#I still plan on adding minigames at some point

[blank-house]

If funding and time wasn't an issue, what would you add into the game? What features/ideas did you guys have to cut because it just didn't seem feasible? I'm really curious what your guys' "ideal" version of the game would be.

Honestly? My ideal version is already happening or uhh i.e none of the super important features/ideas I wanted in game have been cut yet! So I’m optimistic (and delusional) that that will remain the same as we continue development.

That being said— we did have to cut like three minigames from the spring demo because it was a programming and art effort that didn’t really net much gain?

For example, in the rainy event— I wanted to do a cooking mama segment where you actually did have to chop, season, and stir the pot to make the soup. But from a development perspective, it didn’t add anything to the narrative and it ultimately would’ve been a waste of our time since it wouldn’t be reused.

Soooo bye bye it went!

[slasheru]

Slasher U Update Roadmap: End of 2023!

Holy crap, it's been a hell of year, hasn't it?! Slasher U Act 1 came out at the end of April 2023 and there's been SO MUCH that's changed!

Things that were added in post-launch Slasher U Act 1 updates:

Sawyer's entire romance arc, storyline, and hookup/makeout games

Outfits

Bartending

The ability to talk to Dark Tate post-coitally

Butterflies and crows (fighting crows used to crash your game)

The entire good UI

Characters including Cliff, Stitcherella, Jennykind, Paisleigh, Tanya, and I'm pretty sure Kennedy was a very early addition, too

And that's not counting the tweaks, fixes, and content! In the interest of continuing to Ship of Theseus this game into the best dating sim ever (no biggie, right?), I have the following updates planned before the end of 2023 for Act 1!

Accessibility settings: A way to opt out of minigames with a random roll based on your personality stats (different stat per minigame as appropriate!)

Refining the places you can get personality points in Act 1

Customization: Cane accessories! These will run on a different band than outfits so you can mix and match them/equip them alongside outfits!

Finance: I made everything in the game on the pricey/"realistic" side and the money you get from gigs relatively low because A) college and B) i kind of thought it would both be funny/reflective of shitty college jobs AND a nice incentive to grind some minigames but. I think the economy needs a bit of a fix, right? ;) (in the meantime, try typing InfiniteMoneyVent with the caps correct in the Cheat Codes menu when you're in-game! Your wallet will be a little fuller!)

There are 27 major bugs left in the list for me to tackle as of now, most of them are routine but there are 3 or 4 harder ones to tackle (naming save files is being a beeeetch specifically because afaik Wolf wipes any additional system string variables even if you specify a larger variable count list? My engine just is like "naw actually I'm not saving that"?)

Prior Planned Quality of Life Stuff: Either a way to name your save files OR a way to make your character name appear under your save file (this used to happen but there was a bug where all names would default to your last used character name)

WHITE WHALE HOLY GRAIL I'm still trying to fix the text box bug! This actually isn't borked in the vanilla version of the WRPG engine but I can't fucking figure out how to fix it with the way I've set up the UI (I think? I THINK?!). This is realistically the last bug to get fixed due to my own ineptitude, so I'm hoping to A) make autosaves automatically turned on and B) making Data 1's save slot unusable so it's reserved for autosaves!

There's ALSO a couple content updates for Act 1 still (nothing major, except for, uh, ONE MAJOR THING, haha):

The Truth or Dare minigame/scenario is now going to be included in the Act 1 game, but take place after the Act 2 bumper (post-murder-attempt)

This is already in there but the preamble for Dark Tate's continuing storyline, and Laila's Act 2, activates after the murder attempt

I'll be adding Hex, Juno, and Sawyer's Act 2 lead-ins, plus regular Tate's lead-in, as I work on Act 2

Resolving the storylines (or, if you're being a Chaotic Evil type of player, ruining everyone's life) with story choices/quests for non-dateables: Act 2 will include more Sawyer/Horsemike story, and personal quests for Melyssa, Professor Plutonium, and partially Veronika/Archibald (theirs will continue into Act 3)

Maybe I'll let you fight crows again. MAYBE.

I'm ALSO working on Act 2, which has a lot of new features (notably permanent cosmetic upgrades like a piercing system and tattoos) as well as new content (obvi lmao), but I really want to find a way to offer early access passes to folks who didn't make it to the Crowdfundr (maybe via Patreon)?

Here are some Act 2 features that I'm excited to include/are already being worked on (you'll recognize a lot of these from fanvotes!)

