Traversal Devlog 3: 11/11/2025

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What is Traversal?
Having crash-landed on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, you take the role of Player, a man determined to get back to the mainland for his nephew's sake. While traversing through several islands in this action adventure game, you'll need to help the islanders, solve puzzles and survive to make your way back home.

What's New Since Devlog 2?

Since I published Devlog 2 last year, Traversal has gotten its own Steam page, I updated the game's free demo (available on GameJolt, Itch.io, and Steam), and I've made further internal progress on Traversal's second and third areas.

What's Coming Up Next for Traversal?

Currently in development are two builds: 0.3.2, a minor update to the demo, and 0.4.0, a version of the game that contains two more playable areas in the game, the second and third islands.

Later this month, you can expect to see 0.3.2 release. It's exactly one change away being releasable, I just need to get one external thing in order before I can make that change. Once I've done that, it'll be made public on all three storefronts the demo is currently available on. As for 0.4.0's release, I need to explain something first. Last year, I kept pretty vague how "done" each area was, giving only estimated percentages. This year, I figured I'd give a more complex explanation of each island's progress to give you, if you're curious, a better understanding of what still has to happen internally before you can play Traversal's second and third islands.

Second and Third Island Progress:

1. Finalizing Dialogue - The final third of the second island and the latter half of the third island have a lot of placeholder dialogue that are due for replacement with dialogue I, for the most part, still need to write. Outside of these cases, there are some older pieces of dialogue written many years ago that need minor edits to bring them up to speed with the current version of the game's story.


2. Cutscene Implementation - There are missing or broken cutscenes throughout both the second and third islands. Some cutscenes are close to finished, only requiring proper, finalized dialogue. However, some are either missing elements (visuals, movement, sounds, music, etc.) and some are just not yet implemented.


3. [???] - The [???] sequence in the game's second island still has yet to be implemented, but the third island one is almost entirely finished.


4. Music - While the soundtrack for the second and third islands are mostly entirely completed, there are maybe three songs I still have yet to make or, at least, finish. (For those curious, the second and third islands, together, currently make up over 20 unique tracks in the game's total soundtrack.)


5. Sailing - The between-island sailing sequences that stitch the second area to the third area and the third area to the fourth area are still a work-in-progress and still need to be finished. The second-to-third-area Sailing sequence (referred to in-game as Sailing II) is mostly completed while the third-to-fourth-area Sailing sequence (Sailing III) has yet to be implemented. Likely, it will be the final thing I implement for 0.4.0 as I transition from second-and-third island development to the game's fourth area and beyond.

So, When Can You Expect 0.4.0?
I believe that before next year's November 11th, 0.4.0 will be out. Expect it sometime in the summer, perhaps. I do really want people to see more of Traversal and its story and its world, so I'll do my best to adhere to that loose deadline. If it comes out sooner, that'd be great, but it's important to remember that progress is only made on Traversal when I have free time, which I can't be certain I'll have too much of in the start of 2026. Until then, thanks for reading and I'll update you next when 0.3.2 releases.