So the Alchementalist demo is now on Steam! I absolutely wouldn't have gotten to this point without the help of the lovely contributors in this thread and elsewhere, in particular
@Zizka for contributing art and listening to me ramble a lot,
@Kezarus for being a great mate,
@Prrz for selflessly volunteering their time, and
@Repix for always being super supportive.
It's a kind of bizarre experience having it out there. The game was basically an old, broken skeleton a month ago, with a lot of systems, but no connective tissue. It wasn't playable at all, and I was happily chugging along adding things as I saw fit and very slowly working towards the end-goal of release. Then I realised how close NextFest was and how I'd need a demo for it and suddenly lost my mind. I've put in multiple 24 hour+ coding sessions and drunk innumerable glasses of coffee & softdrink over the last few weeks, desperately trying to tie everything together to change the game from what it was: a scattered mass of interesting parts, into what it's become: a functioning demo. Not 100% polished and not 100% stable, but in such a better state than it was three weeks ago that I can barely believe it. In a way, I'm experiencing the game for the first time now just as everyone else is. It's a mind bender, that's for sure.
Anyway, enough rambling, I just want to say thank you again to this community, so full of lovely kindred spirits in the game dev journey, you all rock! Oh, and make sure to wishlist Alchementalist, hahaha, steam needs those stats baby!