Dev Update #1: Welcome to Glicea news - Glicea: The Vessel mod for Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Welcome to Glicea!

I'm happy to say at last that this long personal project of mine is coming to actualization. I'm very excited to finally have the first details of this mod in the public eye.

It took me way too long to write this first post, mainly due to distractions and being unsure of what to write about. I was debating giving some story sneak-peaks or just giving a development update, so I've decided to do both. Here's a blurb to give a little background as to what's happening on Glicea:

"After a devastating and prolonged global conflict, the downtrodden Common people of the Earth-like planet Glicea are powerless to stop their resentful and unempathetic governments and leaders for the burdens they leave on the populace. Glicea: The Vessel will give you the perspective of one individual, with nothing to lose, willing to bring about change. He knows the Royal Families hold the real power. He has targeted the most powerful Family on Glicea, the Mawcroths, and their mastermind, Durward Mawcroth. If his justice is to be served, he will first discover the secrets perpetrated by his Family, as well as an unmastered, ethereal force of nature, known by many, tamed by few..."

This project has existed for 3+ years now, with development on and off as I've graduated college and moved around a bit, and gotten a full-time job. It has slowly come to fruition as I began to really set a vision for the story and what I wanted to do with the mod. I had always tried to treat this project as its own video game, and that was absolutely something I wanted to capture within the mod itself. From the story, to the gameplay, I wanted this mod to feel unique from Amnesia: The Dark Descent as much as it could and made every effort I could to create as much quality as possible.

What's going on?

My current focus is to get the mod in a state where it is fully playthrough-able, without the use of any debugging or dev magic, and ideally without progress blocked by any glitches or bugs. For the most part it is playthrough-able, but I find myself frequently distracted by other parts of the mod that I feel the need to tamper with and improve, and until those are complete, I won't feel the mod can be played. This has had its own problems as my creativity juices fluctuate wildly and I feel more motivated to work on some days than others.

I'm also finding writing to be a struggle, and I would ideally like to have all writing elements completed (or largely started) before I put this mod in the hands of anybody else to test or play. I love to write creatively, but find I only have so much energy to put in.

What's next?

Following the mod becoming playthrough-able, I intend to get the mod into a state where I can redistribute it to a few trusted friends of mine to test the mod for some initial feedback. I think a private beta test available for some volunteers will also be a possibility.

All the while, I also wish to give the mod multiple pass-throughs (which I've already admitted to doing) to improve on quality as much as possible.

I still intend to get this mod finished and publicly available before the end of the year, but the last thing I want is to rush things just to meet a deadline.

I'll be using this mod page to give irregular updates on mod progress as I see fit, and a release window as the mod inches towards release. I still have much to do to deliver as high of a quality experience as possible, between polishing, world-building, writing, and plenty of testing. Thanks for reading!