Hi! It’s time for another Whispers in the Moss devlog. Read below for what I’ve been up to. The textmode JRPG will be released sometime in 2022. Check out the game's main page for more information or consider following me on Twitter for more regular updates. I'm also on Instagram.

NEW AREAS

I wanted to finish the endgame city of Armand in April, but since the town is turning out very detailed, it’s taking me a bit longer than expected. The positive thing is that Armand is the last major inhabited area in the game, and after that I’m moving on the to the endgame dungeons which will be a bit less work-intensive.

Anyway,  at this point Armand is almost finished. The latest additions include the Colosseum, the Grand Hotel, the harbor and the Royal Palace. The Colosseum is pretty much what the name implies, an arena where the best fighters from all over the world converge to test their skills in brutal battles. The mini game includes five challenges, but be careful – these are real battles and losing results in death and game over!

The Grand Hotel and it’s suite up in the 64th floor is one of the coolest areas I’ve designed until now. It functions as a very expensive hotel to sleep and restore HP/MP, but there’s also some optional stuff like a hunt quest which can only be accessed by booking the expensive room.

I've also been improving some older maps. For example, the party visits the dwarven town Hurgathon in the early stages of the game. But I created the map in 2012, and it hasn't really aged well. I added a new see-through layer to give the underground city more sense of depth, and voila, now the map looks much more interesting. I'm giving many of the older maps (and later enemy sprites) similar tweaks.

BATTLE UI OVERHAUL

I took some time to give the battle UI a small overhaul. It looks better and more intuitive and the ANSI character portraits found some new use.

SOUNDTRACK PROGRESSING VERY WELL

I’ve spent most of my time in the recent weeks on the soundtrack of the game. I’m not a professional musician, but I play a couple of instruments, know some theory, and I’ve been composing music in a form or another for about 20 years. But I’ve been out of it for years, so I haven’t really been sure whether a self-made custom OST is something I’m capable of doing on a level that I’m satisfied with.

Now I’m happy to say that it is definitely happening! I’ve already composed around 20 songs for the game, and while there are certainly “fillers”, I’m actually very happy with many of them. Most of the songs are pretty short, atmospheric or melodic loops. You can listen to a short sampler below.

The most difficult song by far has been the battle theme, but after numerous attempts I managed to create a pretty decent one. Listen to it in full below.

You could argue that a more retro OST, something in the chiptune/midi/whatnot department, would suit a textmode game better. The truth is that I’m not a very good composer, and I believe that the more archaic sounds you use, the harder it is to hide your lack of skill. Believe me, I’ve tried! I’ve decided to use more modern sounds, because this is the only way I’m able to get a soundtrack done. I will continue to finish a “0.9” version of the soundtrack, then implement the sounds into the game, and perhaps go back later to improve on some of the songs.

OFFICIAL TRAILER

I’ve also released the official trailer for Whispers in the Moss. Check it out!

WHAT’S NEXT?

There are still four major paths I have to finish to get the game completed.

• Finishing Armand and the rest of the missing areas + story events.
• Finishing the soundtrack, implementing it in the game + doing the same for sound effects.
• Going back to improve on many of the older maps and enemy sprite designs. My ASCII art and general design skills have improved fantastically during the 10 years (!) of development, and some of the older stuff have not aged well. Also, adding more story sequences, filling some gaps, adding new side quests and lore.
• Massive play testing and balancing.

Thanks for reading!

- T / Uncultured Games

PS. Since my last devlog, I revived and released an old project, a text-based retro football manager game called Mafioso Football Manager. You can download the game for free for Windows on Itch.io.