#muteposting

“Why can’t you speak?”

“You’d fit in better if you unmuted.”

“I’m not looking at your chat window.”

“Was it painful?”

“I can’t talk to you, it’s too slow.”

“I won’t read your speech note.”

“Participate in the lecture.”

“Stop gesturing to me, it’s rude.”

“You could at least try and laugh.”

I’ve always been one of those people who has story ideas floating in their head, developing for years while never having the time or energy to put pen to paper. With crushing existential emptiness to the left and the pressures of capitalism encroaching from the right, I decided it was time to try something different.

I decided I would actually write a story.

And so I opened up a fresh document, typed a couple sentences and immediately realized: this might work better as a game. I exited my word processor and downloaded Gamemaker Studio.

And so my brief stint as a writer came to a close.

Vague Notions -> Sketches -> Drafts

I am not an artist. I am not a programmer. But what I am is persistent! I won’t get into plot details until later, but the basis of my game is for it to be yet another Earthbound/Mother-like RPG. But I wanted it to have a large cast of characters with relationships that develop in player driven ways like in Hades. I’m doing my best to not thinking about the nightmare it’s going to be to code that right now, and instead have been focusing on character design and style, using Gamemaker to make the sprites and eventually the tile models.

How do I want the game to look?

How do I want the game to feel?

While those questions bounced around the empty Yahtzee shaker that is my head, I started just making people shapes in the Gamemaker pixel editor. 8x8 made me cry, 16x16 was just a bit too simple, 64x64 was way too complex, but 32x32 was just right.

And on that 32x32 canvas I found out that pixel art was basically just digital marble carving. How do I take this square grid of empty pixels and carve out a person? For me, I started by making shapes with reckless abandon. Not following the various “rules” of “good” pixel art that I’d come to learn and implement later. Regardless or maybe because of that, I didn’t love what I was seeing. And then I made The Shape.

The Shape of Reckless Youth

Persona 5 is a wonderful game about reckless youths who decide to take their fate in their own hands regardless of the oppression they face. The problem is they are almost without exception Right™ about their decisions, the only real consequences really coming from when the actions of the bad guys catch them off guard. They are also some of the most beautiful anime teenagers you will ever see.

This is an issue because when I was growing up I was an absolutely misguided chicken nugget. I looked like a child til I was 17, even up to my early 20s depending on who you ask (( and they’d be mean and wrong so )) I wanted to capture that spirit of rebellion, but translate it to the muted grey tones of suburban America life. Write what you know, etc. And so I see The Shape and from it comes our main protagonist’s head.

Max is our PC, an overly serious teenager on a mission to right the wrongs he feels have been committed against him. I knew this going in and The Shape being SO round and wide spoke to me, and the rest of the design came to be. He’d unfortunately get slimmed down in subsequent versions but this moment of design inspiration gave me his glasses and signature cowlick that would remain in every further design iteration.

Above is the current version of Max. This post is already getting overlong so I’ll just summarize and say I spent most of the rest of the month giving him 8 directional movement animations and designing his 12 potential party members. I’m sure you’ll see them at some point. And what’s that in his hand? It’s a binder! We’ll talk more about that when we discuss battle mechanics, next month, or in the new year depending on how well everything goes. Til next time!

Keep it cozy