Piercing/Tattoo Parlor

Headless Horsemike one-off hookup minigame

Tate's movie date (yes it's scripted and implemented, it'll be in the next Act 2 update lol. I KNOW I KNOW :D )

Being able to run the speakeasy/sex dungeon as a little moneymaking game in and of itself (well. More for the speakeasy. The sex dungeon is mostly for sex. You're welcome, Sawyer Enjoyers)

Being able to gift outfits to dateables

I'm personally super hype for Tate's storyline (which also involves some other students?? ooo????) and how that's going to mechanically shake out, PLUS, tattoos. Oh my god. TATTOOS GUYS. Plus, the piercing system works like IRL-style - you have to get pierced, then buy jewelry for your piercing if you want to replace your starter/healer gear! I'm a big fan of body mods IRL and having a more realistic piercing/tattoo system was important to me!

Can't wait for next year AND to bring y'all more Slasher U!!!!!!!!! Making video games is literally my favorite thing to do in the whole wide world and I can't imagine doing anything else with my life :')))) (one day I'll be able to do this FULL-full time instead of on top of reviewing medical documents and drawing IP comics for Big Corpo)

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE BEST FUCKIN' 6 MONTHS OF GAME DEV I COULD EVER FUCKING ASK FOR!!!!!!!!!! You guys rule :')))))))))))

xoxooxoxoxoxox, Professor Plutonium

[kooldewd123]

one of the smaller leaked details from the teraleak about plza got me thinking about what i'd like to see in terms of shiny hunting mechanics, and i ended up going down a rabbit hole and ranking the games by how much i enjoy shiny hunting in them (roughly ordered within tiers):

reasonings beneath the break, i've got a LOT of thoughts to infodump:

SM/USUM: sos chaining is my absolute favorite shiny hunting method. there's a really fun element of preparation to it that i think most other methods lack - researching your target pokemon, looking for any recoil or status move that may be an issue, figuring out how to plan around it, etc. it's a fun planning game that can easily make individual hunts much more memorable than simply “wow this one was so quick/long” when you see your plans come to fruition. usum improved it even further with some small mechanical tweaks, plus an expanded dex to hunt through. also in usum is the ultra warp ride. the wormhole shinies are honestly so easy that their allure wears off super quick, but the actual minigame attached to them is pretty fun. that said, the real star of the uwr are the legendaries and ultra beasts, all available through soft resetting. i love soft resetting for mostly the same reasons as sos chaining: you've got one chance to catch this legendary, so you better go in with a solid game plan and make it count once you finally see those sparkles. or if you want a different sort of challenge, you can always go for one of the gift pokemon instead: poipole, type:null, and ash cap pikachu. no battle required, but no shiny charm, either, with the added clout value that their shinies haven’t been available since. alola was my gateway to shiny hunting, but even trying to account for nostalgia, i still think it has some of the most engaging hunts to this day.

XY: i feel like kalos is really overlooked nowadays when it comes to shiny hunting, but it’s one of my absolute favorites. friend safari is always one of the first things that comes to mind whenever i think about shiny hunting. it’s a really cool community-driven shiny hunting experience. i spent so much time just exchanging friend codes to find the shines i needed, and i was always able to find a thriving friend safari community all the way up through swsh’s lifespan until i finally caught every possible shiny i could from it (i wonder how they’re doing now that the 3ds servers are shut down?). this is also the best region for fossil resets - most of the fossil are readily available in large quantities, so you can stock up as much as you'd like and revive them all at once to see if any surprises pop out at you. between friend safari, fossil resets, and horde hunting, xy has a lot of good mindless shiny hunts. a lot of the time, shiny hunting is just something for me to do with my hands while i’m bored, and xy excels at that. oh yeah, there’s also pokeradar in this one, too. i could never quite figure out how to work it.

SWSH: swsh gets massive bonus points for being the only game where masuda hunting is actually fun tbh. the fact that zl can be used as a replacement for the a button means that you can just gather up eggs one-handed at the route 5 nursery, then you can use the 3d camera in the wild area to easily spin in circles to hatch them without even needing to return to a pc box every five minutes like before. as for the rest of the shiny stuff in this game… the intended shiny hunting method is laughably pointless and dynamax adventures, while a neat concept, are only fun if you actually have friends to play it with. otherwise, you’re stuck dealing with either braindead npcs or even more braindead randoms. like i said before, i love planning out big hunts, but in dynamax adventures, so much of it is out of your control that it’s just completely unfun to me (at least we got the regis and swords of justice huntable through run aways. those are some really fun hunts as a consolation prize). honestly, i’m definitely placing these games several spots higher than they probably should be, but sword is possibly my most played game ever due to the sheer amount of masuda breeding i’ve done in it, so that has to count for something.

