It's been one month since 8-Bit Adventures 2's initial launch 🥳

Honestly, writing that feels a little surreal! Thank you so, so much to everyone who has supported the game in that time 🥰

While we're still working towards financial sustainability, the response from players and reviewers has been incredible. We've had 77 reviews from players on Steam so far, and achieved a Very Positive rating! This has really helped us a lot; I noticed that Steam started sharing the game a lot more when we initially hit Positive, and then again at Very Positive. So a massive thanks to everyone who's taken the time to share their thoughts!

They've been a genuine joy to read 😊 And now, thanks to a new review from RPGFan (check it out by clicking on the link), we've also achieved an OpenCritic Rating of Mighty (the highest a game can receive), placing us near the top of their Best Video Games of 2023 list.

And that's not all! We've also received a Metacritic Score of 87 🥳

But most of all, I've been especially grateful for the people who have reached out and told me how much they've enjoyed the game - whether for its story, its characters, its music, its visuals, its combat, its sense of exploration, etc. It's been incredibly humbling and gratifying, and so I just wanted to express my gratitude. The community around 8-Bit Adventures 2 has been absolutely wonderful to interact with, and that's thanks to all of you 😊

Text Speed Options

One of the most requested additions to 8-Bit Adventures 2 since its release was more text speed options. And I'm happy to say that these were included in the February 16th Update!

While the way the game is set-up made large changes difficult, we were able to take feedback on-board and incorporate some new features.

First off, you no longer need to hold the Confirm button to speed up the text; one simple press will speed it up now. Additionally, the speed up function will now cut off at the end of the current text box, preventing you from accidentally skipping through multiple boxes.

Finally, a new Option has been added, allowing the player to choose between Normal text speed and Fast text speed. Essentially, the Fast text speed makes our current optional speed-up function automatic and always on. I still recommend Normal text speed, as this is timed with the choreography of cutscenes, and provides a stronger narrative experience in my view. But for anyone who wanted faster text, I hope these options address your concerns!

Please note that, while the speed-up function has been thoroughly tested, the Fast text speed system may have some unforeseen issues in certain cutscenes. They should only be minor issues at most, but if you run into any, please do let me know!

Community Guides

I wanted to take a moment to shout-out two members of the community who created some excellent guides for players. Note that both guides contain spoilers! The first is the Court Room Guide by the awesome dragon_blade. This guide will help you to achieve a "Not Guilty!" verdict, and gain the best possible rewards.

Court Room Guide

And the second is "Augments and You, a Party Build guide" by the wonderful SupahVi! She'll teach you one way to build a super-powered RPG party in 8-Bit Adventures 2, including Augments to Equip and character combinations to use.

Augments and You, a Party Build Guide

Thanks to dragon_blade and SupahVi for creating these for the community! 😊

Bug Fixes and Updates

Over the past month, Sufyan (our programmer) and I have fixed dozens of bugs reported to us by the community. Thank you very much for all of your feedback; it's been a big help. In fact, as of this past weekend, we've finally exhausted the list of reported bugs! So the game should be incredibly solid at this point (famous last words 😋).

This included everything from the addition of an ultimate Axe weapon that had been accidentally left out of the game, to balance changes and bug fixes (including one fight that became unwinnable if you followed a particular order of actions), to an additional shop added before a boss fight, to an overhaul of the turn-speed calculations to make sure that every build was viable and enemies weren't getting an unfair number of turns. Among many, many other things!

I'm still a little new to Itch.io, and only just realised that I should've been posting Patch Notes as update posts. But for now, all the details are available on the 8-Bit Adventures 2 Steam Community if you want to see exactly what's changed. Sorry for the trouble there!

Interviews

Finally, I wanted to share a couple of new interviews with everyone! First off, we have an interview that our composer Sebastian Cruz did with the DeltronZ Youtube Channel, all about composing for 8-Bit Adventures 2:

Del has been a massive supporter of the game. He interviewed me in late January, and has actually been doing a full playthrough of 8-Bit Adventures 2, which is really enjoyable! But the interview with Sebastian is really good, and I highly recommend it - even I learnt some new things! 🥰

And then we also have another new interview that I recorded LIVE with NinjaGuyX and Gladiator50n on Youtube:

It was a ton of fun, and I think we talked about some interesting topics (including the future), so I hope that anyone interested might enjoy checking it out.

Finally, there's a written interview I did with Kosuke Seki from a media outlet in Japan called Game*Spark! It's entirely in Japanese, but for any fluent speakers, I thought you might find it interesting: https://www.gamespark.jp/article/2023/02/28/127507.html

A big thanks to Del, NinjaGuyX, Gladiator50n, and Kosuke for getting in touch and making these happen. I really appreciate the support 😊

Thanks so much for reading this update everyone! As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to share them here on Itch, on Twitter, via my email (josh@criticalgames.com.au), or by joining up to our Discord linked below (which has a great RPG-loving community)!

Finally, I mentioned last time that there's a hint towards the Free DLC in the game already, but I've only seen a couple of people mention it so far 😉
~Josh

For more information and updates, please:

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