A Familiar Artist

26/06/01 narrative sandbox rpg

Game summary: "You're a puppy thrown out on the street after your mom got a headache. Wanting your moms approval back, you solve strangers problems."

Hello! This month I managed to lay down the groundwork for some visual stuff... Here's what's been added:

Inventory. I've fixed up a visual mockup for an inventory!

Here are all the items! (A lot got cut out) It's just a screen to look at to remember what you've collected. Some labels might be nice... Loosely inspired by Persona and cgi Zeldas, along with point-and-click games.

Dialogue screens have all been properly bugfixed.

There were some bugs where if you talk to an npc too quickly back-to-back the dialogue screens would play their animation with twice the power, ending up off-screen, or making you stuck. That's been fixed by just adding a timer that makes you wait to talk.

You can finish the game! With an intro and reachable ending sequence, I can pretty much begin sending the game off to playtesters to check for bugs. Which, hopefully, will be soon! Input and feedback will be important, so that's a big one.

Yo! Sorry if I've been a little absent during the latter half of this month, been working on a slightly longer oneoff pilot (40-ish pages?) and just been busy with game stuff as well. (will post a devlog update tomorrow)

I really just wanted to draw a punch, guys.

26/05/01 narrative sandbox rpg

Game summary: "You're a puppy thrown out on the street after your mom got a headache. Wanting your moms approval back, you solve strangers problems."

What exists? I've worked on this game for about 3/4's of a year now. (taking a short break for 1/4 of that) And, because this is my first solo game to go this far, it's gone through a couple different iterations. So what is it now?

This!!!

AND THAT!!! Originally, the game used isometric spritesheets (As you might see here) but I disliked how difficult it was to make the world feel varied. Instead, I decided to hand-draw the background, which I hope you agree makes the world feel a bit more unique. Though, it looks pretty rough, mostly because it's all blocked in for collissions. But you might be wondering, what do you even do in this game? Go for a walk? Yup. And talk!

If you see a character, you can talk to them! You get a couple of different choices, the main ones being: 1. Problems. - Problems are marked by a ! symbol. If a character has a Problem(!) they'll usually tell you about a Problem they have. You then unlock the prompt to give them an item. Items are objects you get that can be given to NPC's to solve their problems. However, no one item solves a problem, and different items can give slightly different (but similar) results. NOTE: The character shown in the screenshot does NOT have a problem, not all do! 2. Rumor. - Rumor is inspired by Oblivion, if you know that. You talk to an npc, and they have about 3+ random responses. where they either answer with gags or hints. 3. Leave. - Leave just exits the conversation. Kind of a necessity, really. As with any good game, that list got less interesting as it went on. So here's something fun: The music is done by Louie Zong! Louie's a wonderful artist, incredibly skilled guy, and he's said he's fine with people using his music for projects. Though, I have personally emailed him to ask for expressed permission, and he's been super nice about it. I'm using his album Hurricane Louie currently (it's on spotify, check it out!) and it's gotten stuck in my head bug testing. Damn you, Mr. Zong... So, you might be wondering:

What's left of the project?

I've been wanting to keep the project relatively manageable. So, I've been cutting a lot of stuff. The current goals for the project is to:

1. Do narrative revisions As the narrative is 90% of the game, making sure the characters hit a charming nerve and don't break the game is... Well, important. 2. Make UI placeholders I'd like for the game to have a bit of a visual novel element to it, we'll see how that goes. 3. Send out test versions to check for bugs. 4. Finish background art 5. Finish character art. I've been thinking of redesigning Ponken, honestly... 6. Finish UI. 7. Make a proper end credits sequence In about that order. (It's rarely ever that linear) I plan on releasing it on itch and steam, making a trailer, and paying for some advertisement if I still have money in the end. The goal is sometime before halloween, hopefully. The main inspirations for this game have been Chulip, Frog Detective, Oblivion, and the overworld sections of Undertale and Deltarune, and I hope this can be half as charming as any of them. I'll keep you updated next month, or whenever something big happens, to show far I've gotten.

A short comic about tree art paranoia (and Real Life New York City!)

A very silly comic, with nonsense characters, about an odd cube scenario.

Exploring writing for different genres, so doing something very silly comedy focused after the last one. (Also primarily girl focused because I tend to default to drawing dudes)