GSC: okay i know these are a curveball compared to everything else on the list. when these games came to the 3ds virtual console, i did some rby glitching to get a shiny ditto into them and honestly? probably my second favorite game in terms of breeding after swsh. because shininess is determined by ivs in these games, a shiny ditto parent gives every child a flat 1/64 shiny rate, balanced by the fact that the oval charm and flame body don’t exist yet. what you end up with is a situation where you get eggs much more slowly, but with hunt times still comparable to modern-day masuda hunting, and i personally found something about this arrangement really satisfying. every egg has so much more build-up to it, and so despite the slower pace, it somehow still felt more consistently exciting than perhaps any other shiny hunting method. crystal has some additional shiny fun with the odd egg if you feel like doing a bit of save manipulation with it (plus obligatory shiny celebi comment).

PLA: i know this is a very niche and odd opinion to have, but pla handles loading pokemon into the overworld better than any other game with overworld pokemon. the format of having distinct separate regions that you can load and unload at will, with pokemon (even those not yet spawned) being preset at the moment of loading and persisting until being forcibly unloaded, is something that i truly hope carries forward into future entries. it creates a world that feels much more natural, and yet is also highly exploitable on a gameplay level. resetting the regions until you find an outbreak, and then traveling to that outbreak to search for shinies, is a compelling gameplay loop that implements very video game-y elements in a way that i particularly enjoy. the differentiation between mass outbreaks and massive mass outbreaks also adds a fun trade-off into the mix: do you target a specific pokemon at lower odds or do you go for a grab bag of random pokemon at higher odds? i do have one big complaint, however, and it’s gonna sound kinda insane. it is nearly impossible to actually fail a shiny in this game. they persist through saves, they don’t respawn when you run, they even give off a distinct jingle when they’re in your vicinity. if there is a shiny near you, you are gonna find it, and you are probably gonna catch it. and personally… i don’t really care for this arrangement. the risk of failure is an integral part of shiny hunting. making it too safe makes the accomplishment feel a bit more hollow to me. i wish there was a way to disable the shiny sound. i feel like if they weren’t so blatantly telegraphed and were still a bit harder to find in the first place, it would balance out the safety nets the game gives you somewhat.

LGPE: i feel like i’ve come to appreciate lgpe a lot more as time has gone on. the catch combo system is a nice simple numbers game - just keep catching the same pokemon and shiny odds go up. simple, elegant, satisfying. the big drawback is the fact that the motion controls are uuuhh. less than ideal. but it’s easy enough to build a combo back up that it doesn’t usually feel like too big of a setback if something goes wrong. also the fact that you can use the in-game trading mechanics to hunt the alola variants is pretty nifty! i should get back in and try one of those hunts sometime.

BDSP: after not being able to get into pokeradar hunting in xy or the original dp, i was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable i found it in bdsp. it has a really good sense of risk and reward as you try to map out the safest path you can, which makes it super gratifying when your skills and luck are good enough to bring your chain all the way up to 40. honestly, the fact that the shiny charm doesn’t work in this game is a complete nonissue for me, because the pokeradar doesn’t even need it. of course, this game also has the added fun of not shiny locking anything except some tie-in bonuses. you can shiny hunt any legendary from the first four generations, and you can even go for the sinnoh mythicals as well (the event to get their items is over now, but i believe it’s still possible to glitch your way to them anyway).

SV: sparkling sandwiches are probably the shiny hunting mechanic i’m most split on. once again, there’s a really good strategic element to it that i enjoy: trying to figure out where on the map you can locate your target pokemon with as little type overlap in the surrounding area as possible, and then once you’ve begun your hunt, finding the best path to spawn them in as quickly as possible. on the other hand, however, probably my biggest hot take of sv is that the sandwiches bump the shiny rate up way too high. in my first shiny hunting excursion of the game, i found five shinies in the span of two sandwiches, and as a whole, that’s been more the norm than an exception. most shiny hunts in this game are over so quickly that i don’t feel all that rewarded for accomplishing them. the process of acquiring herba mystica is a good bottleneck keeping it from spiraling entirely out of control, but it feels so distinct from the actual shiny hunting process that it doesn’t help alleviate those feelings for me.

