I've overhauled the System Menu for my game. The options are now laid out in a grid and have character animations when active. The Map and Items menus are accessible as tabs, too. Animations need fine-tuning but otherwise pretty happy with this.

If a cozy pixelated top-down action-adventure sounds like something you're interested in, you can...

Hello everyone! I have an exciting announcement today! For the last year and a half, I've been making a game called May and the Amazing Bouquet! And it is coming soon to Steam!

If a cozy pixelated top-down action-adventure sounds like something you're interested in, you can now... 💐 Wishlist May and the Amazing Bouquet on Steam! 💐 Thank you to everyone who's offered support and encouragement for this effort. I hope this game will be as enjoyable for you to play as it is for me to make! 🩷

May meets Kya, her childhood friend. This conversation introduces players to the game's main quest, and also the map screen! View the full video playlist

After many months of work, here are the first two minutes of my indie game (still in development)! Enjoy!

It's May, the protagonist of my game!

May says hello. ^^

🌼🌹📜🩷

May looks at her map. Where to go next?...

Hi everyone! Been awhile 😅, but I finally have some title screen artwork for my game! You can see May, a flower, and an enemy in the foreground. In the background, the nonlinear world you can explore.

Hello again! Another month has passed, so it's time for another monthly devlog!

Story and Quests

As mentioned in the last devlog, I was not satisfied with the main quests in my game. They felt forgettable, too fetch-quest-y, and felt disconnected from the game's world and lore.

There's been a lot of improvement in that regard. I'm currently planning to have 3 main quests ready for the game's first playtest. I've fleshed out the characters on paper and made their quests feel more relevant, and hopefully fun.

I also decided to increase the final game's quest count from 6 to 8. Originally, I planned for the game to have just one dungeon-y quest. But I've found that an overworld where backtracking is commonplace isn't a great place to put challenging enemies or complex puzzles. So, I'm adding two dungeons and moving a lot of the ideas into those. This will make things feel less cramped from me trying to cram so many ideas into a single dungeon.

State Machines

I reworked the game's characters and objects to use state machines. Each object now has exactly one "state" at all times. Standing, walking, idle, frozen, thawing, etc.

Previously, this was all handled with...a lot of if/else checks. 😅 State machines make it much easier to change their states during cutscenes. And it lets me divide up their code so that each state's functionality is in one place (typically two functions - one that runs per-frame, and one to initialize the state whenever it changes).

Enemies can now be frozen by your whistle ability. And after a while, they will start to thaw out. Two states, both of which now have custom visuals which are similar for all enemy types.

Text

The game's text box has been a source of annoyance for a while. The game's resolution is only 160x144. And I'd hoped to keep text aligned to 8-pixel lines to mimic the limitations of old game consoles (especially the Game Boy). But I want to have realistic dialogue and meaningful conversations. Having just two lines of text makes that very hard. And there wasn't a good way to easily convey who is speaking, in cases where multiple characters are onscreen. I suspect this is why, on many old games, the protagonist is silent and conversations with more than 1 other character were uncommon. But that feels too limiting for me.

So, I ditched the tile-aligned text limitation. I also added a sprite on the text box to indicate who's speaking. Also trotted out an old 3x5 pixel font I made last year but never found a use for, to indicate their name. And I like it! A lot.

With the text box now in a good place, I feel much more comfortable working on the game's cutscenes now, since I have a better grasp of what the text box's limitations are.

The text boxes also changed from a parchment-style to a wooden-block-style. This fit their new tabbed look a bit better. Cursors were also changed to pink arrows, since the pink protagonist is the one technically making those decisions.

Graphics

Lots of graphics received overhauls:

May's walk animations were updated yet AGAIN. In particular, the sun's highlights in her hair are toned down, and her side-sprites no longer have her shoulders appear so far behind her head. I wanted to get this feeling right before I start making other NPCs in the same style.

The forest area, and garden area, now have their own unique look (see the first 2screenshots in this post).

Colors were consolidated for many things. Lots of sprites used similar but different colors, making them all looks kinda off. Part of this is due to their graphics being made at different points in time, when palettes were different. In such cases, they now use the same colors.

Tall grass now covers May's feet when she walks through it (and slows her down too). This mechanic will be used to make some areas more difficult. Tall grass is harder to navigate. Areas that constantly change from tall to short grass will be even harder.

Next Steps

The current goal is to have an internal playtest with half the game's quests in a polished, complete-able stage. Current things on my mind for this:

Finish the scenes, NPCs, and maps needed for those quests (and the tutorial area too).

Add a nice-looking title screen. And reveal the game's name! 🥲

Add whatever other menus are needed.

And finally, music and sound effects. 😵 I haven't started on this yet (other than a blip-sound when text is displayed). This will probably take the longest...