Hello to the person reading this announcement. I am not the person who normally writes these -- that would be Claire, the game director/writer/artist -- but this update concerns the game engine itself, which is my department -- I'm Brandon, the programmer.

The short summary is that I am having a friend (well, to be exact, it's Claire's girlfriend!) help me rewrite basically all of the game engine.

I wrote the bulk of this game's code in 2013, when I quit my office job and lived off of savings for about a year. I was still a pretty novice programmer at the time and there's a lot in the engine that's pretty messy an in-elegant, but most of that doesn't directly impact the game experience itself. When it comes to Software Engineering, it's always hard to justify to non-programmers the process of code refactoring -- rewriting and restructuring potentially large amounts of code to make them more maintainable and efficient -- and this is especially true when it comes to products with heavy financial obligations like a video game (and a video game that isn't even out of Early Access to boot!).

However, refactoring the code myself was just gonna be too much of an undertaking for me personally. I've spent several years of my adult life working on this game engine, and I'm too close to the code and too invested in this project to give the proper effort an engine refactor requires. So when Claire's girlfriend offered to take a look at my code and see what she can do, I gladly accepted.

The point of this announcement is to simply give an update saying that this game is still being worked on. With an RPG that's as complex as The Magic Wolves, it's imperative that the game's engine isn't a total mess. Like I said earlier, most of the messiness isn't reflected in the actual game experience, but there are definitely some known bugs that will be fixed by this refactoring process.

Thanks for taking the time to read this announcement and I hope you continue to enjoy The Magic Wolves!

-- Brandon

Hello!

We updated the game!

There are a ton of changes in this update, but they're all really tiny. Mostly numerical tweaks, fixing some graphical glitches, a few crashes, and some other assorted things. Still, this is a pretty big update for the general playability of the game; it should be a lot more palatable early on.

At the very bottom I also try to give a vague picture of what's next for us as a company, but find it difficult, as the future is always in motion.

• Infinite Durations of abilities!
  
  Almost every ability in the game that had a duration now has an infinite duration. This includes Heal over Time (turns?) effects, Damage over Time effects, and others. This notably didn't touch Artificer's Wither, though.
  
  
• Lowered basically everything's HP, and many things' PDEF and MDEF
  
  
• Raised base DEF and EVA stats for some classes

Honestly, that's the only main things I can think of off the top of my head. On to more interesting fare.

I reworked Feralist, because I always found them to be a bit lacking, but I usually resolved this by only using a few of their abilities. That lack of luster shows later on into the game, though, particularly when it's time to learn your third Feralist ability.
It was also pretty apparent that they didn't even really fit what my original vision of them was, so I did some stuff to make them feel a bit more like the Barbarian Slot Machine (...ew.) they're supposed to be.

• Abilities that give Woozy & Ferocity now say what they do instead of making you refer to the manual that no one seems to know about
  
  
• Focus:
  
  Now gives two charges of Ferocity rather than one, and raises SPD and ACC rather than SPD and PDEF. I don't know what was going on with this ability before.
  
  
• Double Swipe:
  
  Attack twice with low accuracy; successful attacks grant bonuses.
  Evidently Double Swipe B was just flat better, which I never paid attention to really. Now, both versions of the skill attack twice, have high miss chance, but when you hit with type A it gives you a stack of Ferocity, and when you hit with B it increases your SPD and ACC.
  
  
• Quick, Quick!
  
  I deleted this terrible skill and replaced it with:
  
  
• Fury Slash
  
  An attack with increased crit rate. Critical hits trigger additional actions.
  One thing this class was definitely missing was a way to instant pay-off on Woozy's Ravage; what I always want when I play the class is a simple skill with increased crit chance, so I can take better advantage of turn 1 Woozies, for instance.
  Type A attacks again when it crits. And yes, those attacks trigger additional attacks on Crits.
  Type B stuns the enemy when it crits. This has the advantage of not eating every charge of Ferocity, and also, damage mitigation.
  
  
• Devour
  
  Trigger point was increased to 40%, and its effects were buffed.
  
  
• Malice
  
  Fears a group of enemies, making them unable to act occasionally. Also lowers their PDEF, or also lowers their MDEF.
  Basically I merged Malice and the old Howl. Nothing fancy, but with this, Devour, and Fury Slash, they have a nice secondary role of "DPS with a side of mitigation."
  
  
• Howl
  
  Raises party's SPD and EVA, or raises party's SPD and ACC.
  I think I moved what used to be Animal Instincts over here, kinda? I don't even remember what that skill used to be, it was so terrible.
  
  
• Fierce Swings
  
  A: Psychs up the party, giving them double damage for one attack.
  B: Psychs up yourself, giving you double damage for one attack. Also gives two charges of Ferocity.
  A is for party-wide DPS comps (which are kinda dangerous, so I don't mind it being a bit overpowered), and B is a more offensive replacement for Focus.
  
  
• Animal Instincts
  
  Raises an ally's crit rate, and restores their MP or HP at the end of battle.

I think this gives them a couple interesting builds in and of themselves. I haven't had much of a chance to play around with it, but I'm expecting them to be a bit overly strong in certain mixes now. in any case, they have a lot of fun abilities on their own, and that's cool.


So it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone following the game here, or on twitter, that the last update was almost a year ago at this point (about 9 months.) The reason for this is twofold: first, the game wasn't making enough money to keep me alive, and second, life forced me to focus on things that were way more important, like having food and shelter, as well as things I just preferred doing, like learning how to animate and working on Lolita Pinball.

The second point was, obviously, largely fueled by the first.

So, after much deliberation on this subject, here's what we decided to do for The Magic Wolves in order to ensure first that it gets completed, and second that it doesn't dominate a probable extra year of my life (I really cannot even begin to say how much writing is in this game; it's massive absurd huge large mcbig):

We're skipping what was originally planned for v .9, and working directly on v 1.0. That is to say, we're gonna finish all the skills, and I'm gonna write the last area of the game, the City of Bays and Bridges, rather than the Chateau Umbre (Ombre? I don't remember) because it's where most of the important variations in the game happen, and because it's where the final boss is.

On top of that, the City is already more completed than the Hotel!

There will still be incremental updates, since the City's split into a few easily divided areas I can add piecemeal.

After the release, if the game goes well, I'll work on the Chateau. If not, we'll move on. There is certainly interest in the game, but I can't eat interest.

When this is gonna drop, though, I honestly couldn't say. I'd bet 2017, but I'm not a betting girl. Right now, after this, my priority is to work on the prototype for Lolita Pinball, which has been in that "nearly done, I just need to finish the cutscenes" stage since, oh, October. After that, I'll probably work on The Magic Wolves and Lolita Pinball as I so desire. So maybe a small update within Winter still. That'd be nice.

Anyway, I hope you guys have fun playing my game. Going to cons to show my game was an incredible experience, even if I didn't really get "success" in any measure, because it made the fact that I made a giant, pretty kickass game a lot more apparent, even if it's not apparent to others :p

Have fun!