ORAS: i don’t hate shiny hunting in oras or anything, but i don’t think it does anything exceptionally well, either. horde hunting is just as fun as it is in xy, although it’s fairly easy to exhaust the catalogue of huntable pokemon in both games. soft resetting legendaries is here, although for some of them, they require lengthy trips to the encounter point each time and you’re better off sticking with usum or even bdsp instead if you wanna hunt them. the standout is dexnav - frankly, i’ve warmed up to it a lot over the years, but i think it’s still the roughest chaining mechanic. the search function is simple to understand, and the mirage spots and hidden pokemon inject a bunch of new encounters to hunt for. that said, i think the sneaking aspect of it never feels quite right with a 3ds circle pad, and having to constantly swap between battles and sneaking means that it’s hard to stay in a groove. i don’t mind dexnav, but it’s rarely my first choice.

[mixing0]

Ideas for a potential (and ideal for my tastes) Kirby Party game!!

This'll be long, obviously, so I'm leaving everything under the cut.

At its core, the game is a literal copy-and-paste of classic Mario Party. Everyone moves around the board, gathering more of a select item than their competitors to win, with minigames sprinkled throughout. No differences there. The difference comes from what the objects are, in this case.

On the topic of stars:

Here, stars are replaced with food items, given out by Kawasaki who replaces Toad. Whenever Kawasaki is moved, through any means, he prepares a new, unique food item.

When you get to Kawasaki, you can spend 20 point-stars (the Kirby equivalent of coins) for whatever he offers. Or you could spend 25 point-stars to get a different food selected at random.

Why does this matter? Because you can eat these food items for special bonuses, offering a nice helping of strategy to the established norm. Eating them means you lose a point, however, so it should be used very carefully to be effective.

Outside of those, at least one food is offered that has no stat effects and is just your bog standard.

On the topic of items:

Originally, I had planned for most of the items to come straight from Mario Party 2, but after looking more closely into the item system of Parties 5-7 (mainly 6 because it serves as another big influence on the project), I fell in love with the nuance and strategy that could be employed.

With that in mind, I was thinking about revamping the item system and number of items to better fall in line with this style. However, I'll still share the old item lineup, just for personal reference:

Wheelies act as mushrooms, letting you roll two dice blocks, while Rex Wheelies let you roll three.

Warp Stars act as, well, Warp Blocks, letting you swap places with a random player.

The Dimension Mirror allows you to move backward along a board when used. (And this will be more costly, so as not to be absolutely broken like the Reverse Mushroom was.)

The Vat-luck moves Kawasaki to a different space.

The Noddy Network calls Nightmare upon a player of your choosing.

The Enticing Cheese calls Daroach, while the Stinky Cheese prevents Daroach from stealing from you.

The Dinner Bell warps you straight to Kawasaki.

The Invisibility Stone lets you walk through alternate pathways.

The Nebula Chest steals a random item.

The Dueler's Sword... is self-explanatory.

On the topic of boards:

I conceptualized 12 main boards for the game. At the moment, they are:

Augmented Area (Technology-themed.)

Foody Feilds (Grassland, Food-centric theming.)

Corruption Cavern (Mining cave theme.)

Dusky Drawings (Spooky Mansion + Art theme)

Basalt Boulevard (Fire/Lava theme)

Royalty Ring (Castle theme)

Headstrong Honky-tonk (A casino in Merry Magoland.)

Galvanized Garden

Sanguine Sands (Western theme)

Mauve Mountain

Impeccable Iceberg

Nightmare's Nexus (Space Theme)

I may end up removing some of these, adding more, or changing a few of these ideas around.

On the topic of characters:

The roster includes:

Kirby

King Dedede

Meta Knight

Bandana Dee

Marx

Gooey

Adeleine

Ribbon

Magolor

Taranza

Susie

Elfilin

With the following making an appearance as non-playable characters:

Kawasaki (as the host.)

Nightmare (filling Bowser's role.)

Escargoon (who owns the bank.)

Daroach (filling in for Boo.)

Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright (who operate the day/night cycle.)

and other well-known enemies (who serve the other roles as needed.)

Each playable character will have a unique outfit for every board except for two. No one will have a unique outfit on Basalt Boulevard, and everyone will have a unique outfit on Nightmare's Nexus.

