Phase 1: Chapter 1

It seem a little late to be writing a devlog as development is very much in full swing, at this point I have already fleshed out the first quarter of the story as well as the world within GBStudio. 

The game is currently using some free or low cost tilesets, sprites and music found on Itch.io to allow me to get the game development underway quickly without being hindered by my strong desire for it to look perfect from the beginning - this flaw of mine has definitely been the kicker for several game developments in the past causing them to be abandoned so didn't want it to be a show stopper on this one.

Although being restricted to only a few matching tilesets has meant the world that I create will be limited in comparison to what I envisaged, I believe (and really hope) it will only require a few weeks of work at the end to give the assets and artwork a full overhaul once the game logic and story is basically complete. When I get to that point I will begin reaching out to pixel artists,  illustrators and chip tune musicians to start the collaboration of creating the real world I envisaged at the initial conception of this game.

I would say I've spent about 3 months working on this project so far, with roughly a  6 month hiatus in the middle (due to burn out) and I'm really pleased with where it stands. Obviously even what has been developed so far still needs some fine tuning and tinkering here and there (game balancing, dialogue, animations and player actions), but a lot of that will come with time once I and a few testers have played through it a several times to get a good grasp for it's flow and playability.

In my head the game will consist of roughly 4 chapters (or acts, if you will) ending with a final face-off against the game's antagonist, as I mentioned the game's current state consists of just the 1st chapter and I think there is still room to increase both the content and even the world within this initial part of the players journey. That being said I don't want to just keep ramming more scenes, puzzles and side quests in just to extend the play time, but after playing through it a few times I still think there is room for it to grow ever so slightly before I begin the next chapter. At the moment it stands at around 50 minutes of gameplay, bearing in mind that's me playing knowing exactly where to go - but also doing every side quest as well, so I will only really get a realistic idea of the the play time after I get some fresh players to play test.

I am hoping for 4+ hours of gameplay with multiple endings as well as varying player experience based on decisions made to allow for moderate replayability - the more the better really, but I want to remain realistic considering my own creative limitations.

One challenge I did stumble on, which ended up being the cause for my burn out and hiatus, was the battle scenes. I already had a decent turn-based battle loop implemented from a previous game I'd parked so that part was fine, the main issue was making the scene and battle actually look and feel good within the GBStudio limitations as well as my own very limited (if not non-existed) pixel art skills. Thinking of different attacks that both the player and the enemy are able to do while also trying to make it look good with the tilesets and sprites that I had to hand became very disheartening, but once I'd taken some time away and got some clarity on my goals and intentions I was able to accept that I needed to make do with what I had and come to the conclusion that it wouldn't be perfect to begin with but that doesn't mean the end result won't be.

In summary I'm really enjoying the development process, it's had some challenges but that mainly falls on my creative limitations rather than anything else, as long as I can stay within this same mindset I feel I can this game to a really good point by the end of the year. I don't want to be too unrealistic as game development always takes longer than you think, even though GBStudio often gives you that false sense of ease and makes you feel like you'll have it finished in no time. I mean, GBStudio is a great tool for pushing out proof of concepts but once you start getting deep into the development of something, progress really starts to slow down compared to writing actual code.

I'll try and write more frequent devlogs so I'll have something to look back and reflect on once the game is complete and out in the wild. I do have the pipe dream of getting it on a physical cartridge - whether that's through an established producer or independently myself I don't really care at this point, maybe that will change when I get closer to the end and whether I feel the final product has the potential to be seriously considered by a producer or not. Who knows.