Version Update in Short

A Good Start

Took me a while to write this but here's v0.1's official devlog! Let's start by saying that version numbers are lame and that I'll be giving them codenames from now on instead. The upcoming update will be v0.DREAD and no one can or will stop me in this decision.

Onto serious stuff, dreams are awful. I'd rather not have them at all, and I admittedly have a fear of dreaming which tends to keep me awake often. This has been at play since I was very young, and likely will be at play for the rest of my life. A week filled with night terrors was what inspired me to start developing this project for a compensatory uni assignment.

Dreaming for me is much akin to zapping through channels. I can jump out of a dream by closing my eyes and concentrating, but I can't wake up, so I'm transported to another dream until I wake up 'naturally'.
This is how ONEIRO functions as well, where the player can input a channel number with the number keys and be transported to a dreamscape that is either neutral, slightly unnerving, or hellish.

The channels in this version (001-005) are quite tame, maybe slightly unnerving at most, and future channels might be much more intense and triggering to some. Topics such as sexual violence, substance abuse, and homo/transphobia often make their appearance in my dreams, unfortunately. I hope that putting these dreams, or analogies of these dreams,  into this game will help me deal with their recurring presence in the future.
Importantly, I do not want to harm people with this experience, so I will make sure to implement a solution where players can opt out of certain channel topics if they wish to avoid them. This could take the form of different versions available for download, or a series of checkboxes in the options menu. I'll be sure to experiment and see what works best.

I hope people will resonate with what this game is and/or will become, cause I'm having a lot of fun developing it and will probably wind up tinkering with this for years to come.