The Diary is a short experimental game. You can unlock the true ending in about ten minutes, probably less, and you have a good chance of doing it without doing anything special. Just approach the game as a curious person who wants to know what happened. But just because it’s short doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. In The Diary, you are a student who finds an abandoned apartment building and in it, an apartment that’s not completely empty. It seems the last tenant left some things behind: books, documents, a fully-charged laptop that clearly was meant to be found. Look—and listen—to […]
I think I’ve finally settled into my new day job, more or less. Enough so that I’ve been making steady progress on Raziel, even if I haven’t posted it here as often as I probably should.
I’ve basically finished designing the Real World. It’s suitable for wandering around in, though I still need to finish the interior of Raziel’s Tower. But the one thing I’ve spent the most time poking at (and probably will keep poking at until the game is near-finished) is Glitch’s apartment. Not just because it’s where the game starts, but because I want it to reveal certain things about Glitch’s character.
For comparison, here’s the current version Glitch’s apartment next to Jenny’s room from She Who Fights Monsters:
Jenny’s Room
Glitch’s Apartment
Glitch lives in a one-room apartment. So, basically, her (or his if you play as the male version) room or “space” is everywhere. Little Jenny’s room has all sorts of personal touches — flowers, a rug and general pretty things — that give it life and color. In contrast, Glitch’s place is pretty Spartan and looks a bit empty. The only rug is a bath mat and there’s not so much as a picture on the wall. Then, there are clues in the furniture: a single twin-size bed; a kitchen table with one chair. From the looks of things, she lives alone and probably doesn’t have guests.
There’s also a custom computer console that probably cost more than everything in her home put together, plus the nice laptop she keeps near her bed. Which probably says something about where she really “lives.” (There’s actually more to it than that, but I have to leave some stuff for players to sort out on their own.)
I want to have those kinds of things woven throughout game. Small details that, if you’re looking for them, can tell you a lot about the game’s world and/or the people in it.
I am still working on Raziel. It’s just that over the last month or so, my life has been quite something. First, there was meeting my long-distance boyfriend in person for the first time — and the mad scramble in the days prior to make my apartment properly presentable. (He was with me for a week and yes, it was quite lovely. He also introduced me to Doctor Who, which explains my Twitter lately.) When he left, I missed him terribly. I also had to look for a new job, which I somehow got fairly quickly. I started work last week. So basically, lots of stuff going on. Good stuff mostly, but certainly stuff that takes time and adjustment.
But back to Raziel.
Otherworld: Interior Tile TestThe biggest challenge of making this game isn’t (yet) anything technical. It’s having So Many Ideas and so much planning to do, definitely more planning than I’ve ever had to do before. The snags I run into are things like locations and story details and exact battle mechanics and figuring out how to use those mechanics to help tell the story, especially when I’m not totally sure of all the story yet, especially the parts that happen between the beginning and the ending. Which is basically “most of it”. Then, on top of that, I have kind of a perfectionist streak. I want this game to be as cool as what I see in my head and I’m prone to tripping myself up with fears that it won’t.
The thing with Raziel is that unlike every single other game I’ve made before, there isn’t just one story. It’s a bunch of little stories combining into a whole. So instead of figuring out how to tell one story, I have to build a bunch of them and tie them all together in a way that best represents the whole. And I have to plan locations, themes, visuals, etc. to do all that instead of just words and a few pictures.
And until I have all that stuff planned out with some degree of certainty, it’s going to be rather difficult to set up much else.
I know deep down I’m up to it; I’m going to make it work. But when there’s so much you can do, it can be a bit overwhelming to figure out what you should do.
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.
[09/01/2014 Update: Added screenshot for the real world.]
Hi, everyone! I am still around and working on new games, or at least one game in particular. I’ve just been busy with my [really stressful] day job and only have so much to give after I get home. I am making progress, though, and here’s what I’ve got so far.
First off, I’ve determined that Raziel will have some kind of karma system. For whatever reason, that seems to be my thing: giving players the chance to make moral choices. There will also be hints in the game about which side of the scale you’re tipping towards. But in most cases (as in life), unless you’re aiming for a certain outcome, you’ll probably end up somewhere in the middle instead of at the Good or Evil extreme.
I’m still working out the details of the combat system. There won’t be a lot of battles (and probably no random ones), but I do want to include some confrontations that fit the game’s themes. As a hint, people in Raziel’s world are dependent on the virtual realm of Otherworld. Your ultimate goal is destroying Otherworld. So, naturally, at least some of those people are going to want to defend it — one way or another.
And finally, the screenshots!
Early version of Otherworld.
More finalized version of Otherworld.
First glimpse of Etherworld.
They’re all tests of tilesets. The first is an early version of Otherworld. The second is the version I think I’ll use in the game. And the third… is your first glimpse of Etherworld, which is my favorite concept in the game so far.