The character that does not have a unique outfit on the given board plays an integral role at the end if they lose, triggering a boss fight that acts as a final minigame (sort of similar to the boss minigames in Mario Party 9).

And that's everything I had! I hope you guys like my ideas!

Oh, and be sure to look out for the art I'll be making for this in the future. I've already made a few things for it, but they're all so old now that I feel like revamping them.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Toontown Rewritten Recap: November 2002 (Part 2)

November 9, 2002

Sir Max reveals that they’ve removed the instant transportation the Trolley previously used, and replaced it with a roundabout called “Trolley Tracks”. (Sir Max assures us that the Toon responsible for that name has been fired… Out of a canon.)

How does “Trolley Tracks” work?

All of the participating Toons get a set number of votes, and vote to go either up or down.

At the end of the tracks are a series of tunnels that lead to various Trolley games. Winning those Trolley games earns the Toons more votes. After three Trolley games, the Toons can get off the Trolley or ride again.

Additionally, Toon Memory Game has been added. 1-4 Toons can now try to match pairs of cards to score points. Clear the board to win.

The Great Umbrella Shortage has ended! Now Toon Slingshot can be played with friends!

Bingo cards have been placed at every Fishing Pond, so Toons can now play bingo for even MORE Jellybeans! They’ve all been given hardwood rods and bigger Jellybean Jars to boot!

Loony Labs has invented the Toon TAGS. These are basically holographic nametags that float over every Toon in Town, meaning you don’t have to worry about forgetting your friends’ names anymore! Thank you Loony Labs! I would never be able to forgive myself if I forgot duchess of the clover’s name!

(Note: Trolley Tracks is typically a Thursday-only thing, and Fishing Bingo Wednesday only, but I have no idea if this was true of Alpha testing, given that they were implemented on a SATURDAY! Then again, Saturdays typically rotate through all Weekly Holidays, so…)

November 10, 2002

Upon being allowed back into the Toon Council the previous evening, Sir Max attempts to pitch one more Trolley game before they declare the Trolley games done: Robot Thief.

Unlike Canon Tag and Crane Dozers, the Toon Council actually likes Sir Max’s idea this time, being outright moved to tears by how beautiful they are. After raising him for his first ever good idea, they asked how soon he can make his beautiful dream a reality.

Upon seeing how much debt his idea would put them in, they kicked him out of the meeting.

Before Sir Max could build a top-down minigame on public property, however, he was stopped by a Toon from Loony Labs. The Silly Scientist somehow already knew about Sir Max’s brilliant plan, and promised to foot the bill for the Toon Council.

With a new arena constructed by Loony Labs, “Robot Thief” discards the “top down” view of Cog Thief in favor of the same third-person POV used in the rest of the game, complete with a designated pie-throwing button taken from one of Toontown Online’s boss fights. It otherwise works exactly like Cog Thief, but actually fun to play!

Indeed, the Robot Thief overhaul was so popular, that it’s still in Rewritten today!

November 11, 2002

Hawkheart had been getting reports and complaints of Fishing Bingo not working properly, and so navigated the under-construction streets to get to the Fishing Bingo Office and tell off the Bingo Operator.

Halfway through his lecture, Hawkheart got fed up with the Bingo Operator refusing to acknowledge him, and turned the Operator’s swivel chair around so he could look them in the eye while telling them off.

Turns out there was no Bingo Operator. The entire system was automated and had never been switched on.

Oops.

Ah well, easy enough to fix!

November 12, 2002

Sir Max considered this update to be cringe-worthy, as all that got added were the “Cringe”, “Bored”, “Confused”, and “Think” emotes.

They would be continuing to add four emotions per day over the next four days.

(Out of character, the devs asked if their players thought that “emotions” should be renamed “animations” to fit with the cartoon theme.)

November 13, 2002

Sir Max found Fat McStink’s “Doglet” script laying around, and decided to make some edits to it.

He also announced the induction of the “Delighted” emote, while the script he was editing called for the use of the “Dance”, “Applause”, and “Bow” emotes. Conveniently, those are the other three emotions that got added that day.

Also, TTR Staff were given special Toon TAGS: Toon Troopers were given yellow tags, while Resistance Rangers were given green tags.

For reference, Sir Max is a Toon Trooper.

November 14, 2002

Sir Max wanted to teach everyone how to do the Flop. Either the “Belly Flop” or “Banana Peel” emotes will do. The “Cry” and “Laughter” emotes were also added.

November 15, 2002

The last batch of emotes were delayed by one day.

