Everstone Daycare - March Demo

By a razor's edge, it's here!

Howdy everyone,  I apologize for the very last minute upload. This demo will admittedly by very rough due to how last-minute it ended up being. I was hit with a major bout of writer's block and only broke out of it around the 2nd half of the month. I apologize if the writing is a little less clean than previously and for the scarcity of sound effects. 

My goal next month is to properly polish the contents of this demo, but I owe everyone some kind of content for this month after failing to do so last month. I hope to improve my work schedule more in the future, and this was definitely not a good showing for myself. I have discussed different ways of divvying up the work between Tennet, Spooky, and myself for the coming months, and hopefully one of them will allieve the productivity issue.

I apologize for the radio silence this back half of the month as well. When I am focusing on writing the story, I end up neglecting communicating with you all and keeping everyone up to date with any new developments and media we have created for the demo. I'll try to improve on balancing working on the story and keeping an open line of communication with you all, as well as try to find a way to show the progress I've made on the story without spoiling what I have written.

Anyway, enough apologizing. Back to the demo!

This demo features the continuation of the story after you are dropped off into the retraining wing of the daycare (the 'baby side'), the new text scrolling sound effect I featured in a previous post, the new blue UI scheme, a functioning fastforward button (the [AUTO] button, and a few other tweaks I wanted to try out.

As always, I appreciate any and all feedback for this game, especially regarding anything new I've implemented. I wish to deliver the best product as I am able to, and your help will be vital to that. Other than the writing, my biggest concern at the moment is the implementation of the text scrolling sound effects and whether they add to the experience or are implemented in a satisfying way. 

Please keep in mind that your previous saves will likely no longer work as I have remade almost all of the scenes in the game, which would likely mean that saves made in previous versions might be referencing pointers/scenes that no longer exist. I suggest you start the game from the beginning and fastforward though the dialogue using the [AUTO] button in the text box.

Again, thank you all for your patience and patronage, and I will strive to do better next time.

[EDIT]

Regarding the key: At the moment, it doesn't open or unlock anything. It's something I mean to use in the future, but it's currently just something to fill your inventory. I apologize for any confusion this has caused.

Install Instructions

Please extract the game folder to your directory of choice, and then run the 'Everstone Daycare.exe' file within to play the  game. Enjoy!

Please note for the Mac version that this is not a signed app, so you may encounter an error  when first trying to open this program. Please follow the instructions  on this support page to work around this.

Known Issues

• Character sprites may become invisible during the scene if you go through dialogue boxes too quickly. They return the next time their character is sprite is supposed to appear. I assume this is because you can go too fast for the sprite finish fading in, causing it to skip it entirely and leave them unloaded.
• The  font for the Mac version seems to be defaulting to the program's  original font and not using the pixel font intended for the game.