November 2025 status update (Done with my personal playtesting) (Patreon)

So, how was your Halloween? Got spooked? Or are you already preparing for Mariah Carey, who is defrosting since July? In any case, I hope you had a great time :)

This post will be longer. I will put it into sub titles, so you can just skip forward, if you aren't interested in a certain topic.

Time played:
I finished fully playtesting the game. I needed 17 hours and 30 mins to play through the main story. And another 2 hours and 30 mins to complete the game to a 100%. Keep in mind that I know the locations of enemies, ingredients, recipes and so on. Also I skipped through most of the animations; only saw them a couple of times to check, if they behave accordingly.
Furthermore I... haven't took the time to 'enjoy' my game, like most of you guys do (if you know, what I mean). Also I speedrun to get the last few enemies to unlock the gallery.

All in all this makes 20 hours of game time + definitely some more for actual players; not developers.

I would have NEVER thought, that the game would be so lengthy. I'm really, really proud of myself. That is quite a bunch of playtime for my game. I couldn't have hoped for more <3

My To-Do List:
As I went testing, I took some quick notes of things that needs to be fixed, changed or just buffed; everything that I could find. The list has a decent size; as expected. But nothing I couldn't do in time. You will see the exact amount of changes in the patchnotes, once the game gets released. I won't write down small stuff though, as always.

Overall personal experience:
I'm very happy with how the game shaped up. The amount of content is great. The most fun I had was to plan my next run: What ingredients and enemies do I focus on? Which potions will I take on my journey? Outfit? Meals?
I love that I can choose different tactics, depending on what I'm looking for.
I noticed that the game might be a bit hard in the beginning, but the longer you go the easier it gets. Since there is no real game over I will leave it at that.

Pace of the game + revenge quests:
The pace of the game is great. Everything fitted together quite well EXCEPT one thing: In my opinion, it takes to long to complete the quests. Therefore I decided to make them easier to solve: If you need for example 5 different potions 5 times, I will change that to 5 different potions 3 times. This should save time by about 33%. That feels more fair to me. Feel free to leave a comment.

Buff food:
The meals that are available in the kitchen are worth it. I used them every run. I'm glad I gave the effects a buff in the past.

Notes from crows:
In the beginning of the game, especially noticable when first visting the mansion (and the cave), I noticed that finding the crow to get the recipes for this current area could be to hard to find for casual players; ESPECIALLY since the player can't create any potions from that area. Meaning the player "wastes" his time, and can not make any money from potions; forcing the player to go to an old location to find ingredients.

Because of that, I will change the location of the crows in all locations (except the normal forest) to an easier to spot place. What do you think about that?

Dialogues
The amount of dialogues seemed perfect throughout the game. Right before I finished the game, I got the last necessary dialogues about Linda's monsters in the house to unlock the the complete gallery.

Unlocking CG's by having fun with enemies:
I will increase the spawnrate for certain enemies, such as the Doppelgänger, the Wendigo and a few more. Not by far though. Overall it felt great.
Also the amount of unlocking CG's (20 for lesser enemies and 10 for elites) seemed fine to me. No changes there.

Next steps:
I will go through my To-Do List. This will take a while. After that I will probably release the game for some testers, while I work on other things in PSS simultaniously.

Release date:
The 15th December 2025 still is my target date.

That is all. Phew, quite a long post.

I will now proceed to link my Discord here yet again. Over the next few days I'm doing some PSS polls over there. Feel free to join the fun!
Of course, you can always express your opinions in the comment section, right here!

And now
I wish you a happy day!

Your
random Crow