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It’s that time of year again…Happy Holidays and early Merry Christmas everybody. May everyone’s month be filled with warmth, joy, festivities, and twinkly lights! With that being said, the tracks in Deso, especially in EP6, have been quite pleasant and I’m very excited to hear that there is a focus on crafting an OST for the game during this cycle. The breakdown of your guys’ musical process was such a fun read. It was super informative and the explanation of technical jargon was much appreciated. And of course, the pics of the project really drive home the process. What you guys do is absolute wizardly and amazing. Interesting thoughts on original music and its inspirations…it could potentially be applied to all artistic endeavors to some degree. It’s certainly something to ponder. I digress though, it’s super fascinating to see how those particular tracks shaped the basis for Astra Café. I also like how the rule for the older sound plugins isn’t totally concrete and allows for some flexibility. The late DS-era sounds are such a nostalgia trip and pair nicely with the gen 3 aesthetic though if a new sound would fit well or sound stellar on a particular track definitely go for it! It’s also nice to hear it is such a collaborative effort between the team. The final version of Delica’s café sounds pretty chill and quite zen and ya can clearly hear that Conquest inspiration peeking through. I enjoy it. Something I’d actually listen to while diving into a good book so seems pretty lo-fi-esque to me! I know I’ll be thinking back on this post when encountering new tracks in EP7 (and whether there are any more Pokémon Conquest inspirations lurking underneath). Regarding the megas, I was kinda wondering if there was consideration to their stats and potentially new typing in their designs so it’s nice to know there is. Certainly a nice touch! I am looking forward to seeing which other two megas the dartboard method has chosen. As much as I’d love requesting a tiny sneak peek into every department that mayyy be a bit much lol. So, instead, I second CrystalStar’s request to see some of the map creation process whenever you guys do decide to do another department deep dive. EP6 was full of neat places so seeing that broken down would be really cool. Thanks Darius and Rust for giving us a behind the curtain glimpse of the music in Astra Café. And of course, everyone else on the Deso dev team for the time, effort, and creativity you put into this project! I’ll be patiently waiting for the next dev blog update. Also hope the new member process goes well and am super stoked to see another member on the team in due time!

I mean to ask them for less dialogue and characters is basically telling to censor themselves. If a story or dailouge story isn't for you stick to the regular games or play an enhancement hack

Love Desolation Two ideas: Don’t overload the game with characters and dialogue. Make select Pokémon fights really interesting by introducing a choice or difficulty setting just before the fight. Prune the character catalogue: I just played through Rejuvenation. Desolation remains my all-time favorite fan game. Towards the later chapters in Rejuvenation, the sheer amount of characters to remember, along with new introductions, old revisits, and long, boring, overwhelming dialogue, meant I ended up just skipping a lot of it. So please don’t let Desolation fall in quality over the chapters by adding overwhelming complexity. Elegance is simplicity, and a great, simple story is something that Desolation already has and should not lose by adding a ton of characters we can’t remember and walls of boring dialogue. A good approach is to think "What can we cut?" "What is not absolutely necessary?". Interesting fights: I also found that most battles were too easy in Rejuvenation, likely because I had some cheesy strategies for any Rift Pokémon: Salazzle using Toxic on anything + Chesto Berry/Rest + Protect + Venom Drench. Galvantula with Gastro Acid to remove abilities that blocked a Toxic strategy, or another mon with Soak to change typing so Toxic would work. Or a sweeper setup with Baton Pass Drifblim using Minimize, Amnesia, and Focus Energy into a Bulk Up + Leftovers Blaziken that could sweep. Or no setup at all, just straight Alolan Ninetales with Aurora Veil + Nasty Plot to sweep. Changing the field early on with certain mons, and later Lycanroc with Lycanium Z to remove any annoying field with its Z-move. Why am I saying this? Because not a single fight was truly challenging. Maybe Souta was the highlight in Rejuvenation. My favorite fight to date is the Sigmund double battle in Reborn – that one was interesting. So ideally, have bosses that are not mandatory but easy to access, with insanely hard mechanics. Or, in Desolation, have an option just before a boss fight to affect how hard the boss will be, possibly changing the later outcome or simply the reward from the boss. I’d love to go for the hardest possible difficulty – and not by limiting myself, like saying I cannot use a certain strategy. I want to be able to use anything at my disposal, and I’d like the game to be tunable to that. I'm saying the above because i hope Desolation remains at the top of great games! Best regards, Peter

Very interesting dive into the music creation process! I used to be very unclear on the different work of the composers and production people so this clarified quite a few questions i had. Also, mega noivern.... it's peam..... Since you guys asked, I'd like a similarly in-depth look into the map creation process! As an aspiring fangame dev myself, it's one of the two spaces im not acquainted with at all (the other being music creation haha) so it'll be neat to see a deep dive into that :) Been doing more spriting lately so this sentence just speaks to me a lot (the voice from the sprite mines are never ceasing) Awesome work on everything and cheers to getting Episode 7 over the finish line!

Hey if Charizard can have 2 I see no reason why my boy Feraligatr can't have both.

Man, whenever I think I cannot get more hyped about the next update, y'all come and post stuff like this!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!! The sheer amount of STUFF you're implementing! And it looks SO AWESOME!!!!!! I'm so hyped. I'm SO FUCKING HYPED!!!!! It looks phenomenal!!!! Utterly blown away by everything.