I must admit, you're making a convincing case, especially with the visual aid. : P I'll add this to my task list!

Old vs. new!
I really struggled with this one in 2019. So many attempts at designing the road, the water (which is super hard with a brown palette!), at adapting the creative-commons tree...
I knew Nothing about drawing, and after all this time... This area in not even in the game anymore! Instead, its spiritual descendant plays a much more notable part, and in a different section of the realm. : )

When you ignore all the marauding beasts, ruins, dark bogs, and treacherous power-hungry leaders, #Roadwarden is actually cottagecore.
(don't ignore them, though, they're cool)

I'm preparing the next version of the demo. Not only I second-draft all the oldest areas, I also introduce new systems for the player to use them to their advantage, as well as new interactions, choices, obstacles, and visuals. It's insane how much this game grows, and I'll share more news very soon.

Quote from: Aureus on July 03, 2021, 07:29:55 AM
When you ignore all the marauding beasts, ruins, dark bogs, and treacherous power-hungry leaders, #Roadwarden is actually cottagecore.
(don't ignore them, though, they're cool)

Bundle with Dorfromantik when? 

Damn, this game looks sick. Though I usually avoid Early Access titles. Hmm.

The huge demo update is on its way, with new mechanics, updated dialogues, redrawn illustrations, better UI... The game is now slightly more complex, and I think it gets better at building the experience of being a traveler in a hostile realm.

Here are some examples!

How intricate is the inventory/equipment system?
I.e. are there slots for armor/shoes/etc. or is more like one "whole" outfit?

I hope to add a drag-and-drop inventory screen to a sequel, but I don't want to even think when THAT is going to happen. In most contexts, it is assumed that the player always uses the best item they have in their possession, so if you have a basic axe and a good axe, the game will always assume that you grab the better one when you have a chance. There's, for example, one Cloak upgrade available in the game, but until the player gets it, their old cloak is present only in the game's narration, then new one is always used by default. The armor is also always used while PC is in the wilderness.

There are some scenarios when the player has to select through an in-game choice which item they want to use. For example, during some combat scenes you may select either a crossbow (if you have it), or a shield (if you have it), or a spear (if you have it), or a wand (if you are a mage and you have enough mana to use it) or a different relevant item, and the game doesn't make it obvious which one of these choices is an optimal one.

The "fancy outfit" won't use separate parts, but it's going to be possible to lower its price by delivering to the tailor useful components, such as pieces of jewelry, hide, or linen. It may be that I'll add some magic shoes to the game, but until I have a good idea how to utilize them, I won't add them just for the sake of complexity.

The Roadwarden screenshots look very sumptuous. The color palette is atypical, but soothing.

Also, I've spent the past couple of weeks messing around with Ren'Py and I have to say that I'm impressed with anyone who's able to build projects of considerable size within it. I've been having a lot of annoying hangups because doing many simple things is difficult in RenPy. (Of course the tradeoff is RenPy does some difficult things rather easily, so it's got major pluses if you're within the sweet spot.)

As I'm not an expert when it comes to programming, I can't judge, but as an amateur I was able to learn quite a lot since I started to work in Ren'Py. I think it's very easy to build quite complex Screens in very little time, and I do so mostly by combining vboxes, hboxes, and frames, but I do believe it does take a lot of practice since there are no proper tutorials online.

For example, I recently updated the UI (attachment) and I think I keep improving it by applying things I've learned over the course of seasons to older parts of the code.

Of course knowing Python would significantly speed up the progress. Additionally, I'm grateful for the kind people on the Lemmasoft forums who help solve some coding difficulties.

The game has changed a lot over the course of a year and a half. Read more about the recent changes, updates, and the new demo in today's devlog.

Hi there! Long time no see.

In the meantime, Roadwarden got pretty close to what I hope is its last stage. I still need to fix a few things, but there's a chance the game will be available on Steam this September!

I'd be happy to answer any questions. : )

Found some screenshots from 2019 Roadwarden demo and compared them to the ones I took this week... What a long journey!

Hmm, with the inventory I actually like the older one better.

The newer one seems to have a ton of wasted space and less information given (categories, etc.)

Quote from: TheSHEEEP on August 08, 2022, 08:33:41 AM
The newer one seems to have a ton of wasted space and less information given (categories, etc.)

I think you may be onto something, but it's getting messy once you reach the mid-to-end game! I think having a few categories, with the most-often changing ones sitting closer to the top, helps to navigate between them.