Devlog #2

"There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story." - Frank Herbert

Today held much progress. The inventory system came out quite well, and while the icons may need some touch ups the interface itself works well. Cleaning up the save system felt nice as well. Some other small mechanic improvements are a dynamic end screen which has different messages depending on if you died prematurely to spikes or a hole or made it to the end. Additionally there is an idle animation when looking away from the camera.

To the narrative improvements, I seem to find more typos than inspiration. I did clean up a lot of basic interactions which makes the game loop feel smoother. To round everything out, I updated the climactic events dialog to more properly reflect the characters who say it, and I added the base dialog to one of the optional characters. At this crossroad I'm wondering if I'm approaching this properly. My current strategy is to outline the base dialog of each character and then iterate over it again to make changes to it depending on the magical tool that is equipped. I wonder if that front-loading of the creative writing is what is causing me problems.

Luckily adding small improvements and mechanics here and there is keeping me motivated to continue. This is difficult compared to my previous jam because there is enough time where it doesn't pressure me into making hard decisions, and I'm attempting a game type I'm not experienced with, and unsure of my understanding of. Without that pressure cooker I am at risk of slowing down. It may just be that narrative driven games aren't suited to game jams, or that you should just go do a visual novel instead. But the mazes, sink holes, and discovery of trying item combinations to affect the environment do add an interesting layer I think.

Before my next update, I'd like to finish the climax scenes dialog and add the optional endings depending on tool use. That way I can breath a sigh of relief that my base idea has been realized, although not finished. As a token to flip toward my sanity, I may add some new sprite graphics to the main hub room to spice it up. At this point, It's hard to imaging why a player would want to know more about my world when it is so drab. Some small, really any, sprites would help the mind latch on to something.

More to come 🤠