#reenvision game

It’s been another few weeks since my last post on just about any of my socials, but on my Twitter, I showed a small little clip of Liza’s boss fight. It’s not much of a looker (yet), but man oh man was it working! It’s still not very flashy (I’m not worrying about overly flashy visuals and effects until towards the end of development), BUUUUT I can say that since that last post, it’s done!

All of Liza’s possible moves have been implemented and I’ve even added a few little neat things. For example, on certain frames of some of Liza’s attacks, you can hit her and her attack will instantly be interrupted, meaning you can basically cancel the attack completely. Although the “reenvision” mechanic doesn’t work on bosses, you can still use it to instantly end Liza’s current attack and reset her position in the arena (so if she’s cornering you, you can reenvision her and both you and Liza will be reset to the positions you started the boss fight in!)

There’s more things like that I’d love to add to not just Liza, but future bosses as well. This game does not have a level system and depends entirely on player skill. While this is turning out to be quite the challenge in figuring out how to give the player the feeeeeeling of gameplay progression, it also opens the doors for quite a number of cool little tricks like this. Letting the player be in complete control of battles like this as long as they know exactly about their opponents... There’s so much potential with this, it’s a little crazy!

ENOUGH about Liza though, she’s been the center of attention for long enough. Let’s talk art. Let’s talk about Clemence Inn!

SO. THE INN! I mentioned it vaguely at the end of my last post (and “promised” to post more about it the week after... Aha) but Clemence Inn is the name of the main location of the game. It’s a rundown inn in the middle of a small, sleepy town named Clemence. It has a total of 4 staff members: the mayor, a janitor, the town’s bounty hunter, and the Nurse. I’ve shown off the Nurse frequently in the past, so the other 3 will be new characters I’ll show off in time! The Inn is also where you, the player, will live. As the inn comes together and I fill out more rooms (the pictures above and below are only of the inn’s lobby area), maybe I’ll give a bit more of a proper room tour! As well as give a proper introduction the wonderful Inn staff. Who knows? 😳

With the foundation of the game done and Liza + the store system as a whole also being done, my focus will be shifting to some other very important, yet not as “exciting” things to show off. Basically, I’ll be focusing on game locations, art direction (for said locations), more monsters, more enemies, writing and finishing the script, more smaller things I’ve been putting on the backburner ingame (such as some smaller features and tweaks I’ve been meaning to get to). All of this is very important to the game and uh... Well, it’s literally the rest of the game. However, it’s not as “exciting” to show off as it slowly comes along. I’ll continue to show off these WIPs nevertheless (I love blathering about this game, and I’m sure there’s some who love hearing about games in active development), but if things start to feel a weeee bit like a slog, then it’s because it is! Everything will come together with time though. We’re only in year 2 of development, and I suspect this game will take 4-5 years at least.

To end off this long update post, I’ve also been working on newer, more “finalized” tilesets for the game. That’s right, plot twist: The tilesets currently ingame were always just temporary. I had changed the screen size of the game (384x216 to 320x180) a year ago and surprise surprise, big pixel art assets do not scale down very well! I needed new tilesets, but wanted to take is as an opportunity to practice :P

The new tilesets aren’t that different, but I made sure to make the colors easier on the eyes. Here’s the new (top) vs old (bottom) "main” forest tiles!

SO. In this game, you have a meter called your “desperation”. It’s the blue bar in the video and that meter is constantly creeping up in almost every battle you get into. Once it hits a certain threshold, the amount of damage you take multiplies. HOWEVER, the amount of damage you dish out ALSO multiplies.

Once the desperation meter maxes out, you take 4x the damage you normally would (so if a slime were to hit you and only deal 10 damage normally, you’ll now take 40 instead). The trade-off is that you also dish out 4x the damage... AND you can “reenvision” things.

When you reenvision, you can change things into something else. In this video, I changed the funny slime lad into a plant monster and back!

The biggest challenge of this game’s battle system is meant to be managing your desperation. The higher your desperation is, the more damage you do and the more special moves you can use (because those are also despair dependent), BUT the more damage you take. Which means you have to be on your A-game with your dodging skills.

Took far longer than I expected, but the inn is finally done! I actually finished this up around October, but as they say, the last 20% takes 80% of the work. For the most part, the visuals of the inn won't change much from here to the end of the game, which is exactly why I spent so much time on it!

With this being the most important location of the story, I wanted it to be as good as it can possibly be. It was my hope that putting a lot of effort in now means I won't have to worry about this place as much during the end phases of development. Now even with this, please remember: nothing here is 100% final. Anything can change from here through to the game's release.

I've already introduced the inn's staff in a previous post, but one character I neglected to mention was OJ. He's a weird little guy who can almost always be found in the inn's dining hall. No one ever seems to mention him, but he's a friendly conversationalist nonetheless. Keep an eye on him as the game progresses and you might find out why people choose to pass him by, however.

One thing about Clemence Inn is that it also doubles as a town hall. Shepherd, the mayor of the town of Clemence, has an office space of his very own. Can you tell what he likes from appearances alone?

