Raziel: Latest Updates and More Screenshots

Posted on September 12th, 2014

Short version: Yep, still working on this! There’s a long way to go, but progress is being made. Oh, and there are some new screenshots at the end of this — including your first look at the game’s main character.

Long Version: I’m making slow-but-stead progress on Raziel. A lot of the slowness comes from the fact I still haven’t totally figured out the combat system yet, which makes it difficult to design the UI or put certain other elements in place. There are also certain story details I need to work out before getting too far into making maps and such. But the visual stuff? Yeah, that’s coming along. Especially now that I have a nifty sprite creation tool called (appropriately enough) Game Character Hub. I helped me quite a bit in customizing the main character. Game Character Hub isn’t just for making RPG Maker sprites, either, so it’ll probably come in handy for the future.

I’ve also decided that this game’s protagonist won’t be a total blank slate. Certain things can still determine their “morality rating”, but they’ll also have a certain degree of set background and personality. The reason I say “they” is because you pick the character’s gender at the start of the game. Whether you pick the male or the female version makes no difference in terms of gameplay; the character’s nickname is always Glitch, their basic history will always be essentially the same, and other characters will mostly react to them in the same way. They even have near-identical costumes and similar hair. I decided to do this because I thought it would be neat to have which gender you choose be purely a matter of preference — and to not have the female version be “extra-sexified”.

The new screenshots are below. The first is of a new tile test, this time the interior of a building in Etherworld. Yes, the entire place is weird and glitchy like that with the exception of a few important places I may or may not talk about later. ;p And if you think this is weird, wait until I start introducing what lives there.

The screenshots after that are Glitch’s sprites and portraits. Female version first; male version second. I might make some minor tweaks to the sprites later for visibility purposes, but I’m pretty satisfied with these overall.