New Major Release - The Traumatic Update

Hi there!

After a long time away for work, illness, and visa hell (it went well, it went badly, and it was hell, respectively), I'm back for more The Red Market development. Since the start of May I've had a lot more time for game development, and that should remain true for the next few months at the very least.

Today's update - The Traumatic Update - is pretty big, and puts the game into a much better state than before. Here's the short version of the changes. You can dive into more detail below:

1. The long-awaited revamp of the game's stats and Challenge systems
2. The long-awaited revamp of the game's Injury system
3. Added, reworked, and improved text and dialogue throughout the whole game
4. Relics that were previously available to buy at the markets are now owned by the player as default
5. Balancing, editing, bugfixing

Give it a try here. You can let me know what you think by commenting on the Itch.io page, or by tweeting at me.

Other Stuff:

I also started a Patreon, both for development on The Red Market, and for my new blogging project RPG Autopsy, which is a deep-dive playthrough diary looking at the game design of role-playing games. I'm currently writing about the excellent Vampyr. 

I'd really appreciate it if you became one of my patrons! It'd really help me spend more time working on The Red Market, and on other great and lovely things.

My first 20 patrons - at $1 or above - will also be immortalised in a new small game I'm developing as a side project - One Thousand And One Nights, which is a game about dreams. So, if you'd like to be immortal, you can read more about it here.

Future Updates:

I'm aiming to have a new major update out every two weeks (with a two week hiatus in June due to another intensive translation gig) until August, at which point the game will be feature complete (will fewer monsters than initially hoped for, but expect post-launch updates to fix that).

The next update should drop at the end of May/start of June, and will be called The Skin-Stealer's Update'. It might include a very nasty monster.

In the meantime, thanks for your support!

Nick Keirle

Here's the full information for The Traumatic Update:

• The long-awaited revamp of the game's stats and Challenge systems:
  • Each character (the player character and their four expedition party members) now have a set of six character statistics: Observation, Subterfuge, Power, Control, Grace, and Flair.
  • There are now far more Challenges (i.e. stat-check dice rolls to determine success or failure) in the game. Challenges now work with the character statistics.
  • In addition to Easy, Medium, and Hard, there's now an even more challenging level for Challenges - Dire.
• The long-awaited revamp of the game's Injury system:
  • Instead of immediately being cured at the end of an expedition in exchange for 1 shilling, party members (and the player) will remain injured until the player pays for medical treatment.
  • Instead of injuries, characters now suffer levels Physical Trauma, which lowers some of the character's stats.
  • Physical Trauma also stacks, with each progressive level adding further stat debuffs.
  • Since treating a character's Physical Trauma costs 1 shilling regardless of if they have 1 Physical Trauma or 5 Physical Trauma, the player has to decide between delaying treatment to save money, or treating right away to maintain that character's effectiveness.
• Added, reworked, and improved text and dialogue throughout the whole game:
  • I've gone through the whole game and spruced up the text.
  • Extra dialogue options in certain dialogues to make conversations more interesting, and increase opportunities for player expression.
• Relics that were previously available to buy at the markets are now owned by the player as default:
  • Deciding when to use relics in expeditions/on monsters in captivity is a huge part of the game, but it wasn't very accessible to the player considering the high cost of Relics at the markets. So players now start with these five Relics, and can use them at any time.
• Balancing, editing, bugfixing:
  • Added new ways to solve problems in the Fungal Presence and Concatenation of Rats expeditions.
  • Fixed several bugs that prevented progress.
  • Fixed spelling errors, etc.