When creating the level design for World of Whimsy I noticed something strange. My level design for World of whimsy feels drastically different than something I would do for Lithodora of Despair. It’s been a while since I split the project so I thought I’d mark a few differences as of now.

• World of Whimsy has much more platforming
  This seems to be a bit of a trend for my “ficticious” games. Hopefully I don’t set myself up to rely to much on platforming.Thinking of unique platforming ideas is hard enough without having to think inside the real world’s box.
  
•  Lithodora is more Cinematic
  Thus far it probably seems like I’m shifting focus away from the game. In honesty, I am in a way. The game has always been crafted from the story, never the other way around. Naturally, I’m going to get more in touch with the script.
• Lithodora is more 3D
  While both games will be 3D, World of Whimsy mostly plays in a Tale of the Night like manner.
• World of Whimsy may have easier puzzles
  Depending on the reaction to World of Whimsy’s puzzles, I may crank up the difficulty of the puzzles in Lithodora. Either way, Lithodora will be more puzzle based.

There will obviously be a ton of other improvements from Whimsy to Lithodora but going from project to project the taste will definitely be different.

I haven’t even finished Whimsy it already seems that next project will have a different feel from the last. I can’t seem to make 2 games that play the same.

While I may not be done with the prototype, I do at least have something to show.

What’s the cause for delay this time? Well, after tinkering around with the stage almost endlessly, I just couldn’t get it to feel right.

You may recall this image on the left that I posted 2 months ago.  Finally, got the bright idea of actually working off my concept art, (which is what it’s for in the first place!).

Long story short, I ended up with this. picture on the right. I’m pretty satisfied with it! I also found it funny how the recreation points how barren the scene actually is.

I know I don’t make my dates, but I”m going to set another one! This time I have a date that’s kinda special to me because I keep remembering for whatever reason, July 24th! How much can I do in 9 days, stay tuned and find out!

My apologies for the lack of updates. I’ve been on a bit of a development bender but I’m back on course.

The game isn’t seaming together as well as I thought it would. Turns out building all the pieces and then trying to glue them together near the end isn’t the best approach, so I’ve been scaling the project back and introducing one thing at a time. It really highlights how much you’re missing when you focus on the basics, but it’s a bit of a trade off knowing that unplanned additions can offset the foundation of the game (which still managed to happen several times). Even so, I like the basic approach, as everything tends to feel more whole.

Because the prototype version of the game won’t feature any combat, I’ve been forced to become more creative with my level design. That has been very time consuming but interesting because I’ve never had to be creative with level design before. Sprinkling enemies over miscellaneous landscapes was very easy.

Don’t trust me on this but I think I’ll have something to show around July 15th. Maybe later in case I want to add some music. : )
This prototype will be purely a 3D platformer.

It’s no secret that my 3D games have been well.. a blocky mess, but all that is set to change.

While my previous tools had the capacity to have a more refined setting, it was just so time consuming that I just opted to go with the ugly blocky style that you’ve been seeing the past few years. It’s funny how games I think look pretty good are considered ugly when I read reviews (there have been times where I’d agree upon playing them though). Honestly it doesn’t give me much hope for myself, as I’m not exactly an artist, and one person can only do so much (to make matters worse, that one person is a bit of a minimalist).

That doesn’t mean I’m not trying of course! Ultimately my graphics will depend on how I model my stages but I’ve been giving my tool extra special attention so that I’m able to make detailed environments in a timely fashion. I’m very proud of my little level editing tool. I’ve come a long way since using notepad to make stages.

One thing you’ll see a lot more of in this game, is curves. The screen on the right shows a few hills I made very quickly. Sadly, you could play through any of my games and never find anything as smooth as this picture. That said, I consider this a nice start. I believe that making many detailed environments won’t be a problem this time around.

With the amount of effort going into this I’m beginning to wonder if I should bump this up to an Arcade release. The project has already gotten bigger than I originally planned. Either way I’m very pleased how this is turning out!

Hopefully the music can follow suite.

It’s amazing how ideas evolve over time. One of the things I could never wrap my head around was the chapter select. As strange as it sounds, I’ve always looked at my game in an RPG style fashion and one thing I never notice with RPGs is chapter selects. Of course there are technical issues that would make chapter selects very complex, but is that really the only thing stopping companies now? I believe, in terms of RPGs or more story based games, people have simply become use to the idea that the integrity of the story is upheld only by one long continuous stream of actions that can’t be changed.

I feel that approach to be too limited. The user should be able to pick out portions of the game they wish to replay without having to experience the whole thing over. This can be done with books and movies, why not games? (They’re all essentially in the same category now)

So with World of Whimsy I will be introducing a Chapter Select system, that will pave the way for ideas I plan for future titles. The game will likely be so short I probably wont really need one, but because it’s so short, I can give it a really thorough testing.

This may seem like reinventing the wheel, but trust me when I say there are a lot of hidden benefits. The only time I don’t see this working, is with games that have choices (Mass Effect).
This idea was actually inspired by the Phoenix Wright series.

While I’m back to my productive streak, it’s pretty obvious I won’t be making that demo May.

Here’s the part where I say June is most definitely the month, but I’m not going to say it. I don’t see the prototype going pass June but still I won’t say it. It’s almost like I jinx myself. The good news is, once the game is in prototype form a release shouldn’t be very far behind. It took roughly a month to put Tandem Tales together.