You can't really have an inn without a place to cook, now can you. This is the kitchen area, where all the yummy food is cooked up for the inn's many visitors. Every now and then, you might see a friendly face in there.

Heading upstairs, the inn is split into two separate hallways; One for guests and one for residents. As the player, you get a resident room! When you start the game, your room will be rather empty but, as you progress, the room will become even fuller than what's shown here.

Heading outside, we have the inn's garden area. This place is ideal for any guest who wants to simply relax and enjoy the peaceful scenery. To help maximize the tranquility, there's even a fountain in the middle of the garden.

With the garden area, I should mention that part of the reason this took me so long is because I had to redo the outdoor tilesheet as well. This was a lot of work, but the results paid off tremendously. Just outside the inn greets you with a rather pretty view!

Unless this post is take 8 minutes of straight scrolling, I unfortunately can't show off all of the inn and its surrounding area. So, I picked the parts that I thought were the most interesting. There's a lot more to the inn than what I've shown here, but I suppose this just means there's more to explore when the game releases.

Currently, I've been reworking the player's battle spritesheets. It's about time I finally make a more "finalized" version of these, especially now that I have a better grasp of what is and isn't working in the game's battle system.

Along with making adjustments relating to that, my plan is to add more places to the game. Next up will be the game's first "dungeon", in quotes because it's less so a dungeon and moreso a 2-room-long walk through nature. After that, I'll work on another location in the game, Clemence's library. My goal is to just slowly expand outwards until the entirety of Clemence is done, then continue to just add more places from there, slowly branching out until the entire game's map is complete. I think that'll give me enough time to do things like finish the game's script, add all the enemies and boss fights i wanted, add more items, make more adjustments, etc.

From here on out, everything about development seems like it'll be taking less of a "step by step" method and more of a "everything will kinda just flow where I need it to be by the end of this" method. In the meantime, here's to hoping the next big update takes a little less than 5 months to show off :P

Apologies for the sudden hiatus! I was pretty busy the past few months (college student problems), but fortunately, things are settling down and I can start focusing on ReEnvision more once again.

As usual with my absences, I still made a nice bit of progress during it. First, let’s look at a new enemy, the “shadow wolf”

This wolf-like creature will be a difficult early-game monster that you may encounter. They’re opportunistic hunters who will take down whatever crosses their paths. Local residents seek to avoid them, as they have a particularly nasty bite and an abnormally long tongue, which they use to paralyze and poison their targets respectively.

Speaking of which, status effects now exist in the game!

I’ve added these into the game quite a while ago, but recently fixed up the code so that it’s a LOT more functional. Status effects are classified as either an “ailment’ or a “boost”. Ailments will hinder you in some way, while boosts will help you. This feature is meant for the player to either utilize to its fullest or fight against, as both you and enemies can use them freely. You can stack them up or use special moves to wipe them away! Whatever playstyle works best for you.

Finally, I’m currently working on the ingame shop system. This is Liza, the friendly neighborhood shopkeeper. Depending on your actions, she’ll likely be around for most of the game, sometimes even following you into a dungeon just to sell you items.

Much of the UI and even Liza herself are in such an early stage that there isn’t too much of note to show off just yet, but Liza is quite the interesting character. When this game releases, I have a feeling she’ll be received well!

I’ve already mentioned most of the stuff I needed to in my last post so, by and large, things are still the same. I’m still working on the inn, though progress was a bit slower than I had intended. Summer school + Artfight made things pretty busy, BUT DON’T WORRY. I prevailed >:D

The rooms I got done/am working on are coming along beautifully so far. The picture at the top of this post is of the Inn’s lobby area! The picture just above these very words is of the main character’s room. If I had to estimate, then I think the inn is about halfway towards completion by now. Development should become speedier as both Artfight and my summer classes are ending, AND most of the base assets for the inn are completed.

A bulk of the lobby’s development time was making reusable assets, such as the wallpaper and flooring. Now that that’s done, I can just copy and paste a bunch of that over and over again. We love efficiency ✨

Next time the inn is shown off, I’m hoping it’ll be in the form of a full video. It’s the most important location, so of course it deserves one of the biggest reveals so far. As promised from my last post, though, I think now’s the perfect time to finally introduce some of the residents of this Inn.

As you’ve probably seen from many of my screenshots and videos, this lady in pink appears quite a lot. This is the Nurse and one of ReEnvision’s major characters! She runs a clinic inside the inn where she works as one of the country’s only two healthcare providers. You’d think this would be a problem, and it is, but most people ignore it because of how small of a population it is. The Nurse is caring, gentle, and friendly, as well as very sarcastic. Visit her for any of your aches and pains and she’ll fix you right up!

This funny guy is Shepherd, the dog mayor of the town of Clemence. Did I ever mention that the Inn is not only an inn, but ALSO a town hall? Because it is, and Shepherd runs the place. Innkeeper and mayor, it’s a miracle Shepherd juggles it all. Yet, he does it perfectly well with a huge smile on his face. He loves his town, and he knows that if he isn’t the mayor, who would be? Only he can do the job right!