Professor Propostera announced that he was studying “The Gray”, a strange “space beyond spaces” that Toons can sometimes see through holes in geometry, or fall into if they happen to phase through something.

Out of universe, the Gray is just a nickname for the “out of bounds” area you can clip into in certain places. This update just patched up some level geometry so you couldn’t see it in Ice Slide, and also patched out certain glitches that’d allow Toons to clip out of bounds. It’s called “The Gray” because it’s an endless gray void outside of the game’s skybox.

Irrelevant, but if you jump while in the Gray, your Toon will just get frozen halfway through the animation and never land. You should still be able to move, but I just thought it was funny.

November 16, 2002

So, no emotes were added, but Sir Max announced something equally exciting: Donald’s Dock was now open for business!

In addition to this, Punchline Place (the street that connects Toontown Central to Donald’s Dock) was now open for business as well!

Also, Toontown Central’s Toon HQ was now open for visitors! It’s not quite complete YET, but soon it’ll be able to serve as a hub for all of Toontown’s tasking needs!

To celebrate, free Ice Cream treasures were deposited all over Toontown Central!

Also, Sir Max decided to open a photography business! First, he just needed some Toons to hop on the Trolley, ride it in a circle so they get off at the playground, take these ambiguously stolen cameras, and take pictures of all the Toons running around the Playground.

Unrelated, but Photo Fun was added to the Trolley Game rotation!

Photo Fun simply requires the player to take pictures of the various Toons doing certain things, and earning more jellybeans the closer the picture is to the goal.

-

I know I said this before but I do find it great how they just. Roleplayed the fuck out of this.

[theunwellkingdom]

Design Deep-Dive #4: Lands Week - Designing the Illusory Palace

One big takeaway from researching set cubes is that mana bases in an average MtG set have a tendency to be very weak, to the point that many cubes will pad out the quantity and quality of mana-fixing lands from other sets.

For the Unwell Kingdom to remain self-contained, I knew I'd need some solid lands... but I also knew that each card in the set is precious, representing hours of work for me to design and illustrate! I wanted to find a way to make color-fixing consistent without devoting a huge chunk of the set list to do it. To solve this, I looked to real Magic cards, hoping to find some insights...

What Would Wizards Do?

Two existing lands stuck out to me as potential solutions, though each came with caveats.

Evolving Wilds is a quintessential fixer that gets reprinted constantly. It's simple, familiar, and flexible -- not strong enough to see much constructed play, but a welcome sight when building a limited deck! However, in this set cube environment, even Common cards only exist as 4 copies total. That alone wouldn't cut it, but printing more might enable greedy decks with too many splashed colors!

So I turned to a set designed for high-powered draft play: Double Masters. For those draft boosters, WotC tried something bold: a land guaranteed in every pack called Cryptic Spires. The Spires function as a tapped two-color land, which is nothing special, but this time there was a twist! Before shuffling up to play, you could choose the colors on each copy by physically marking the cards.

This proved to be an elegant solution with some serious pain points. Obviously, I don't want people writing on my cards in a set that's meant to be replayed. My solution couldn't be single-use. Second, it could be tricky to tell which colors were picked, since the art stayed the same. And lastly, it introduced a minigame to deck building that seemed more fatiguing than fun... Adding even a simple choice to a card can take precious time away from more pressing deck building decisions.

By combining aspects of Evolving Wilds and Cryptic Spires, I found my answer:

Introducing: The Illusory Palace

The Illusory Palace is both a single card and 10 unique ones -- one for each color pair. It will be the 16th card in each Unwell Kingdom pack, a guaranteed extra slot!

It has two functions. You can sac it like an Evolving Wilds to grab a basic land from your library, with the restriction that you must stay within its color pair. The land enters tapped, so it's a bit slow, but thinning a land out of your deck never hurts!

Alternatively, you can use it right away as a filter land, paying a mana in to get a mana out in one of its colors! This still nets you one fewer mana for the turn, but it can allow you to tap into that color pair the turn you play it! You can also use this side of it if you can't decide which color basic to commit to, and keep paying extra for the flexibility.

My hope is that Illusory Palace will make it much easier to play two- and even three-color decks without ever feeling like the star of the show. Guaranteeing one in each pack should make it feel like a solid backup plan in case you don't find some of the more powerful lands lurking in the set...