You can get a few more details about the realms of Razielhere. Also includes original concept art.
Here’s some new concept art for Raziel, which currently in development. It depicts two dimensions of the game: Otherworld and Etherworld. The third aspect (the normal world) doesn’t need it at this point, though I might change my mind before the major work starts.
Basically, in this cyberpunk-themed game, you’re going to be visiting three realms. The normal world is our world, though the game will show a grayer, blander version of it. Otherworld is the cyber-world where people can live their fantasies. Thus I’m making it a place of wild, surreal colors partially inspired by the color schemes of Killer7. As for Etherworld, it’s basically a land of junk data that, normally, no one accesses or even knows is there. It’s weird and chaotic and creepy-like… and you’re totally going to need to visit it in order to finish your quest. (Funnily enough, Etherworld also takes some inspiration from Killer7, namely the Vinculum Gate you pass through every time you confront a midboss. I think the concept is really neat and, taken one step further, it fits this game nicely.)
My next non-Twine project is a game called Raziel. As I said before, it was born as a Twine game and I planned to keep it that way… but I kept getting more and more ideas that either went beyond Twine’s practical limits (i.e. “Yes, I could do this in Twine, but is it really the best way?”) or just plain weren’t possible using that development tool. So I started thinking and wondering what the best means was to do all I needed to do.
Oddly enough, I kept coming back to RPG Maker XV Ace. All of the ideas I had were possible with that, and unlike with Unity (which will indeed be necessary for some long-term plans underway), I know my way around it thanks to working on She Who Fights Monsters. Since I want to get this game finished in 3-6 months, that tips the scale in its favor.
Sure, I’ve got a love/haterelationship with RPG Maker. And I’m a little ambivalent about using it again. Overall, though, it can do what I need it to do in this case without too many surprises or a new learning curve to follow.
I’ve got big plans for this little game. Details to follow… when they follow. 🙂
Note (6/20/2014): The current version is now 1.101.20. It includes a minor dialogue fix for an issue I didn’t learn about until AFTER I uploaded version 1.03. But everything else posted here (in particular how I don’t plan on making any more non-critical updates for a long time; hence the version number jump) is current.
Further edit: Exactly one day after my posting 1.10, someone noted other minor, non-gamebreaking bugs and, being me, I couldn’t rest until I fixed them. So version 1.20 it is. But seriously, I’m done with this game for now.
Howdy, all! I’ve uploaded a new version of She Who Fights Monsters that fixes a save glitch where in certain installations, you can’t save. It basically happened because when something is installed to the Programs directory, it can’t be written-to unless it’s run with Administrator privileges, at least in certain versions of Windows. (Having jumped semi-recently from Windows XP to Windows 8 (stop laughing), I didn’t know this.) And by default, the free installer program I’m using installs things to that very directory. To avoid future confusion (and my apologies for any inconvenience, past or present), I fixed it by remaking the installer so it installs to My Documents by default instead.
The new version also contains a steam banner by Raven Maurer, who actually first made it at the request of someone else and, in the process contacted me for some of the game’s artwork. I liked their work enough I asked if I could include it in a future version, and here we are. 🙂
I’ve also updated the end-of-game credits to include Madamluna, and I’m embarrassed that I forgot to include her earlier. After all, she’s the one who gifted me RPG Maker. So if it weren’t for her, She Who Fights Monsters might not exist.
Overall, I’m proud of this game, but I’m tired of looking at it. This means aside from game-breaking bugs, there won’t be any new fixes for awhile ’cause I need to work on something else for the sake of my already-questionable sanity.
Next project: Raziel. Which, to my own surprise, I think might be best-served as an RPG Maker game now. But that’s a topic for another blog post.
So, uh, I found out last night that a very nice LPer who goes by Razorhog is Let’s Playing She Who Fights Monsters. I’m flattered and overwhelmed and half-convinced there was some mistake because he says so many nice things about the game and my website and stuff. But, uh, here’s part one.
(Yes, this really happened. And thanks, Razorhog!)
Once upon a time, I hastily threw together a thing in Twine for something called the Cyberpunk Jam. The thing-I-threw-together has since been taken down [edit: It’s back!], but I always wanted to turn it into something more. Something on the scale of Eden and Shadow of a Soul that plays like, well, a full a game and has things like music and custom illustrations and many more possibilities.
Raziel will be a cybepunk-themed game where you go into a virtual world to track down the mysterious figure who’s been haunting your virtual dreams. Who is he? What does he want? And once you learn the answer, will you think it’s worth the price? There may be other questions, too, if you know where to look.
This game will be made in Twine. Not only is Twine cross-platform; I know it pretty well, and I think the intimate feel of a Twine game is ideal for this story. After all: most of it goes on inside your head. [Edit: Due to getting lotsandlots of new ideas, I made it in RPG Maker instead. :p The end result is very different from the original Twine, but in a good way, I think.]
