Sin Spire – Dev Log 38

Hello everyone! At the beginning of the month, I released Sin Spire’s first beta test build – hopefully the first of only a few. After that, I took a longer-than-intended break from development.

While some issues were found with the released build, feedback overall has been generally positive. In this Dev Log, I’ll be going over what’s left to do for the game and how long things might take.

Missing Content

So, now that the game is playable from beginning to end, what’s actually left to work on? Well, outside of bug fixes, missing content is obviously the biggest thing I’m paying attention to.

I mentioned this before but Ophelia’s scene after you complete her quest still isn’t in the game and is my current priority. There are a few headaches involved with her scene but nothing too bad.

The rest of the missing content includes mostly purification scenes:

• Front animation for Butcherette

• Front animation for Wraith

• Animation for Creeper (Intro Boss)

• Animation scenes for Twisted

• Animation scene for Banshee

• Drain animation for Girlfriend

• Drain animation for Mangler

Lastly, some of Savina’s voice lines are still missing. The recordings are done – I just haven’t finished editing and assigning them yet.

Bugs

Of course, a big part of what’s left is fixing bugs. I even found a few new ones during my most recent playthrough that somehow slipped through earlier testing.

Here’s the current list:

• The Creeper (intro boss) sometimes doesn’t move in the tutorial

• You can parry the Girlfriend’s bullets, staggering her from a distance

• Boss voice lines no longer play during purification

• Opening the boss door in the 4th or 5th dungeon can cause a crash

• Raven’s body disappears after loading a save following his final dialogue

• Projectiles remain active during Vanessa’s death

• Crouching while purifying puts the player into the floor

• Stalker grabs can make the player fall through the floor on respawn

• Reload animations can get mixed up, causing infinite reloading

• (Free Mode) Enemies may freeze after certain animations

• Savina’s relationship scenes can be interrupted

• Various cloth clipping issues

• Voice audio levels are inconsistent

• Controllers are not supported in the Map or Extras menus

• The player may T-pose after a purification scene (animation issue)

• Typos in tutorial notes and dialogue

I’m leaving out the dungeon generation bug since, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s not easily fixable without a full system overhaul. It happens very rarely (maybe once every 20 runs, and usually in the last two dungeons for me).

That’s one of the few bugs that will likely remain at launch, though I’ll continue trying to debug it post-release. While I can't fix the bug itself yet, I'll do my best to make sure that the progress lost from both that and the crashes are minimal.

If you find any other issues not listed here, feel free to report them in the Discord server.

Ending

I wanted to briefly address the ending, since it’s been the subject of a lot of discussion – both positive and negative. Some players are still hoping for a “good ending,” but as mentioned already, that was cut. Just to reiterate: there will be no true good ending.

The reason for it being cut has been addressed a few times already but the decision was made for both practical and creative reasons, and I apologize to anyone who expected it based on earlier posts. For now, I won’t be adding any new story content – at least not before release.

Whether or not I do some post-launch content is something that’s still undecided. Especially as there are numerous concerns and factors that come into play when it comes to actually releasing the game.

Supporter Credits

I’ll soon be reaching out via private messages to everyone who has supported me to confirm whether you’d like your name included in the game’s credits or not. While I did plan for this to be an opt-out, I'm also very aware that people may not want their name (especially their real name in the case of some people) associated with this kind of project.

Since tier descriptions don't mention anything about credits at this stage, I figured it'd be best to just give people ample opportunity.

Translations

Now that the endings are finalized, I need to finish preparing translation documents for translators. I’m admittedly slow at this, but I’ll do my best to get them sorted soon.

I already have a few translators on stand-by for the ending, but if you (or someone you know) might be interested in translating the game into another language, please contact me on Discord or leave a message in the server.

Next Steps

This post is already long enough, so I’ll keep this short: I plan to submit a review build to Steam this month.

That’s a pretty big milestone and it will decide a lot about both the project’s future and my own. While I believe the game is complete enough for Steam’s review process, this step also involves removing Patreon/SubStar links and other non-release elements from the build.

That’s all for today. I’m not sure how many builds I’ll release before launch, but I’ll try to put out at least one or two more to help test and verify fixes.

Thanks again for all the feedback and support – it means a lot. See you all next time.