Hello there! I hope you are doing well. I hate to break it to you, but it’s already April.

The team at Enchanted Works has been working on Nomori at a slow but steady pace for the last months. We’re not developing full-time yet, but a lot has happened since the last update and I’d love to fill you in!


The Game Developers Conference is probably the most prestigious and most expensive event in the game development industry. We did not expect to attend before Nomori would be very close to release. However, we were invited to showcase a new demo of the game at the Made With Unity booth and did not reject the offer!

It was a great experience for two reasons. First and foremost, we’re still looking for funding. Talking to dozens and dozens of people in person at GDC is great networking. Even when some people couldn’t offer meaningful help, they would come back to the booth later bringing a person with them they thought should see the game. Secondly, hearing people react to our game in person is really fulfilling! Nice comments, feedback, curious questions and compliments confirm that our hard work is starting to pay off and that we have a chance at finding a publishing deal for Nomori. It motivates us to continue working, even in the current state of the industry.


So what’s this new demo you say? It’s a new version that smoothes out a lot of things from the alpha that is on Steam. We’ve been posting sneak-peaks already in our Discord[discord.gg], and I’ll share with you the biggest changes here:

• Nomori’s art direction has basically been rebuilt from the ground up, after exploring styles in the alpha version. We’ve now defined the look and feel for Nomori! In the new version, we are showing the first of four environments the game will take place in, the Autumn Domain. I’ll let you guess what the other three will be. We also introduce the first NPC characters!
  
• Part of solidifying the artstyle is working out the world of Nomori. Who lives there? What’s their story? In this process we’ve changed a few characters. For example, the bunny spirit that will accompany Kiko during her journey has a name now: Yuki! And the big stone block you can perform telekinesis on is now alive as a Slimebun! Trademark pending.
  
• We added onto the main gameplay. On your journey through Nomori’s twisted levels, you will be on the lookout for stranded spirits to take with you in your backpack. Prepare for spirits to be out of bounds. We know you will look.
  
• New gameplay mechanics have been added. Now time-reversal is operational through portals, which increases puzzle potential by approximately 500%! Slimebuns of various sizes affect each other physically in a meaningful way, and checkpoints let you solve levels faster by failing faster.

We’re preparing this new version to replace the alpha version that’s on Steam right now. It will be more reflective of the finished game, but not resemble it by a long shot. Our main goal still is to get user feedback and improve the experience of the game. That’s why it will still be free to play! I cannot say exactly when the update will drop. Be sure to follow us, for example through our Discord [discord.gg]or Steam to stay notified!

That’s all for now. Until next time!

- Joeri

Hello!

We are delighted to tell that you that Nomori Prologue is part of the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase and also that it's happening right now! Until the 7th of august you can browse dozens of brilliant and cool and often discounted puzzle games. We can't recommend it enough!

You may have noticed our fancy new key art in the promotion for the event. Let me give you an update on what we're working on at the moment. We've been hard at work developing and solidifying Nomori's art style. The early access version of Nomori Prologue features placeholder assets for most of the game. We're not only replacing those with our own trees, bushes, rocks and other props, but also making characters, vfx, and UI.

It's all work we're doing on our way to a vertical slice of the game: an early piece of Nomori that will look and play just like the final game. The vertical slice is a couple of months away. We're still developing Nomori largely unpaid. However, Enchanted Works recently acquired a grant from the Dutch government to work on the vertical slice. It's really helpful since it will let us worry less about rent, and spend more time on Nomori.

To finish it up, I'd like to share some insider information with you: we have successfully overcome a major technical challenge within one of our planned game mechanics, and the implications for Nomori's puzzles are huge. It has to do with portals and time travel, but I'd need a Ted Talk to properly explain it. I hope you'll learn about it yourself when you play the next version of the Prologue.

So long,
Joeri

Hey all! We're announcing that Nomori: Prologue will be part of the Steam Puzzle Fest, which runs from April 24 to May 1. We're looking to spread the word about our pre-alpha to new players through this event! It's exciting to be part of an awesome selection of puzzle games and we hope you are able to quench your thirst for puzzles, even for a little while. Stay tuned for an update on the development of the game!

The new update is a quality-of-live update that adds controller support, full input rebinding and extra control settings to the game in a fresh menu. It took us longer than expected, but we really wanted to get it right. Accessibility means a lot to us! We think that the features we added are a good starting point and we’re eagerly awaiting feedback. The game is now localized to new languages, including Chinese, German, French and Russian. We also massively improved performance by optimizing portal rendering even further. If you’re curious, go play now!

We have also opened a discord for Nomori! You can join here[discord.gg] to get more direct contact with us.

Patch Notes:

• Massive performance increases (Portals finally received much needed optimization)
  
• Particle system optimization
  
• Smoothed out the time reversal
  
• Portal Rotation improvements
  
• Lots of visual glitch fixes
  
• Better checkpoints
  
• Added German, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French and Russian localization
  
• Added support for Xbox and Playstation controller input
  
• Added audio volume option
  
• Added full input rebinding
  
• Added control settings
  
• Added credits
  
• Brand new menu UI
  
• New music by Vijay!

Hello! I want to give you a little update and share what we're currently working on. Now that Nomori is public, we enjoy reading your reviews, kind words and feedback. It may seem like a mad decision to release a Pre-Alpha version of a game publicly. A version that does not have a final artstyle, complete gameplay loop, or optimized code! But we think it was the best thing to do, to see how people react to Nomori's weird mechanics and crazy levels. We're observing, and learning. And in the meantime, working on baseline features that any released game should have.

Controller support & Rebinding

We're working hard to implement controller support and rebinding to Nomori. Unity makes this very doable with their new input system, but their documentation on it is very difficult to work with. We expect to release an update in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

Around the game

Releasing the Pre-Alpha also opened many of doors for us. We're still actively looking for publishing and investment opportunitie, and that takes up a lot of time from our team. It is essential work though, because we need funds to sustain ourselves if we want to develop Nomori fulltime. We're enthusiastic to keep working!

That's all for now,

Joeri