Keiko.

Dev update! 9.30.2020

Well... I have to come clean now. The rest of the game is still very much in its bare bones. Everything is a mouse drawing, to focus on progression and concept. No animations, so everything is just sliding around. And most rooms are completely silent, which is haunting to playtest in LOL. 

But I still want to update you guys. Not pull a YandereDev. Some of you have donated to help my process, and many of you who have enjoyed the demo have expressed it to me, which means the world to me. This is my first real project that I put my heart and soul into, and because you all have enjoyed it thus far you shouldn’t be disappointed to not hear anything from me for ages. Even if that means most updates for now will look like childish sketches.

That being said, let’s talk about the update. I want to make the rest of the game much more interactive than the demo, which is why I’m still in this phase for the graphics, because holy cow are there a lot more areas alone than the demo, which calls for a LOT of interactions. A lot of you maybe didn’t notice the Talk function in the demo, which WHOOPS I should have made that more evident. The final game definitely will. But you can talk to you party members and they’ ll give advice or menial comments depending on how far you’ve come in the game. There are nearly 40 different interactions with Cai in the demo alone, so you can imagine how much more I have to write for that.

Great news for the OST as well! Unfortunately the demo could only have 2 original songs due to all the technical difficulties my brother and I have been having, but now we have a solid computer and use Sibeluis for our program instead of MuseScore. I’ll definitely make an OST post once we have a coupl’a bangers all finalized and good to go. So look forward to that!

DEMO RELEASED! 

Download: https://rpgmaker.net/games/11003/downloads/

https://okamen.itch.io/keiko

Dev update! Real happy with my personal progress.

I’ve been working on the writing and art (aka everything LOL) and I think the writing has become pretty solid, at least from a character development perspective. I’m at that point where I’m starting to have fun playtesting and reading some of the character interactions.

On top of that, I’m done with updating most of the graphics, and about halfway through updating the tilesets/parallaxes. All that we’re basically waiting on is more OST, but I’m happy to wait since Michael Balars, who is doing most of our OST, still has to save up money for a new computer. 

Big art post! But I’ll go through things in order, so don’t worry.

I wanted to start off by saying thank you to everyone who’s been supporting the project! I know it’s hard to really get to know the characters or the environment without even having a demo and instead having a game dev who loves to hold back a lot, but I still appreciate everyone who’s stuck around despite that! So from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for all the support and patience you’ve given me!

I’ve given you guys a bit of Keiko art so I wanted to give some love to the second protagonist, Cai. I included a little bit of Cai sketches that I did a long time back of some expressions and to overall try to encompass who he is as a character. He’s an A.I. with a heart, who loves to learn more about what it means to be a person while keeping a somewhat laid back attitude. Almost like a switch, though, if anything threatening comes by his way he does get serious.

Next are two images that show the evolution of Cai and Keiko’s art as this half year has gone by. My biggest issue, which I’m sure I’ve talked about before, is choosing an art style for the game. I’m not at all good at having a consistent art style since I keep learning every day, but I still think that it’s only gotten better as time went on. November Cai and Keiko were... sub-par, to say the least. At least after 5 months Cai finally took his hand out of his pocket.

Then is the evolution of Keiko’s pixels. Actually, there was one before the first one, but yet again lost to time. When I first started mapping out the game, I really could not be bothered to animate sprites. Not only did I struggle with pixel art (I still do, it’s probably one of my weakest digital art skills), I also really didn’t like animating. So the first batch of sprites for all the characters in the games were... t-poses. Really. They would just have a blank, pixel expression and slide across the screen. For all the time I’ve playtested the game, it definitely gave me something to laugh at while I was working. I still have the t-poses for Cai and the other minor characters, but for some reason Keiko’s disappeared.

Next two are just some in-game pictures. Nothing real special, just the game over screen and Cai.

The next three are some maps. You’ve got a mysterious, dark, and rather tight hallway with eyes and a message written on the walls. Then I decided to show an update to the garden. There are still some errors in it, but I think it’s coming along wonderfully. I focused so much of my time and energy on this particular map, making sure it looked nice. You’ll understand why I devoted so much energy to it when the demo released. After that, we’ve got this vertical room. It’s the first of quite a few hand-drawn maps (as opposed to putting tiles together), and this one in particular helped teach me more fundamentals of pixel art. And a big flower monster too, so yay!

There was another picture introducing another character I wanted to add, but tumblr won’t let me add it. Maybe if I do another of these before the demo comes out I’ll include her.

I’ll be featuring a lot of the art in the game, be it maps, characters, etc. Perhaps I’ll also include at the end the evolution of the two main characters, Keiko and Cai, over these past 7 months!

It’ll be posted in the very near future, so look forward to it!

Dev update! Got back from a trip to Tokyo very recently, and my body is trying to adjust to being back home again. So a lot of time taken away from working on Keiko. Oh well.

OST is a little behind just because the computer used to make it crashed (all the files have been saved thank god, but we just have to wait on a replacement). In the meantime, I’m continuing to make little tweaks here and there on the demo. It seems like every time I pick it up, I find something minuscule that just rubs me the wrong way, so of course I try to jump on and fix it.

Hey guys! This is the title screen music that we’ve got in the game! Composed by Michael Balars (who will be doing most, if not all the OST for this game), I think it perfectly encompasses the tone for the game! 

If you guys enjoy it, feel free to support the game or check out the composer on instagram! @ embeethree_music

On a side note, this is a great time to update you guys! I know the demo release deadline is coming up, but I have decided that after analyzing the current state of the game, I want to make it more artistic than anything. And being the perfectionist that I am when it comes to this stuff, means I’m gonna reevaluate all the maps, art, etc. and mostly remake them all (yet again). Just another part of the game making process, and I’m completely comfortable in making a game that has a late release but looks amazing over a quick release for a very unpolished game. 

I again appreciate all your support and patience! My style of handling the game development process is mostly keeping information in the dark so you guys can be surprised at everything when you do play it, but I’m more than happy to treat you guys to updated maps, official art in the game, etc. if that’s something you guys would like for all this waiting you’ve done. Feel free to message me if you’d like them or not, and I’ll be sure to consider them when I make more updates!

As well, I am a college student so finals are within a month. I’ve gotta make sure those will go well and then I can focus on the game again.

Hey guys! Wanted to show off some mapping, since it’s not my specialty but I ended up enjoying this a lot. I’d be more inclined to show off the black and white maps, but personally I just find these color ones much more interesting.

This was the first color map I made for this game, and I’ve been trying my best to show it so much love and improve it as often as I can. Before, it was just a large room of only the grass and the tree, with the walls being straight up plain white like the ones in the black and white area. There was no bench, no vines on the walls, no nothing.

It’s really come a long way since it was initially made, but I also wanted to include my personal thoughts on it currently since it’s DEFINITELY not finished. I make sure to update it at least once a day and find something to improve. Learning about RMVXA tiles and how to draw these different items have all been a huge struggle for me, and I hope to get better with it each day.

And above all else, I’ve really appreciated all the kind words and support you guys have given me! Thank you so much you guys!

If you’re interested in keeping up with the progress of this game, be sure to give this blog a follow or check it out on https://rpgmaker.net/games/11003/

Thank you so much! That means so much that you find it interesting!

this is keiko’s sprite!! i’ve got the front and back animations done already, but now i have to finish the side animations.