A lot has changed since the last Improve my Game Jam, where I got some very good feedback to push The Last Question to what I can comfortably call the first 1.000 version. This is now the 6th IMGJ this game has been submitted to going back to April of 2021, and I can't thank everyone enough for the feedback and playtesting over the years 💯

Cinematic Wrap-Up

• There were 5-6 major story elements that I had put off fulling building out till the end of development, as completing them was going to be very nuanced and require lots of time. Those are all now complete! Some I would still like to re-work in a real real release of this, but at this point the main path vision of this game has been realized 
• Dozens of new higher quality assets have replaced placeholder art. There is essentially zero true placeholder art left in this game (although I would still like to iterate on much of it)
• Extensive rewrites have been made to tie all threads together to better flesh out the central mystery of the game
• 4 new items have been added to the in game codex since the last release, covering a variety of different elements 

Mega-Optimization + macOS

• I had to submit the last Jam submission of this game as an external OneDrive link as my file size had ballooned out to almost 1.3GBs. I have spent much of the last 4 months optimizing this game in a number of different ways
  • The game's total size is now under 1GB (itch was kind enough to grant me a larger limit though!) done through asset resizing, audio compression, and an overall directory clean up 
  • General scripting optimizations have been made across the entire game. Unnecessary global checks and larger variables have all been replaced or removed where possible
  • Much of the games assets are now frontloaded which should very greatly improve performance and load times while playing. It may take 10-20 seconds to boot this game on start due to this depending on your machine. I am intending to have a true loading screen in the 1.00X version of this
• I have also compiled a macOS version! This is the first mac version I've been able to get together since the 0.7v of this game in 2022. It can be a little tricky to get off the ground depending on your system settings as you may have to change file permissions to run it, but this should allow a larger segment of the audience to play!

Several Dozen Balance Changes and Bug Fixes

• Mostly sourced from feedback from the last several IMGJs, various bugs, crash-points, and glitches have been fixed. In addition, a number of balance changes have been made to the levels where multiple expressed frustration 

This game is likely a slightly higher investment in terms of time and energy relative to the rest of the submission field, so I very much understand if it is too much commitment for you. It's a 1GB download, and likely about 60-90 minutes to playthrough (without spoiling, it also is meant to get much more interesting about halfway through the game).

If, however, you like challenging 2D platformers and a Souls-esque story telling approach I think you'd very much like this game! I would love any and all feedback on any portion of this game you may have.