The Red Market Dev Log #3: Pre-Production Round Two, or, Re-Pre-Production

No new content today, but wanted to post letting everyone know that a full version of The Red Market is currently mid-way through pre-production. Here are some details:

It'll be a 10-month production (including 1-month pre-production). I'm going to continue using Inkle's Ink narrative scripting language, and I'm continuing to teach myself Unity so I can eventually integrate the two. 10-months is not enough time for this to become a graphical game in the vein of Sorcery! or Cultist Simultaor, so it'll stay text-based for the foreseeable future.

Anyway, here's the list of planned features:

• 15 new monsters, and their accompanying storylines. Including: The Tree of Hands, Jenny Hundredweight, The Bishop-fish, and, of course, the elusive Double Lion
• ~10 breeding matches between these monsters, giving birth to such unwanted things as Shivers-in-Brine, The Rakehell, and The Glabrous Child.
• ~7 new areas in which to hunt monsters/meet your demise.
• ~ 5 new NPC monster-purchasers. Find your beasts comfortable new homes at, for example: The Cabinet of Curiosities, Bruisewater Offcuts & Rendering, or an entirely normal circus.
• ~5 new powerful Relics, as well as extra treasures to find and sell
• Visions of your own death, and 8 ways to die!
• A handful of endings that don't end in your own death.
• Scars and Boons - semi-permanent preternatural effects that might help or hinder your efforts.
• New interactions, options, re-balancing and editing of current content. Lots of extra secret, large and small.
• A radical new mechanic: turning back time. Upon death or game completion, reset back to the beginning with all your secrets, memories, relics, etc. Make different choices, fast-forward through parts of storylines you've already played, and devise time-looping strategies to achieve your goals.
• (if possible) full integration into Unity: in a groundbreaking innovation still new to gaming, The Red Market will be a downloadable file with full save and load features.
• A better UI, or at least my best attempts at a better UI.
• Approximately 200% more having-your-cake-and-eating-it. Experience a barely-veiled critique of capitalism and environmental exploitation while having fun engaging in ruthless capitalist exploitation of nature.

I'm also going to be very strict with myself on deadlines here: this project is as much an attempt to improve skills like scheduling, time management, and other incredibly unsexy things as it is an attempt to improve my writing and designing skills.

Anyway, that's all for today. I'll be posting fortnightly throughout development.

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Remember that you can play the prototype here: https://nkeirle.itch.io/the-red-market

If you like the game, or have suggestions feel free to comment here, or come say hello on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nicholaskeirle