The Flavor Files #3

What’s Up?

[ TL;DR: We’ve made major bug fixes, added running, improved UI and are working on implementing a new menu. The grey battle system is next, and we’re participating in GDWC! ] 

It's been a minute since my last devlog, but truth is—development never stopped! In fact, we've made so much progress.

Since leaving Instagram, I wasn’t sure how to continue logging our journey, but I still want to share the passion and effort we’re putting into Taste of Terror. Ultimately, Itch feels like the right place to keep track of everything, so here we are!

A lot has changed, and honestly, I have no idea how to seamlessly pick up where I left off—so I’ll just dive right into what’s happened recently.

What’s New?

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where loading a save made the player invisible in Noah’s room
• Fixed inspect mode freezing the game
• General controller support fixes
• Fixed light switch not working correctly
• Fixed both keyboard and mouse cursors appearing simultaneously in inspect mode
• Fixed a soft lock when entering Noah’s room
• Fixed layer issues
• Fixed a branching issue

Additions

• Running is now possible
• New GUI design (not yet implemented)
• Smoother scrolling and cinematic parallax background effects
• Inspect mode is finally finished... Functionally (will add a screenshot showing it off when we've also added the frame and aesthetics).

What Now?

Currently, we’re working on implementing the new menu. Here’s a rough mock-up of how we want it to look.

Our idea is to have the phone menu appear on the left side, while the right side focuses on Noah—who, while talking, serves as a help text. This also lets us clearly see their emotions.

Beyond that, I’m also touching up and creating extra CGs. Animations are still in progress as well!

What’s Next?

Development

Our priority is finishing the menus, UI, and HUDs. After that, we’ll move on to what we call the “grey” battle system.

Context: The grey battle system is what we call our combat system because it blends diplomacy and turn-based battles—but it’s not an “all or nothing” system. The approach depends on the battle itself, making it more nuanced, or “grey.”

Art

We’re in the process of recording the game’s intro song. I can’t reveal details just yet!

Events

We’ll be participating in GDWC! As some of you know, the tech demo is finished, but the public demo is still in progress. We can apply with the tech demo for now, but we’ll do our best to complete the public demo in time.

What If?

Here are some experimental ideas we may or may not implement—we just want to test them first:

• Adding more rows: The game will remain a side-scroller, but we want to see if the sprite can move diagonally (back and forth). This would create a depth effect where characters appear larger when closer and smaller when further away. If it looks right, we’ll add it.
• Avoidable attacks: This one might be tricky, but we’re considering making some attacks avoidable.
• Speaking bust in inspect mode: Right now, the character disappears in inspect mode, but I like the idea of showing their emotions to complement the voice acting.
• Extra animation frames: Not sure if the improvement would be worth the effort, but we’ll experiment!

What About Us?

Here’s what everyone’s been up to since the last devlog (attributions and credits from this specific period—not to be confused with the full team’s contributions overall):

• Val – Management & direction, development, 2D art, spriting, writing, marketing
• David – Programming & development
• MilkyyMelodies – Songwriting, music & mixing
• Fran – Graphic design
• RedMoondae – Background art, animation
• ShadowDragon – Programming

What Else?

Tasty Terror Trivia

Last time, I listed all factions and explained how they work. We'll learn about them more in depth now. This time around we'll be talking about orchardians.

Orchardians are based off fruit. As I mentioned earlier, they're born from a tree. They also have the shortest life-span along with veggies, which is why they prefer to canp or live in extremely cold weather. 

They're very community driven and tend to help eachother out with anything one may need, but they're also very wary of strangers and don't tend to welcome new people.

Fun Facts

• Noah's gender was going to be dependant on the player's, but in the end I decided to make them intersex because they have no connection to the player at all and are their own character.
• The light switch in Noah's room was for testing purposes, the room was supposed to stay dark, but I have night blindness and couldn't see too well when it was dark, the light switch helped me develop and event, but in the end I liked the subtle detail so I kept it. And now in fact the default room is with the light on.
• The game was going to be a short visual novel for a final project but I kept developing the game beyond my skills and wanted to learn to do more, my ideas got crazier, my friends started to collaborate with me. Then I started showcasing Taste of Terror on events and seeing the positive reception, I decided to take it more seriously
• Pat is absolutely terrified of water. It will affect her behaviour not just visually but also on a technical level in battle

What About You?

Have you got any feedback or ideas? Any thoughts at all? Don't hesitate to let us know, we see you!

That’s it for now! Thanks for following along with our progress—more updates soon!