Been avoiding writing stuff here due to my arm but it’s been feeling great for a long while now. I’m less scared of doing things with it.
Lots of work, mostly on the bug hunting department and polishing of the tools we have. Environments, UI design, playtesting. Aside from some hiccups with the save system and some other jank the game has now a solid 40 minutes of gameplay and that’s like… holy shit! The chapter would be finished by now if it weren’t for the aforementioned bugs but that’s a great signal. My goal has always been hour or hour and a half per chapter and it looks like we’ll make it.
I wasn’t exactly worried about the game being short, but rather that it didn’t have a compelling loop with a good rhythm and pacing that encouraged players to take their time and explore the maps at leisure. Well, now I know it does and the story ain’t bad either. All it needs is a good polishing pass once it’s complete and it will be a Video Game.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still lots to do. But with this chapter up and running the rest feels achievable within an acceptable time frame.
Medium and long-term goals:
>Code behavior for main bosses
>Code behavior for more enemies
>More items
>More weapons
>Models for characters
>More environments
>Polish and kill whatever bugs we see along the way
It’s very much just content creation whatever we have ahead. It’s great! With the story sort of already written, this thing feels very tangible. Just gotta pray for our current workflow to withstand the impacts of full production. Would be a shame if we had to rebuild the game again but at least this time my Plan C is quite good.
I hope it doesn’t come to that, even if it ain’t gonna be that painful.