#igmc

Introduce yourself! Heya I'm Atlas aka Melon Kid, making games is a serious passion of mine and I hope to stick with it for the long run, otherwise I occasionally do other junk like animation or slowly decompose in my chair as I disassociate from reality and become one with nothing, oh and I've been trying to get into art lately too.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Atlas: I've always wanted to make a project that was outrageous and fun, but for a while I've never really had a proper vessel for it. But in the past year or so, I began recognizing magical girls as a seriously underappreciated genre in video games and I thought the two were a match made in heaven!

How long did you work on your project? *Atlas: I began concepting some stuff not terribly long ago but it was sitting on the backburner until the IGMC rolled around at the end of the year in 2018. The time limit for that contest was one month, so naturally I put it together in roughly a month too.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Atlas: Oh yeah, a for sure influence is Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, some people have actually picked up on that on their own which was pretty surprising to me - and there's no way I can't mention Space Patrol Luluco which so excellently captures the feelings I want to put into the game. Both of them are Trigger animes. . . coincidence? :3c

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Atlas: BOY HOWDY-- okay so basically, the first half of the contest was a disaster because I somehow had to condense all of the cool things I wanted to do in the frame of a one hour game. I literally spent the first two weeks just scrapping story ideas over and over because I just couldn't be content with anything, halfway into the contest I had virtually nothing to show for it. At some point with a little encouragement from a friend I just stuck with my best idea at the time and rolled with it and. . . it turned out not so terrible, but man was my brain on fire the whole time from overthinking so much. To make it worse, the artist who worked with me last year (Inazuma / Golden Mimic) was suddenly out of commission and wasn't sure if he could participate or not. It wasn't until the last stretches that I was able to scramble together and get some friends on board for the project to try and make up for all the lost time. Remember how I said I made the game in a month? Yeah that was a lie, this flaming pile of wreckage was cobbled together in just a few weeks of massive crunch, god bless you Floramy.

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Atlas: The initial concept differs from the IGMC project which differs from the current iteration so yeah. It definitely changed over time. For the IGMC game, pretty much all of the features, story ideas, and characters were gutted to make space for a compact 1-hour experience that could best convey everything I wanted to do with the game. It's like the core concept on crack, because I wanted to squeeze in as much fun content as I could in that short amount of time.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Atlas: At first it was just me and my artist Inazuma who I worked with last year, and then over the course of development it became me and @f-loramy, a very cool and handsome friend B^). And I definitely got a lot of support from other friends as well!

What was the best part of developing the game? *Atlas: I think the best part of development for me is seeing characters come to life. Story is such an integral part of everything I make and I love writing dialogue so when I feel like I get those interactions to click, it's very satisfying.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Atlas: I do play other RPG Maker games from time to time but just as a hobby, I've seen some impressive things done with the engine but a lot of the time I'm not too interested in the spectacle or fancy features.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Atlas: Hesperos is definitely my favorite character. She's a blast to write for, she acts like a sailor-mouthed idiot and constantly does REALLY stupid things, but at the same time she's actually very observant and is a lot more soft-hearted than she'd have you believe.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Atlas: I don't think I could've done anything differently realistically, but I do wish I'd gotten it together sooner so I didn't have to finish the game last minute!

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Atlas: Yeah!!! Magical Disaster X is just a teeny slice of a giant five layer cake, I have so many things planned for it when I start on the full version of the game!

With your current project, what do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Atlas: There's nothing more I love than to watch let's plays or streams of the games I make and seeing people enjoy them. It's a very fulfilling experience that reassures me that folks out there really do enjoy what I put out.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Atlas: I do want to go commercial and that aspect is honestly pretty daunting. I can easily imagine commission costs ramping up fast so I'm not gonna lie that has me sweating a little as a poor person. . .

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Atlas: This is going to be pretty unusual advice since most people will tell you to start with small projects, but here's what I have to say: Get to know the engine for sure, BUT, when you start working on a game for real, make sure you LOVE the concept or world. Something that you know for sure you'll want to come back to even if you have to sideline it for a while. See, I had this problem in the earlier phases of developing games, and that was to jump into projects where I thought "hey this is a cool idea! I'd like to do this!" But then it happened again, and I pushed the previous project behind me figuring I can work on two at once. And then it happened again, and again, and I was just shelving projects and ideas left and right. The one time I actually committed to one of these ideas, it sucked hard because I initially wanted it to be a smaller project but I started concepting a ton of cool stuff for it and expanded the universe and it got the point where I realized, I have all this sweet content but the core of the game was one I wasn't like super passionate about. It collapsed under the weight of its own feature creep and I gave up on it entirely - I had no intention of putting that much time and effort into a game I know I wasn't going to really love. That's why I've been curating my ideas WAY more carefully lately and been all the better for it. Maybe this won't apply to everyone, but for those that it does. . . you already know who you are ;j

Question from last month's featured dev @abigailfortune: Is there a certain theme or a topic you would like to explore in a game one day? *Atlas: Too many to count! Here's a funny story, my college English professor once told me that every story ought to have a message of some kind and I scoffed at the idea like "huh? That's dumb, it can just be something meaningless and fun." Which I still hold to be true, however, as I've gotten more and more serious about making games I've come to realize that I've wanted to include strong underlying messages in each and every one. Social and economic injustices, mental health, love and abuse - these are things I think about all the time and I feel somewhere in my heart that it's important to connect with people and let them know they're not alone, or to bring awareness to things they might not have even considered before. The point where a story, no matter how fantastical, really becomes 'real' is when it speaks to your audience on this deeper level and that's something I want to strive for all the time.

We mods would like to thank Atlas for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Magical Disaster X if you haven’t already! See you next month!