Elinor is taking on the challenge of transforming a dilapidated farmhouse in a small seaside village into a luxurious inn. You'll see a few familiar faces from Lost Art (I'm so glad some of you gave feedback on your favorite guests!) but the new game will have a different setting and storyline, lots of new people, some new features, and can be played without knowing anything about the previous game.
After I released Lost Art, a few people asked for a sequel, which made me happy that they had enjoyed the game enough to want more but I felt that I had other ideas that I wanted to bring to fruition. I was able to work on a few different projects for game jams, including The Ghost Cage in 2020, Forest Star in 2021, and Mayor On The Run (currently available only on Itch.io) in 2022, so I kinda got that out of my system.
I settled on the basic plot for Hidden Art back in 2021 (I usually need an ending in mind before I can start working on a game), and it took me several months to plan out the characters, areas, and gameplay features on a spreadsheet. Having said that, I'm still constantly changing things as new ideas and characters come to mind!
I would say that at this stage, I'm a little more than halfway through the development of the game. I'm hoping to release it in either late 2023 or early 2024, but we'll see... I want to make sure that the game is as polished and bug-free as possible upon release, and playtesting always takes longer than I expect.
It's going to be a while before I create a Steam page for The Hidden Art of Innkeeping, mainly because a trailer's required for one. In the meantime, I'm planning to release updates about the game regularly on Itch.io and Twitter, and I hope you're all as excited as I am! :)
