So it's been a good few months since I last touched this game, but I'm happy to announce ROSA's first major update!

When I first submitted ROSA to Narrative Driven Jam #2 I soon came to realise it had numerous game design issues. It was definitely a learning experience. 

I've been wanting to fix those problems ever since, but between other game jams and general procrastination I never got around to it. Then I quit game dev altogether back in June for various reasons. At that point I decided to leave all of my games as they were. However, this one still lingered at the back of my mind.

One thing I did notice though, both before I quit and after I returned to itch,  was that this game was getting a lot more attention than I expected. Things were quiet at first, then one day it got added to three public collections by the same user, and since then it's been getting played and saved more than any of my other games. As I write this, ROSA currently stands at 101 browser plays and has been added to 17 collections. Seeing more people discover it was exciting, yes, but also mildly horrifying because now a lot of people were seeing all its imperfections, exactly as I'd left them.

So my motivation grew, and eventually I decided to take the plunge and work on this game again. I figured it was the least I could do for the people who had taken the time to show their appreciation. Then early on in the process I came across Improve My Game Jam 17 and thought to myself, "Hey, let's see how much we can get done in a week."

So here we are! The basic plot is the same, and so should the length be for the most part (I still don't know how to time games, RIP me). I felt like as a self-contained short story it was fine the way it was, and didn't think it needed much extra content. But beyond that I've made a lot of changes and improvements! I'm very happy with the progress I've made, and I hope the game is a lot more enjoyable as a whole.

Spoilers, Spoilers Everywhere

Now, ROSA's story is kind of plot-twisty (the theme for it was "Unreliable Narrator", after all), so it's hard to talk about all the changes I've made without spoiling the whole thing. But I still want those who are curious to know what's actually gone into this update.  So to resolve this, I've decided to split the changelog into two parts: the Simple Changelog and the Detailed Changelog.

The Simple Changelog will cover the basics of what's been added, changed or fixed, while the Detailed Changelog will go into exactly what I've done.

I was going to put both of them in this devlog, but this being my first (and also due to limited time because of Improve My Game Jam) my nerves got the better of me.  So this devlog will only contain the simple changelog, and I'll try to write the detailed one for a part 2.

However, if you've never played ROSA before or you want to go in blind, just remember that the detailed devlog will be full of spoilers, so I recommend playing the game BEFORE reading it!

So without further ado, here's the updates!

Simple Changelog

The latest version of ROSA contains:

• Brand new gameplay segments!
• Extra artwork and backgrounds!
• New sound effects!
• More general scariness!
• A reworked dialogue scene
• A lower master volume so hopefully the game doesn't deafen everybody
• Colour-coded character names! (Thanks to Josh of Scoot 'o Speed Studios for suggesting this!)
• Updated credits to reflect new assets used
• A "Play Again" option
• A new "horror" tag added to the itch.io page, because people were putting the game in horror collections
• Minor plot hole fixes
• Minor bug fixes
• And some minor edits to the prose to polish the writing a bit

Known Issues

• So that new portal background at the beginning of the game is pretty neat, right? At least, until the portal starts shrinking every time you hit "Next"... Yeah, I don't know what's up with that. I might need to work on the CSS a bit, but as far as I can tell right now it's basically happening for no reason.
• An important link has decided to get the blues... literally. This has affected its readability (though hovering over it helps). I didn't discover this until I did a full playthrough late in the jam, and due to lack of time I was unable to figure out a way to change this specific one. Fiddling with the CSS seems to have no effect, and I'm suspecting the problem may be due to how the link was coded.

Things I Want To Improve

I really want to do some things to improve the UI of this  game. I was going to try and implement them during the jam but had to skip most of it due to not having enough time. I've already made a start on it by using new fonts, but I also want to change up the layout of passages so they don't lhave the same plain text-on-background look all my games so far seem to have. I also want to work on readability.

I think it would be cool to add some more sound effects as well, for things like link clicks. I was going to experiment with creating some myself with Bosca Ceoil, but again I ran out of time.

There are also certain animations I want to look into adjusting a bit.

If it turns out to be an issue, I will also try and look into adjusting the placement of images. I've noticed sometimes when I've had people playng my games on stream that the images don't always look the way I expect, for example when something is off-centre when I went through quite a bit of trouble to centre it. Blame my seven-year-old laptop for this (and possibly my own ineptness at CSS). Basically it's difficult for me to guage how things will look on different screens (and there's a reason only one of my games is listed as being playable on mobile), so if anything looks really wonky let me know.

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So that's it for now! While there's still things that could be better, I tried really hard to fix the biggest problems with the game. I'm hoping I succeeded, but I suppose that's what feedback is for.

I'd like to thank all those who have played ROSA and enjoyed it despite its flaws. This update took a lot of work, but it's my hope that it's led to an even better experience. 

Thanks for reading!

-DreamCartographer