Tomorrow on Lands Week! Tri-Lands of the Unwell Kingdom

UWK Lands Week >Designing the Illusory Palace The Tri-Lands Discard/Sac Lands Utility Lands Back to Basics

[rosieuv]

Yet another fangame idea (this time Danganronpa edition)

Okay so this is a lot more all over the place as I'm still coming up with the basic plot.

So this takes place after V3. A fan of the TV show is annoyed that it's ended and also has comvenient acess to a time machine, so they go back in time to the 2000s where the dispair thing hasn't happened yet, and takes over an international private school somewhere in england to create a killing game that they can participate in or something. None of the ultimate titles are official in the sense that they're from hope's peack, but the mastermind added them for authencisity.

The game will be much, much shorter than a regular DR game and it'll not really stick to the formula of the official games and sorta do it's own thing. I have a plan at one point in a trial, this dutch ballet dancer pulls out 2 guns and starts to shoot everyone so that only they survive and so the killing game forcefully ends. They fail.

Another idea I have is that the mastermind (ie the one controlling whatever the pound shop monokuma of this game will be) is in the game themselves and is in full control of everything (like if the real junko enoshima was in the first game from the start as one of the students, not like tsumigi who's more of a pawn for monokuma and the other show people) and towards the end they get murdered but the "a body has been discovered" doesn't play (cause they're dead) and the last 2 people spend the last chapter trying to figure out what's going on.

Deaths! I have a few in mind. There's this post about Kyoko's original death being her chopped up and cooked into the food in chapter 1. I'm taking that idea, making the blood red, and the "a body has been discovered" announcement plays when they're all eating stew and they're all confused as everybody but the dead person is here in this room so how could a body have been discovered? Then someone finds the leftover corpse with blood, skin, bones etc on the floor in a cupboard somewhere. Another one is for the execution of a pastry chef where they get their blood drained, chucked into a massive mixing bowl, other ingredients get added, and then the electric mixer turns on and you can imagine how that goes. Also the blood from earlier is for the icing. I'm not sure of the other details but I want a garderner to be eaten by a massive venus flytrap.

My idea is that it's from the perspective of one of the NPCs, so it's a lot more visual novel-y (thankfully, all those trial minigames would take me years to code) and could possibly have multiple endings?

The ideas for the ultimates:

The role of the protagonist: ultimate physician

ultimate gardener

ultimate spy (mastermind disguised as a diffrent ultimate)

ultimate pastry chef (fancy baker)

ultimate ballet dancer (the unhinged one and possibly the controlable character? I came up with their character like 5 hours ago but I can already tell they're going to be my favourite to write)

ultimate geographer (also australian cause why not)

ultimate critic

some others that are based on cultures and stuff around the world

And yeah that's all I have at this current time.

[ninjakittenarmy]

There was this one show called Defiance that was all in all a very solid sci-fi series with the glaring exception of the fact that the show seemed to be on a mission to find any excuse to have as many characters fuck as possible regardless of whether it made any sense or gelled with any previous characterization. There was this arc that lasted maybe three episodes of someone sleeping with the main character, who was many years her senior, to get back at her ex, despite there having been zero instances of sexual tension between them. This is portrayed as sexy. This sort of thing has multiple times in the show. More than I could sum up.

Agents of SHIELD had an issue where they did a thing where two agents started sleeping together. These agents never expressed attraction to each other before and the whole plot was going on for like half the season, but only got mentioned three times if that and immediately ended once one of the agents turned traitor. There was a fair bit of drama with the traitor thing but this relationship was dropped immediately and only ever brought up once as mid-fight banter. This is the main example from that show, though there were some others.

There was this one but in The Walking Dead back when I still watched it where Glen and Maggie were supposed to be keeping watch together. You know, because there’s a crazed warlord planning to attack them, and also the hordes of undead, and they for some reason decide that rather than do that, they’re gonna bang in the prison watchtower. This has NO effect whatsoever on any events later. Their abandoning their post doesn’t lead to any negative consequences. It’s just really dumb.

God of War is pretty infamous for this. Gratuitous sex and nudity is something that series is infamous for. There’s at least one character (an oracle I think) who wears nothing but see through pieces of fabric while giving completely serious exposition. One of the games has a sex mini game with Aphrodite which yeah, that’s in character for her but what the fuck is the point of having an offscreen sex minigame represented by a series of quicktime events?

