General Update #25

Hey there Agents!

We hope you had fun with the release of Silent Echo v0.2.1. Today, we'll bring you some news about the next update, version 0.2.2 and share some of our plans with it.

Feedback and improvements for the game(s)

We've been listening to the feedback on the latest version and we're looking at what actions we can take based on your comments.

You'll likely have noticed Sylvia is not yet available as a squad member, yet we've made Victoria available as one in the last update.

One of the reasons for this is that we've been very careful about expanding the amount of available squad members, as we expected to see issues appear with having more than two squad members, and jumping to 4 potential squad members right away would have been a significant jump before we had a chance to look at the impacts of this expansion.

First, on a positive note, we feel the enemy health scaling did its job perfectly. The hardest fights currently available last long enough to see all abilities play out, which was our goal.

On the other hand, the issue we expected to see appear, did appear. The turns are starting to be very long as fights with multiple enemies are starting to be more common.

There is for sure a matter of taste here. I suspect not all players will be keen on seeing one combat turn take 30 seconds to play out, while others will prefer it that way and enjoy the visual experience the game provides.

We've been thinking about what would be the best way to solve this issue. One of the ideas was to cap the maximum amount of active squad members in a fight to something like 2, which is a common way to balance things in RPGs with maximum party sizes.

However I feel this is not fun, and there is a real appeal is being able to have your little group or survivors grow and be there alongside you, and the choice of how you can experience Silent Echo should be left to the player and their preferences.

Therefore, to solve this problem, there are two features I would like to implement in the next update:

1 - A new setting menu option for faster turns

Instead of the current two seconds, a turn would take one second, so about 50% faster.

The one issue I expect with this feature is the potential audio nightmare, so perhaps we'll do something like disable enemy sound effects if fast turns are enabled to prevent you from experiencing something potentially unpleasant.

2 - Conditional enemy encounters

The idea for this one is to be able to add dangerous fights for players with 3 or more squad members. This means they need to be tuned higher than the usual encounters, which would create scenarios that are impossible to win for solo or duo players.

I believe with these two features we will have reached a good maturity level for the game and the introduction of new functionalities should no longer be necessary, allowing for a full focus on the implementation of content and fun things.

After these new features are implemented and tested, we will also make a balance pass on Lina's skills, most notably on MechaLina's abilities.

Skins for Squad Members

In version 0.2.1, we've introduced support for skins for the player's Aegis Integrated Suit. In the same vein, we want to add a bit more customization options to the game, and our last target for that is your squad companions.

In the next update, we will add a first set of alternative appearances for the existing humanoid squad members, which means Emilia, Ava and Victoria. Appearances can be managed and swapped as desired from a squad member's individual page.

These alternative appearances are displayed in combat encounters and most discussion scenes. We chose to not consider them for sex scenes as that would cause development to slow down significantly. This is a point we'll likely revisit and improve upon after the game hits v1.0.0.

For Victoria, the first alternative appearance we'll provide is her original slime appearance. This will allow you to switch between the current human-like form she acquired in the storage vault, and her original slime appearance from Chapter 1.

There are other things coming for Victoria and the slime suit, which we will talk about in the next update post.

For Ava, one of the two skins coming for her in the next update is her maid outfit. It was featured in November's exclusive artwork and many of you expressed interest to get a chance to see more of her with this outfit.

The grand admiral has provided his blessing to have this item added to the game as part of Gwen's patronage rewards program. It will soon be yours!

Congratulations to the discord server members that correctly guessed who the maid outfit was meant for!

Holidays

We wish you all happy holidays and a good time with your families.

Your support in 2024 has been invaluable for us and we're closer than ever to our goal of 2.000€ per month, which will guarantee our ability to deliver you games with the same quality and dedication you can expect from us.

Thank you for your trust. We're really excited to head into 2025 with you. We have a lot of cool and kinky content in stores for you!

Have fun!