2021 is here (and this post is a bit later than we hoped)! At NovaDawn we’re not just celebrating the end of 2020, but also just over 1 year of EXIM development. 

Even though EXIM has been an idea for a lot longer than a year, we’ve been working on it as our sole project since December 2019. We still have a long way to go and didn’t reach all of the goals we really hoped we’d complete last year (including posting more on this blog…) but when we created those goals, we had no idea 2020 wouldn’t be the most encouraging year for a new project. Our big goal for the year is to create a playable demo, which means the game will be nearing it’s alpha stage. In order to do that though, we have smaller goals in the meantime.

Now that we’re well into the January sprint we’re looking to get some pre-alpha gameplay up and running. With basic versions of the UI’s and some of the systems already in place, the focus is on fine tuning our initial plans and getting them to a point that we can get a feel for them as a player.

We’re also hoping to start finalising all character designs so we can confidently create more sprites and models. We announced our first character earlier this month, Annie (if you missed it you can read the post here!), and with her we also revealed some of our plans for the game in terms of look and some functionality.

EXIM, like the games that inspired it, is a VN for the most part, but with aspects that we hope will make it more exciting for a general audience. Third person exploration in 3D environments and animated cutscenes will help us breathe more life into the characters and step away from the point and click detective formula to try new ideas.

Even though we still have a lot of work to do we hope to have some more posts coming in the near future, revealing more characters and taking a closer look at our design process and how all of our characters come into existence. 

We’ll also start diving into some aspects of our pre-alpha gameplay, starting with the crucial point in each chapter; the Inquiry that uncovers the culprit and decides their fate.