So I forgot to post yesterday my work, so this post will be for both yesterday and today. 👀

What have I done:

After day 1, I said that I would not distract myself with aesthetics and focus on game mechanics and story building. Well--

That is not what I ended up doing. I very much got distracted with art.

Because in my head, I told myself I needed some objects to play with so that I could get my player to be able to pick up stuff. After I finished making the little objects, I told myself to get my player moving.

In my game, I wanted it to be where the main character moves automatically across the screen. That took some time trying to figure it out on my own until I found a helpful discussion board that helped me with the main movement. I got them going forward.

After I got them going forward, I needed to see if I could get the main character to recognize if there is an object in her path and if she could identify what it is. At first, that is what I did, where I would have her say in the console if she knew what it was, but then I decided to then move on to making a working inventory system.

Now, Zoe, the main character, knows how to pick up objects and put it into her inventory.

After finishing that part, I decided I needed a more crisp idea of what I wanted my game's story to be since I ended up changing the story more to fit my own capabilities and skills.

I used Milanote to lay out my characters and I am starting to make a web of what the game's story will lead to. The player will be able to make choices and those choices will lead to different scenarios and depending on each scenario, it will affect Zoe's trust in the player and whether or not Zoe will listen to the player's choices. And what each choice the player makes will affect future levels and dialogue. This requires a lot of pre-planning that I need to lay out and focus on.

What I learned:

I learned that I get distracted very easily and let myself spiral into work that is pointless at the current stage of my game. I feel like I should have joined a team instead so that I could have shared the workload, but I don't feel like I am experienced enough to be able to join a team. I feel like I am already so behind compared to the other members of the game jam, that if I had joined a team, I would have only hindered their work.

Just to get my character moving was difficult enough, and I had spend hours on that alone, but I would like to say that it is mostly because I wanted to make this game harder than it needed to be due to the story I want to tell with it. If I was making a regular rpg where the player moves the character, then it would have been simpler for me to code since I knew how to program that already. But I, of course, want to make things harder for myself for whatever reason.

What I plan on doing next:

I am going to finish laying out the story and once that is finished, I want to set up the intro scene and the first decision that the player has to make.

This will require me to set up the UI I want the game to have and also the dialogue system as well.

I do know that in order for me to get this done, it will require artwork again, so I am pretty certain I will end up focusing a lot on that. I need to make the large monster. I also need to animate it so that it looks like the monster is attacking Zoe. And I will also have to illustrate the UI, such as Zoe's money, inventory panel and the dialogue screens. I also want to add fog to my game.

I want to add achievements the player can get at the end of the game, but I think I will set that for a later feature if I have enough time.

I need to remind myself to focus on the story and core features of the game. Wish me luck!