Running of the Wolves - Phase 1

This is the end of Phase 1. At this point, most of the core mechanics are in place, minus combat. The next phase will hopefully add stuff like working shops, more animations (maybe even a new procedural animation system, if I can work it out), interactive sex animations/scenes, female enemy interactions, movement improvements (vaulting obstacles and climbing things would be nice!), and some more enemy types.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1weDF7FekxvklXX0YPZTVemZRE02-q67v/view?usp=share_link

Apologies, it's up to 1.5Gb. I'm working on reducing that size drastically. The new features to watch out for are:

• Pineridge
• Release map
• World Map
• Open Forest levels
• More SFX
• Music
• Loads of bugfixes
• Improved quests/tasks
• Storyline
• Repeatable world

There are a few noticeable bugs I'm working on:

• Returning to pineridge takes you back to world map to restart, instead of allowing further exploration.
• Rivers in the open forest seem to vanish - could be world partitioning issues
• Dense forests in open forest cause lag
• Looking down the valley in Pineridge causes lag
• Texture stretching in places in Pineridge
• Some dialog doesn't match gender of character
• Clothing falls off
• Badger jaw moves in reverse
• Squirrel jaw does not move

The first thing you will need to do on starting the game, is to clothe your squirrel. Tab opens the inventory.

There is an inventory bug, so every time you open the inventory, you will need to reclick the clothes you want to remain. If you open and close it, there will be no immediate difference, but the game will next load you without them. Again, bug, working to get that fixed because it's really annoying me.

Basic Gameplay

The main gameplay is pretty easy. Avoid the wolves and other enemies. Female enemies won't attack you yet, that's coming soon, but thy will cause noise to attract other enemies...

The most important things to remember are that crouching makes you move quieter to avoid enemies, though if they catch you while crouching, you won't get a chance to escape, so it's risky. In the open Forest levels, you'll find bushes all over the place. Crouching in those makes you invisible to enemies unless they happen to walk right into you.

Takedowns / Capturing

Male enemies can be caught. If you can sneak up behind one, you'll get prompts for 2 different takedown methods. One can even help regain your stamina.

Rocks

There's been a little confusion over the purpose of rocks. The main use is as a distraction. If an enemy is getting too close, throwing a rock will help get them to move away. Or you can just smack the enemy with the rock. They don't like that though.

Tutorials

You can talk to one of the NPCs up at the barn entrance for more information on how to play the game.

Oh shit something has fucked up

Bugtracker is here: https://forms.gle/aTzaPQyPf35zMige6 or it can be opened through the pause menu ingame.

What's next?

Some animation and Patreon rewards. I've been working non-stop on this game for way too long and neglected owed stuff. That's the main focus, but the secondary focus is going to be optimising the game further and fixing any more bugs that crop up. The game needs to go out on Itch soon, and I'm aiming for Christmas Eve. Before that though, the game needs to be below 1Gb, so it needs to be optimised by at least a third...

I've also got an idea for a longer animation I want to do, and before that, the next episode of Wilderness.

The christmas period is pretty much going to be animating as much as I can!

I've got a lot of things to look into and learn before I dig into Phase 2, so at the moment I'm estimating an official start date for phase 2 as roughly 14th Jan, which would put the release schedule for Phase 2 looking like:

• Phase 2a - 4th Feb
• Phase 2b - 25th Feb
• Phase 2 complete - 11th March