It took some time to shuffle things around and figure out what new mechanics worked and what didn't, but we're closing in on the final feature set that will carry forward to the full game. There's a couple small ones such as the level cap being raised from 60 to 99 (not that you'd know because of how low level Demo 1 is), but also a big one in regards to party death and health recovery.

I said before that I was experimenting with swapping party deaths to respawn you at an inn - losing all consumed items but keeping all XP gained. This has been reverted. I didn't enjoy it much and it felt like a very forced solution to a problem that didn't really exist (making speedruns more awkward). It was a dumb idea, didn't really make sense gameplay wise, and wasn't enjoyable to play.

With this reverted there are a couple new problems however. In Demo 1 especially there are times where you're low on health but going to an inn can take quite a while due to the distance. This hasn't been touched for the areas in Demo 1, but in Demo 2 there's a new item you can find called the Camping Kit.

When you use the Camping Kit it will fully restore your health, energy, and save the game - effectively it mimics sleeping at an inn, but in any location you want.  Since this could throw off the game's balance there are some limits, however:

• In areas where you've dealt with every encounter you can use the Camping Kit infinitely.
• In areas where enemies are still alive you can only use the Camping Kit 3 times consecutively.
• On the world map you have a 33% chance of being attacked, depending on the location you use it.

The three charges in dangerous areas reset when returning to the world map, but the way the Camping Kit functions is subject to change, as is everything. There's an alternative implementation being tested which replaces the varying uses to being three charges regardless of where you use it - the only way to refill the charges being to sleep at an inn. This would prevent inns from being useless and making use of the Camping Kit a more thoughtful decision, as well as preventing weird edge cases it can be abused in (exiting and re-entering an area to refill the charges, for example).

So yeah, new mechanics are still on the way for Demo 2. The full release will probably not differ that much from Demo 2 or have any significant new features outside of the end game and post game content, but I didn't think Demo 2 would have many new features either... so really, anything could happen.

I'm going to start working on getting Demo 2 in a finished state again after taking a short break to play the System Shock remake, the next post will probably be an announcement for the release. See ya then!