Devlog - January 2025

If you're on this site reading this, then there's a good chance that you follow Too Many Teeth on social media. There's also a good chance that you've also noticed that there isn't really a lot of activity there! I'm not really great at social media - I often feel like I'm shouting out into the void with opinions that nobody else cares about, and at times it's hard to feel like people care. (There's a reason that I deleted my personal social media accounts a number of years ago - unless you count Goodreads. Goodreads is awesome).

I don't really set resolutions for the new year, since they can often be a bit intangible and hard to qualify, which makes it easy to slip up and stop doing them. What I do usually do, however, is set concrete goals to achieve throughout the year, since that helps give me something to aim towards. One of my goals for this year is to post monthly dev logs with what's being worked on at the moment, so that there's more transparency with the development process and people can see the cool things that are being worked on! With that in mind, this post will cover the last few months of development, where progress is currently at, and what the plan for this month is. Unless specified, the updates mentioned here are all for the full version of the game, not the demo.

August 2024

• The demo for Artificial Nexus was released! If you haven't played it yet, you can do so through Steam or itch.io.
• Content for viewing objects in rooms was added in
• Content for optional side conversations began being added in

September 2024

• The remaining side conversations were added into the game
• Some puzzles were programmed into the game
• Achievements (18 at this stage) and a gallery of unlockable CGs were added into the game
• The remaining content for the main story of the game was added in

October 2024

• Too Many Teeth Studios attended PAX Melbourne! If you visited us and played the game over the weekend, thank you for doing so - I hope you enjoyed it!
• The demo was updated with some of the changes from feedback at PAX
• Multiple bugfixes and quality of life improvements were added to the game
• Music and sound effects were added to the game
• The game was handed over from the development team (i.e. myself) to the beta testing team (i.e. my friends).

November 2024

• The beta testing team spent most of the month playing through the game and compiling feedback. Upon delivering all feedback, we had a call to discuss the direction to move things in and clarify some feedback.

December 2024

• Some of the game's script was rewritten in response to the feedback; mostly doing things such as removing unintentional ambiguities and tightening up dialogue.
• Bugs and quality assurance changes began being made in response to feedback
• The decision was made to hire a new background artist for the game after concluding that the existing artist's style didn't suit the tone of the game. Reina Tensei, an experienced artist who has worked on other visual novels such as malViolence, was contacted, and agreed to create backgrounds for the game. Here's the first room in the game - it's a change that we're very pleased with!

As you can see, most of the game is done at this point. The majority of the remaining work involves working through the remaining quality assurance tasks, and at this stage there's a very good chance that the game can be ready for another round of testing by mid-February. While there could still potentially be complications that arise, the goal of releasing the game in the first quarter of the year isn't entirely unfeasible.

Thanks for reading - check back in at the start of next month to hear what progress has been done in the meantime!