#devlogs

Narrative and Themes

Spent most of the week working on the narrative of the game and what exactly i want to tell with this narrative!

I don't want this game to just go through the motions of a self insert fan game, i want it to add something to the player besides being a Caine date sim

So the objective is to be a indulgent fantasy game but also make the player think about the game's themes I've seen that i'm very good with structures but I'm kinda lacking in dialogue, so i'm having the help of a few writer friends for interactions and writing!

If you guys wish to send me fanfics that get it right and maybe give me tips for writing dialogue, i'll love to hear from you!

For now I'm making character studies and profiles, i'm so excited to where this project is going!

Art Concepts

For art concepts i've had some attempts to see what i like visually

The last one was my favourite but not exactly what i'm looking for. I want something a bit webcore and with some nice rendering

I saw some art and now i've tried to adjust the style

I'm way more happy with this style, it looks more polished and date sim like in my vision, without it being too bland

Tell me what you guys think of this style, but then again don't get too attached, things will change in the process and maybe even in the production stage!

Music production

I really love music in games but to be fair, i don't know much about music production

I've been learning about it and trying out some tunes (they kinda trash but we don't mention it)

I'm a big fan of vocaloid music, i think some chiptune, guitar and piano (isn't that just Steven Universe music?) might go along with the theme.

Ending Thoughts

This week i'll focus in structuring the story beats and maybe making a visionboard about the game's looks and aesthetics. I'll maybe make some sketches for some of the sprites of Caine and the Cast

Thank you for the support on this project! All questions are welcome! ♡

The Looping Pavillion Update Progress:

Ah, I remember when I thought that it would only take me a week or so to get this out after the jam ended. Unfortunately, university has really hampered the rate of my progress, so I've barely finished anything significant. XD

Mallory's deadpan expressions are now on full display for all to see!

Dialogue portraits for Mallory are now in the game! The events and dialogue for the Pink Room are almost complete, as what's mainly missing is the sprites and a certain mechanic.

All of the puzzles and how they connect with each other are already planned out. The current thing taking up a lot of development time is that I need to implement a new event type for the very first event in the Pink Room. I already made something similar in the next project I'm talking about, so I don't have to design it from scratch, which helps ^^ After finishing that, however, it shouldn't take much longer to complete the other rooms after it! Though, again, I can't really provide a solid estimate due to my uni workload. XP

Mum Came Back Wrong:

Speaking of uni workload, I've decided to resume work on a project I paused in April due to just that XD

You can very clearly see that most assets in this build are still placeholder XD Though Kit has gotten her own dialogue portraits since I took this screenshot

I've posted about this game about once or twice before on my Instagram story, but never in an actual art post until recently. This is a Phantarium related project, meaning it is set in the same world as TST :) However, the tone for this game is slightly darker.

The title of the game is pretty self explanatory. Paige, the protagonist, notices something weird with her mum Kit after she returns from a walk. The game itself is a card-based memory game with segments where you explore the house from a 2D perspective, searching for any clues as to what may be going on. It's also got some horror themes to it, though in a Tim Burton/Coraline sort of way.

There's not any particular reason within the game itself I stopped working on it, it was mostly the outside factors of University stuff (quite ironic, given Paige herself is on her Uni break during the game XD). I'm actually experimenting with a new Cutscene system in this game which allows me to control actors within dialogue, as I saw other games do that and wanted to try it to enhance the story :>

I'm hoping to finish it next! Probably after The Looping Pavillion Update, but who knows at this point. I just work on either based on which one I have ideas for at the moment.

Summary:

That will be all for today's devlog! I wanted to make these to go along with Screenshot Saturday posts, so I should have another update for you in a week if I've made any progress!