Anyway, Selling Sunlight is an absolutely wonderful little game and I urge people to back it. CoseBelle is a new development team and it's their first game. They don't have much name recognition, only clear talent and a well thought out plan. What they're proposing is incredibly unique, if they don't do it then nobody will. This is what Kickstarter was made for.

Neat! Could you make a post promoting the Kickstarter for Cultist simulator since it's made by Alexis Kennedy?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1144821177/cultist-simulator-behold-our-end?ref=2lxmre

We listened to your feedback and we researched other bartering systems, trying to find new ideas. This article by Sin Vega on Rock, Paper, Shotgun was a big inspiration. It made us understand money is usually the least interesting part about a trading deal, and gave us the idea to check tabletop RPG systems.
The updated bartering system retains the same core, but all the elements work a little differently.
The list of changes includes:

• Multiple currencies.
  
• Each merchant has a default patience level you can increase by befriending them. Grumpy merchants start with lower patience, thus adding some variety.
  
• Patience doesn't reset after every transaction, but at the end of the day. Makes merchants feel more human and limits exploits.
  
• A renewed focus on trading services and goods. You will be able to complete a transaction without using money, if you want.
  
• New skills during bartering now gets unlocked as you befriend the merchants. Gain their trust, and you will be able to unlock risky prepositions like "give me a discount and I will search for this item and bring it to you".

Many of those skills require creating new systems from scratch, and that's why they're taking more time than expected.

It's the last update of 2018! Time for a yearly roundup.

Thanks to your precious support, in the last 12 months we have been able to:

Buy a professional scanner
You may remember the first screens of Selling Sunlight where faded and yellowish. We used part of the Kickstarter money to buy a professional scanner, and re-scanned every single asset we had made thus far. The process took a while, but it was 100% worth it!

Remember this comparison? Old scanner (left) vs. new (right)

Populate our world with characters
Lucy is roughly halfway done with the sprites, and will keep working with us next year. She's currently sketching the Yellow city merchants.
Here are a couple new gals you'll be able to meet soon:


Our workflow is well-honed at this point!
This is an overview of all the art we usually make for a single character:


After defining together a character's personality, Anita paints the character bust (left). She then makes a detailed turnaround (top) and sends it to Lucy. Lucy sketches the sprite (bottom left), and then proceeds to add colors and make the animations.

Make the game sing
Devin Vibert filled the world of Selling Sunlight with music and sounds. He recently finished making all the sound effects and jingles for the game's menus.

Next year he will compose the rest of our soundtrack: a theme song for each remaining location, plus a bunch of atmospheric tracks to use during cutscenes.

Not panic!
Making games is hard, and accidents can always happen. Having some extra funds allowed us to hire additional help when things didn't turn out as expected.

When we realized our UI wasn't on par with the rest of the game, we were able to commission a UI artist. When Giada got stuck with some tricky code optimization, she asked another programmer to step in. Delegating tasks allowed our core team to focus on their strong points: art and writing.

What now?
Our main goal for the next year is to release a new backers build as soon as possible and start getting some serious feedback on it. We're at the point where we are finally putting everything together, and we need to understand if the game as a whole feels good and interesting to play.

It's also about time we start sending backers polls to those of you who have donated the most. We haven't forgotten about you! Now that the main elements are in place, we can finally start working together to add backers-created characters and items to the game. Expect to get a mail with the new year.

We're not 100% confident we'll be able to meet our target release date (May 2019). Some tasks, like character assets, took way less time than expected. Others, like the bartering system review, turned out to be extremely time-consuming. Like many small indie teams, we overlooked the importance of a good production plan. We're getting better at this. We're ready to tackle 2019 with the power of spreadsheets.

We remain committed to our monthly devlogs, to keep development as open as possible. If you have any question, or just want to send us bee pictures, you can reach us through Kickstarter or by mailing us at info@sellingsunlight.com.

Thanks again for making this possible.
Have a shiny and luminous holiday!