3 key differences between what we had finished at the jam deadline and what we have now:

1. The title & splash screens were previously missing from the jam build, and those have been added.
2. Aside from VA, most of the sound assets, including sound effects, were not completely implemented.
3. Fixing certain bugs coincided with adding a bit of extra polish throughout the game in general. The intro needed a bit of extra love & care on the optimization end, and that resulted in more curated sequences.

What took so long for this update?

Vextera, the lead developer, is the sole person responsible for all the NaniScript programming. She handled most of the testing, bug fixing,  and optimization issues post-jam. Some of these issues meant we needed to go back in and make some substantial changes to script formatting (although not the story itself), and some of it meant a lot of trial and error with different asset management techniques.

Between traveling constantly for work throughout October and then processing an unexpected death in November, she unfortunately did not have any meaningful time to return to Eve of Echoes until December.

Is the game finished?

There are still an assortment of things we plan to polish more, particularly in the game's final route. It's definitely at a place where we feel comfortable releasing it for play and feedback from the community; from internal testing, the routes and mechanics appear to work they way they need to in order to progress through all routes of the game.

We envision there will be at least one more sizable update to include further polish (particularly for sound and characterization) and a smattering of additional assets.

If you spot any bugs, please reach out! We have a ticket system for reporting bugs in our community discord server.

Despite the challenges we faced, our jam experience was an overwhelming success.

We came into this project expecting to use it as a stress-test to find holes in our development process first and foremost. As you may be aware, Eve of Echoes is not the only game we plan to release in this fantasy world and using the same style and general functionality. The jam revealed a plethora of issues with our methods, standards, and that we were able to identify and correct over the course of development and in the following months. This includes (but is not limited to):

• Necessities for building and using complex sprites in Unity/Naninovel
• Addressing issues relating to depth and layering in the scene to make characters look like they are physically in the environment
• On-boarding new artists and teaching the principles of the Silverblood art style from scratch (we had 6 artists working on this project!)
• Getting a better feel for team size vs scope vs timelines for future projects, and the thresholds at which we need to expand our team
• Options for building tools that reduce the amount of tedious work needed to implement and configure game assets
• The sheer impact that creating one specific tool had on the entire development process and how we will Never Be the Same

Special shout-out to Microsoft Word, the true MVP of our jam experience, due to the fact that the advanced find & replace mechanic allows you to parse paragraphs/page breaks and include them in your find/replace syntax.