Midli's Story + Demo Progress
We hope you all had a nice long Easter weekend! We managed to take some time off to relax a bit for the first time in ages, so we are refreshed and ready to continue with the hard work ahead!
Firstly a little update on the demo which I know many of you are wondering about. We have been trying to figure out what the most cost effective way to distribute the demo and beta would be. Thankfully Android makes that super easy, but (and we love Apple..) iOS is always way more complicated and restrictive. Unfortunately TestFlight app only allows 25 testers for an internal test, and if you want more then the app needs to go through a review process by Apple, which is really meant for larger beta tests where the full game is available. In any case we have finally found a couple of suitable and free options for ad-hoc app distribution which we are testing out. If you have any experience with mobile beta tests through a specific platform you enjoyed, let us know so we can consider it!
One of the most important things we want to achieve from the demo is getting your feedback on what you think of the game! Of course it will be fun for you to finally get your hands on Midli and try it for yourself, but your first impressions and opinions are really valuable resources to help shape and improve the game! Originally we planned on having an external survey you could access via the web, but we have been working towards in-app surveys instead to make sure we are getting your immediate impressions while they are fresh. Don't worry though, we will try out best to make these as unobtrusive and short as possible.
Other than on the UX front which Lou is taking care of, Chris has been hard at work both handling the code and getting rid of some major bugs which have been causing problems for months. We also have upgraded to Unity 2019, which always is a bit of extra work, but we think it will make the game even better, with much more mobile optimization, as well as a new way to export to all platforms in a much more seamless way.
Other than the code, a lot of Midli's story is getting wrapped up and ready for polishing. Because we have been working on Midli for so long, and the story in particular has been a really iterative process, we have tons of notes all over the place for the various layers to the narrative. We actually took a really cool picture of all of our scattered notes compiled together in one place to post, but then realized there were tons of MAJOR spoilers clearly visible haha, so try to just imagine it instead 😆!
There is a lot of symbolism in Midli, and while on the surface there is one version of the story as it's presented to you the player (two versions really, as this will depend on light vs dark fragment collection), there is a also the underlying story of what is really going on. It's a little hard to explain without giving it all away, and in many ways we wondering if we will divulge ALL the secrets to Midli's story and characters, because we also want players to interpret in a way which resonates with them. We are super excited to see what theories you come up with for Midli's true meaning!
One of the tougher tasks has been writing the two sides to each story. For example, we (Lou especially) are very attached to the character of Yuri, so writing her negative story perspectives which you see from collecting dark fragments has been really interesting. We feel very attached to the characters ourselves, so have to kind of take an objective look at them in order to view them in a "bad light".
That is it for now! This update was maybe a bit lengthy and technical, but we hope you liked it! Next time we are excited to show off how the game is looking, and hopefully give you a clear date for the demo. We actually have updated a lot of the graphics and realized we haven't properly showed that off to you yet, so do look forward to it!
See you soon in our next update!
- Team DinoByte Labs
