Whimsy and Horrors!

Game Progress:

I have loose plans for two games. A (hopefully) smaller test game, called Quote Unquote Quest Negative One (aka QUQ-1), to learn what I need to know for making the second game, currently unnamed (though I'm personally referring to it as QUQI, because the protagonist's name is Iso). The second game is the story I originally wanted to tell, but knew I didn't have the skill to create yet; so I came up with QUQ-1 to practice on.

QUQ-1 is still in its veeeeery early stages of development.

In my first attempt in roughly late 2022 or early 2023, I did minimal editing (mainly color changes) to RPGMaker retro DLC assets, then jumped into experimenting with making the first dungeon, called Ratstomp Cave, as well as Kalamari's hometown.

Unfortunately, I lost nearly all of that when my previous laptop suddenly died. I've only recovered small bits of it, and so I decided to start fresh, making my own assets (probably stupid, but I want to try, especially considering I can use them for QUQI as well).

Here is Kalamari's very first sprite sheet (2022, edited from a dark knight sprite sheet I got with that DLC) compared to their current sprite sheet (2025, completely done by me):

Making things on my own takes longer, especially since I've increased the sprite size from 16x16 to 48x48, but I really enjoy it... I think I have a pretty interesting style, and it's a lot of fun to play around with the limited color palette I've chosen. Also, I actually have the skill to make my own things now! So of course I wanna make use of that ability.

I still have to make full sprite sheets for most of the characters I have so far, but I'm working on it! I'll get there eventually.

I'm currently in the middle of heavily editing my overworld tileset from this spring, which is the only tileset I've done so far, but here's the what the map is like at the moment (zoomed out, which makes the pixels get pretty jumbled around). I've labelled the different countries and cities, but I have yet to name different features like the desert or lakes. And of course, things may change a bit later.

Quote Unquote Quest, both the first test game (QUQ-1) and the second "real" game (QUQI) take place in Null, a continent with a history of great conflict.

The countries: Ursus (the bear), Brachyura (the crab), Vulpes (the fox), and Panthera (the big cat)

The cities:

-In Ursus: Radicatum

-In Brachyura: Diatom, Halimeda, Pennatulacea, and Laminaria

-In Vulpes: Caulerpa, Amsonia, Asclepias, Virgatum, Echinacea, Rudbeckia, and Monarda

-In Panthera: Grusonii, Nepenthes, and Rafflesia

There are multiple locations I don't think QUQ-1 will really be exploring; both because I want to keep QUQ-1 as short as I can manage, and because I want to save some things for QUQI.

Story Progress:

Okay, sO. QUQ-1's protagonist used to be one of my side characters, a popular travelling merchant named Kalamari (he/she/they/it pronouns). For secret personal reasons I won't reveal just yet, he needs to collect a LOT of money, as quickly as possible. To accomplish this, they've started doing mercenary work alongside selling things.

One of the jobs she gets hired to do involves hunting down a violent Chimera (an animal-human hybrid born of now-illegal experimental magic) that's apparently made its home in Ratstomp Cave, an abandoned mine frequented by local teenagers that want to test their bravery.

Chimera are rather rare, and often kept out of sight, so this will be the first time Kalamari has actually come face-to-face with one. He quickly finds out that 1. Chimera are far more human than they've been led to believe, and 2. this Chimera has a human friend determined to defend them, making it impossible to complete the quest Kalamari was tasked with.

However, the human offers access into a country Kalamari previously hasn't been allowed entrance to, in exchange for helping get this Chimera to a safer place to stay. This would give her many new potential customers and employers, so Kalamari has to accept!

And thus the newly-founded, totally definitely temporary party starts their journey, yayyyy.

The rest isn't set in stone just yet. I have some ideas for this story that I personally think are absolutely BRILLIANT, but I'm not sure if I want to share them right now ;3 Surprises are always fun, you know? And really, this game isn't supposed to be serious, it's just a silly little test run, so I'm not sure how brilliant I should allow it to be...

If these things even are brilliant. Who knows, truly.

Anyways,

thank you so much for your curiosity!!