Hi everyone,

The time has finally come! Memories version 0.7 has been released and with it comes a lot of changes. Below are all the changes made in this version (or all that I can remember).

New additions

Here's the things that were added to the game:

• Additional Story - With another big version number jump comes another chunk of the Memories story being told. The story added to the game takes you through a blast in the not-too-distant past as you walk in the shoes of our friend Ichabod to see how he and Meliodis first met!
• New Battle UI - The user-interface used during battles has been redesigned to give a more sleek and minimalist appearance.
• On-screen Controls - On-screen controls have now been added to the game. For people playing on computers, this can be toggled on/off in the Options menu. For people playing on Android, you'll be given a special Key Item (only on Android version) that allows you to enable or disable the on-screen controls. While the on-screen controls are enabled, click/tap-to-move is disabled.
• New Item - A new item has been added to the game which can be purchased at item shops. The "Teleportation scroll"! It does exactly what it says on the tin, it teleports you. Specifically, it teleports you to the last town you visited.

Changes to existing... things

Here's a list of things that have been changed, redesigned or removed from the game:

• NPC Rework - Most, if not all, NPC's now have a "stepping" animation to them. This means they're no longer stood still while talking to them or while they're idle. This is to help give the game a bit more "flow" or "life". As well as the stepping animation, a LOT of the dialogue has been improved to show more emotion through the use of balloon popups too.
• Additional NPC's - Some maps have had additional NPC's added to them. Currently they can't be talked with but hopefully helps improve the "curb appeal" of some areas.
• Redesigned Maps - Numerous maps have had changes made to them. A lot of them are slight changes to add a bit more greenery however, one map in particular has had a major redesign; Greencoast Docks.
• Increased TP Cost - While testing the game, I noticed that my TP bar was nearly always full. To make things a little bit more challenging, I've increased the cost of using TP-based skills so that they each require an additional 10 TP to what they original cost to use.
• Slight changes to enemy stats - A fair few minor tweaks to enemy stats to try and balance combat. Specifically, I've reduced the difficulty of the Imp battle on the bridge after finishing up in Rochwood as I noticed that it was incredibly difficult during testing!
• Default Window Colour - Nothing too special here. Instead of a blue/teal window colour, it's now more of a grey-ish colour tone instead.
• Existing story changes - To make sure the additional story in 0.7 made sense, there were quite a lot of changes that needed making to the existing story plot. I'm not going to spoil where or what the changes were though.
• Removal of Skill Mastery system - If you were ever unlucky enough to encounter a random game-breaking bug during battle (that I thought I had fixed multiple times but hadn't), you'll be glad to know that I've found the definitive cause. The Skill Mastery system. Because of how little I think this system contributes to the game and due to how long I thought it might have taken to debug and try to fix the bug, I thought it best to remove the Skill Mastery system altogether.
• An un-ending list of bugs - The number of bugs I found during a full play test was astonishing. Luckily most of these were found and squashed with my ever-helpful friend Duke on the Memories Discord server.

Possibly some slight bad news for Android players

Recently (in the last month or two), I got a new computer and didn't have the chance to back everything up. One of the things I wasn't able to backup was something called a keystore. The keystore essentially acts as my digital signature for the game.

When trying to upload the 0.7 build of Memories to the Google Play Store, I received an error saying that the new signature I'd created wasn't the same as the one I had lost (rightly so).

With this in mind, I'm temporarily unable to update the version of Memories on the Google Play Store until the support guys at Google have reset the signature for Memories, allowing me to use my new signature (which is backed up).

If you're downloading the .apk file directly to install on your android device then you shouldn't have any problems but, if you normally install/update the game through the Play store, the 0.7 update won't be available until this issue is sorted. Sorry!

Anyway, I think that's everything I wanted to cover. As I usually do after every major version, I'm going to be taking a break from Memories development but, will still upload bug fixes and possibly some other smaller changes that I didn't have the chance to do for 0.7.

Be sure to stay tuned for future news updates :) Catch you all later!