Good evening my fellow Kindred,

Today’s a day of a new dev-diary and since we are freshly after our 1st release we would like to make a commentary about it.

We didn’t release the entire content planned for the game. As of now, we have 4 of 7 scenes implemented into the game, so it’s safe to say you only touched the surface of the entire material. Of course, we will extend the plot to the planned length, but various bugs prevented us from releasing them. The main culprit was combat, which decided to break down entirely several days before the release - hence, we had to cut a lot of combat-dependent content so the player experience would not suffer.

We will not spoil any details yet - but you all probably already know the scene where your character wakes up and discovers that he is a vampire. Some of our older players who remember the 1st version of the game made for Game Jam probably noticed that a lot of the dialogues were changed and extended adding additional flavors and more detailed descriptions without any changes to the general structure. Our Sheriff gained a visible accent to accommodate the written description of his accent. We also changed his mannerisms to make him less annoying. Kieran’s dialogues were also changed to make him less grumpy and more likable (at least we hope so). We tried to make him more intelligent and in line with his background.

What about the added content?

The first scene you encounter after leaving your Haven is the Embassy Club. Our aim here was not only to recreate actual Vegas streets - we used Google Street View as a source for the general level design as well as looks. We also consulted a lot with old photographs of Vegas (from the ’70s and ‘80s - if you’d like to see more visit the Vintage Las Vegas site) and used advice from one of our crew members who lives in Vegas. We also wanted to create an actual British-themed nightclub. The light setup and neons were made specifically for that purpose. The same goes for the interior of the club. Creating a believable and at the same time climatic interior was challenging, but looking back on how it looks now we’re pretty happy with the result. The mix of rough, industrial parts with fancy and flashy lounges reflects the punk culture of that time. Culture that the club owner is part of.

You can also recruit a second companion there - if you want her to tag along. We hope that Anastasia gave you a lot of fun because she was designed to be a counterweight to Kieran with her different worldview compared to Kieran’s temperate, cautious, and calculated approach. She adds a lot of group dynamics that make the general interactions more interesting and add a lot to the conversations.

We also played a bit with a light placement to nudge the player where to go and what may be important. Light in the construction site shows the way through it, a lamp above the entrance in the dark alley indicates where players may enter the club, and so on. Setting the game during the night is an advantage since we may use more profound and natural visual cues to show, not tell.

After you leave the club interior you land in the owner’s office. It’s the investigation part that plays in there. Right now it’s handled entirely through the dialogues, but in the future, we want to make an entire system that will handle investigations. LA Noire was a unique game with its immersive and complicated investigation parts that were very flexible and depended mostly on players' intelligence, wits, and perception. You could even fail in your deductions. As a result, we aim for something similar, and that’s the reason why we won’t stick with the dialogues that handle entire investigations - but that's something for the final game.

In the upcoming weeks, we will release patches that will add the missing content and fix the persisting bugs (and of course add a ton of new ones). So stay tuned for the update announces and see you next month. If you haven't done so already the latest version of the game (v1.0b from the initial release) is attached for download with this post.