This is Mila, the town’s bounty hunter. Technically an inn staff member, her job is to clear out any monsters in and surrounding the town, ensuring that all residents and guests leave to and from Clemence safely. She’s soft and has a tendency to act like the mom friend in any given situation. She also has a killer sweet tooth! You see, Mila is a vampire, but to avoid sucking the life out of everyone in the own, she eats cheesecakes topped with blood. A strange combo, but it’s something she can safely make. Let her cook anything, though, and uh... Hope you had homeowner’s insurance.

This is Erin, the inn’s vampire janitor, housekeeper, repairman, groundskeeper, you name it. He hates his job(s), but does them surprisingly well and takes them deathly seriously. Out of everything, he hates messes the most and if you’re a guest, then expect a very length “janitor handbook” to suddenly appear at your bedside. Break any of the rules in the handbook? Well... May Erin have mercy on your soul. Just kidding! Outside of work, he’s generally laid back and goes with the flow to most things. Whilst his wife, Mila, likes cheesecakes, Erin’s addicted to slime jelly. Everyone is disgusted by his diet.

SO. For once, the video alone actually covers most of what I wanted to talk about this week. Apologies for the windows movie maker quality as well, editing is not my forte 😔.

Here’s to hoping I improve that skill as time goes on. Especially since I’d like to start posting ReEnvision videos to YouTube soon. Gotta spread that visibility!

ANYWAY, one thing i forgot to mention is how buttons and badges are acquired. Buttons will be the easiest to get, as I want these to be closer to how charms work in Hollow Knight (which is the inspiration for this entire system!) Basically, you can find them scattered across the world. Think of buttons as your biggest reward for exploring/beating enemies.

You can also find them in stores. They’ll be a pretty expensive purchase considering what bonuses they offer, but for right now, they only cost $1

The final way you can find them is by completing side stories. Most characters offer a very different item that I will explain another time, but some characters will offer a button for completing their side story. This is, if the character likes you, of course.

Development on the shop system is still going steady! In fact, if all goes well, I have plans on showing that off in depth in the coming weeks. Being a solo developer, though, my attention must remain split across many fields, one of which being the writing department (especially important, as this is a story-driven game). This leads me to something that I don’t think I’ve really mentioned before...

In ReEnvision, there’s times where the story takes a break. This is usually done to create the illusion of time passing, as well as give the player some downtime to enjoy the world at their own pace. Stop and smell the roses, all that. These breaks are called “free times” (or “free periods”, I use the terms interchangeably). During these free times, one of the ways to end them is by completing a “side story”. As the name suggests, these are basically just story-driven side quests you can do. Think of how confidants work in the Persona series, it’s similar to that, but shorter!

During these side stories, you get some lovely time to spend with one of the 9 characters who have one. Establish a bond with them. Treat them kindly and by the end of the story, maybe you’ll get a reward! Who knows?

Of course, because this is ReEnvision, there’s still a bit of a challenge to this. You see, you don’t have endless breaks. This game has 3 different routes, and different amounts of free periods are available during them. In the true/neutral routes, you have 22-24 free times. In the bad route (also called the “erased” route), you only have 12.

Now, this doesn’t sound so bad... Except every side story takes up an entire free period. Most of them are also multi-parters, and some ALSO have prerequisites, so there’s a good chance you won’t be able to complete all of them in a single run solely because you messed up the order they’re loosely done in.

The best order to do them in is... Never told to you! So there’s some fun trial and error to do as well. These free periods are also spread across every chapter, so I hope you’re good at time management, too.

Don’t stress too hard, though! Completing every side story isn’t a requirement to beat the game. Feel free to only do the ones you want (as long as they’re unlocked, of course). You don’t even have to do any of them, if you don’t want to! I wrote the main storyline under the assumption that there will be at least ONE person who ignores every single free period, so although it’s suggested you take advantage of them, you won’t be lost in the story if you decide not to.

However, I do have plans on adding steam achievements, and completing every side story will be a requirement for a few of them. So... Have fun with that :)

ANYWAY, enough about the suffering of future completionists, let’s talk Liza!

My attention this month has been split between the shop system, which uses Liza as a test subject, and Liza’s side story, which has 3 parts to it. This month has felt like a Liza Appreciation Month™ because of it. It’s about to turn into two months, though, as although my time developing the shop system will finally be ending soon, my time with Liza isn’t done yet!

In April, I will begin developing a boss fight for the game, just to see how I should go about making them in the future. I didn’t feel like making a new set of sprites just to test this with the game’s very first boss, so I decided to make use of one of the bosses that are already in the game at the moment. Can you guess who it is?

That’s right, Liza! She’s not only the game’s main shopkeeper, but also the second boss of the entire game.

(note: this scene won’t be in the final game, it’s purely for testing) 

It’s simple and still has areas of improvement, but I’m so excited with how things are shaping up. A good friend of mine is helping to review the story to make sure things flow correctly, and that’s going well so far. Speaking of which, opening the game’s main design and storyboard document lags my entire computer because it’s at 277 pages and it’ll only continue to grow. I also refuse to make a new document-