This was a particularly busy week at my job, as well as with family matters—especially parenting and ‘husbandry.’ As I’m still having to work on Outsider in the few hours before my job starts, I can’t really do much if these hours get consumed by other priorities. This situation won’t last too long, so I’d like to ask our future players to please be patient with me for now! :)

Still, I managed to fix an annoying site deployment bug that was breaking the whoistheoutsider.com redirection on every website deploy. Please let me know on Discord if you see any problems on the site.

Apart from that, I spent the rest of my time working on a brand new ‘game design’ issue, which I’ll call Problem 2 from now on. I mentioned fixing what I’ll now call Problem 1 a couple of weeks ago, but I realized that the fix created a side effect (Problem 2) and only bought us a couple of months of worry-free development. The clock is ticking; if Problem 2 isn’t solved soon, I will have to make certain hard-to-reverse decisions that could turn Outsider into an excessively niche game.

But what do I mean by ‘game design’, or ‘gameplay’, issue? The best way to discuss it without spoilers is by providing an example. You have probably heard of Elden Ring, the latest installment in the ‘Soulsborne’ series. This series is notorious for its difficulty, so players have been asking for an ‘Easy Mode’ for years. From Software never wanted to compromise on difficulty, but that has always limited the game’s appeal; many people I know haven’t played any Soulsborne game because they think they won’t be able to beat them.

For Elden Ring, From Software must have spent a lot of time thinking about how they could make the game more accessible without compromising its core difficulty principle. I’d call this a ‘game design’ issue that was looking for a ‘fix.’ From Software addressed it by, among many other things, introducing the ability to easily summon different NPCs (through ‘Spirit Ashes’) that help players in tough fights. The game remains hard, but this feature helps less skilled players breathe a bit when fighting difficult bosses. I simplified things, but essentially, the game is a lot more appealing to an audience that didn’t want to play this type of game in the past while remaining a true Soulsborne experience for everyone, including hardcore fans.

Problem 2 is in a similar class of problems. I will spend the little free time I have over the next two weeks working on it with Alex and hope that I can make some progress.