Welcome back, everyone!

I've another "mini-update" for you. Mini-updates, by the way, are what I'm going to call 'internal updates that don't come with a new playable version of the game'. So, I'm afraid, we're going to have a few more of these mini-updates before you'll be able to play To Ash and Ember again (or for the first time!)

Even so, you may have been wondering 'where is this guy who keeps posting those updates every three or four days. It's been almost a week now?' Well, some of the things I wanted to do took a bit longer than the other major systems. A lot of framework has been put in!

Let's dive in a bit to what's been going on in the workshop.

#1: Second-order Gameloop Framework Complete

If the first loop of the game is 'solve mysteries to prevent the town from collapsing', the second loop is 'banish the Slaughtered God'. The first loop has been completable for a while now but the second loop required a bunch of things:

• The concept of 'items'
• Giving investigators an 'inventory' to keep items in.
• A menu to access the Investigators' inventory
• A 'loot' system to gain items from encounters and confrontations.
• Support in that system to allow the player to direct somewhat the things they obtain from finishing a combat.
• A downtime activity that lets the player research and confront the Adversary (the Slaughtered God who is descending)
• A means to spend Clues (gained from particular encounters/confrontations) to decipher who is descending, rob them of their power, and to pierce the veil and intercept them before they reach the World.
• Support in the Confrontation system for an Adversary and the win conditions for beating one.
• Pre-and-post final confrontation event support
• A final splash screen to announce the banishment of an Adversary and which ties back to the Downtime phase.

All of these things are now done, in, and running. Thus, if you squint really hard, you can now declare the game 'beatable'. The Adversary doesn't know how to fight yet, or how to summon things, true, and the support for a lot of that stuff is presently bare and rudimentary. But, even, so: that does complete the 'second order' framework. Now you can complete mysteries to fuel your ability to confront your Adversary, which means 2/3s of the gameloop (and the major gameloop) is now 'runnable'.

#2: Looking Forward to Defeat

Now that you can 'fight God' there's an important aspect to introduce to the game now that it is technically winnable: to make it possible to lose the game. Losing the game is more than just 'hitting 0 Stamina/Willpower' though. In the Arkham Horror boardgame's tradition, Investigators are willing to put their very soul and the fiber of their body flat-up against the terrors of the night and what lies beyond the infinite void above. Killing them is no simple feat.

No matter the cause, if any source of damage drops either your Willpower or Stamina to 0 you enter what's internally called 'Final Stand'. Final Stand lets you to take any amount of damage and remain standing once. However, Final Stand doesn't go away until both your Willpower and Stamina are fully healed and you have no Madnesses or Wounds. While in Final Stand you become vulnerable and any amount of damage to a Stat that is 'Zeroed' will send that Investigator spinning into defeat. 

What, then, happens to an investigator who is Defeated? Depending on what was your cause of defeat you'll be sent to either the Hospital or the Sanitarium with either a Madness or a Wound. Normally an Investigator can take two Madnesses or Wounds before they become Consumed or Comatose. These Madnesses and Wounds are conditions that will hamper and make your life more difficult as an investigator (for instance being unable to use items that require two hands or being incapable of summoning a non-core Ally to the battlefield).

The troubles do not end there, however, as the staff of either refuse to let you leave until your Madness or Wounds are healed; you can choose to either spend precious time and money to become fully healed -- or attempt an escape if there's no time left (doing so turns this location of Rest into a temporary Dungeon!).

This of course only occurs if the Hospital and Sanitarium remain open. In the case both are closed you will not need to escape -- but your options for a full recovery significantly narrow as only these buildings (and a few rare and precious items and rituals) can remove any Madness or Wound you acquire.

Of course, if The City's terror reaches 100% then it's the Apocalypse. The Slaughtered God will arrive immediately at their full divine strength -- an unassailable force nigh-invincible even to you, an expert in putting down these shattered zombie-like deities. Defeat here will force you to choose whether to put the whole of that world to Ash or to Ember [to be explained at a later date].

I've built the locations and am in the process of setting up the framework for this currently. It'll be in soon and is one of the features I require to be in the game before I put out early versions of it again.

#3: Polishy-bits

While I've been doing all the above I've been keeping notes on bugs and issues I've noticed cropping up and popping them as I work. While doing this I've also been expanding the game's art, refining its events some, and adding a bunch more music and sound effects to it as well as refactoring and unifying a bunch of the stuff 'in the back end'. I've also started adding tooltips to a bunch of stuff to make things more apparent on what they do (especially since the game is not likely to have a tutorial for a short while)

It's not all invisible stuff though. In preparation for Defeat, for instance, I now have Shops and the Homebase up and running; both give you ways other than the Hospital or Sanitarium to heal damage at the cost of time. (The Hospital/Sanitarium can heal you faster, but they also cost money, take time, and can be difficult to leave if an emergency pops up)

What's Next

All-in-all a lot of progress is being made and I can't wait to share the game with you guys instead of just these mini-updates! In the near-term what I'm intending to do is finish 'skeletonizing' a bunch of these core systems such that you can get a 'real game' in and putting a thin layer of meat on the game's bones.

Also, if you'd like to really help me out and let me get the funding and groundwork to make content faster and more of it:

Wishlist on Steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1189320/To_Ash_and_Ember/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/toashandember