There’s Quantic Dream’s games. Fahrenheit has two of the main characters have sex in a subway box car after like, 5 lines of dialogue between them max. One of these characters saw his ex wife (whom he still loved) fall to her death literally a day ago and has also been reanimated. He is noted to have no body heat. Heavy Rain meanwhile has two of the four main characters screw in a motel room. There IS buildup romantically to this but they’re kinda looking for the guy’s missing son, who has very little time left to live if they don’t hurry, and while he needs to rest too, he’s also covered in countless horrific injuries. And that’s to say nothing of the random shower scenes the dev is obsessed with adding.

There’s Metal Gear Solid V which has Quiet, a character who inexplicably has to be almost naked to breath through her skin because she was burned to near death and healed with photosynthetic parasites that somehow allow her to photosynthesize in lieu of breathing. I shut you not. Despite this her outfit uses tights. There is a scene of her naked in the rain so she can absorb the water. For context, the first character with these parasites was a hundred year old man. He did not need to be naked for them to work. He wore a full ghillie suit.

This is notably NOT an exhaustive list of media I have seen where sex scenes impeded the story, pacing, or characters. It happens far too often for me to cite every example. I legitimately have no idea how you hear “this is a big problem” and think “cite every single example that you’ve ever seen” is a sensible request. If I could list every example off the top of my head, it wouldn’t be that big a problem and we wouldn’t be having this discourse in the first place. Nonetheless, they are the most egregious examples that come to mind at the moment.

my advice for the sex scene averse crowd ultimately is the same as my advice for the long movie haters: just don’t fucking watch it man idk i’m not your mother

[tribaloflight]

((Just for my own personal satisfaction, I want to give some of my thoughts on Rebirth after having finished most everything in the game save for the superboss and some side stuff and dumping over 100 hours into the game. These are really in no particular order, but I'm numbering them out of habit.

Spoilers, naturally.

First, I'm kinda disappointed Deepground didn't show up at all after being brought back in Integrade. I figured that if they were going to show back up in the plot, that Scarlet, Rufus, or someone would have sent them after Cloud and company instead of just constantly relying on Rude and Elena. Only time any of the Tsviets shows up is in yuffie's 'trial' at the Temple of the Ancients where she relives her trauma of seeing Nero murder Sonon. Really hope they actually use the Tsviets in the third game otherwise having them in Integrade was kinda pointless.

Second, the minigame overload. I obviously expected a lot of holdover from the original like the gold saucer, fort condor, etc. But they added a lot more and actually trying to 100% them with my mediocre skills became so tedious that I just gave up on it towards the end to actually enjoy the story. I highly doubt I'll ever finish everything with Johnny because of that. It's just way too much of a grind.

Third, their handling of Cid, Vincent, and alterations to story content. Being absolutely honest: Cid and Vincent feel totally wasted here. Not only are they not playable characters, they are barely characters at all here. I get with how the game being based around disc 1 of the original that wouldn't give them much time to be usable given how late in that disc they joined, but they feel more like props than anything. It doesn't help that they completely cut out Rocket town for Cid which helped establish his character. Currently, I'm not even sure if that part of his backstory is even still canon in the rebirth continuity. Another thing is removing most of the northern continent stuff. Sure Icicle inn and the glacier didn't do much for the story save for visiting professor Gast's old lab and getting the info about his and Ilfana's relationship/Hojo murdering them but it's still worldbuilding they dropped for reasons of pacing. And to that, it's also incredibly weird how they literally moved where the temple of the ancients was, changing it from an island in the southern sea to RIGHT OUTSIDE THE SLEEPING FOREST. If that doesn't scream 'convenient', I don't know what does.

Finally, the ending. It really reached Kingdom hearts levels of confusing.

I get Sephiroth's new plan. He wants to make a reunion of all separate timelines of Final Fantasy VII into one where he controls all. Clearly the efforts from the first game created a new one where Zack lived. Also from the scene at the capital, there's likely at least one where Cloud had saved Aerith from Sephiroth and she IS still alive. The only thing is whether or not it's in the current rebirth timeline. Yes it looks like she is probably dead given only Cloud can see her, but it's not like they haven't made retcons before. The entire beginning of rebirth was one to the scene from Integrade. The plot point for the final game is set: Zack is going to work to try and find a way into the Rebirth timeline to help Cloud and the others stop Sephiroth. Hopefully this includes bringing Aerith with him, because frankly him living and her staying dead really reads as a cruel joke. Same if he ends up dying in the next game trying to protect the others.

And that's my greatest concern for the sequel. They make all these overtures about changes and expanding the lore, only to have the end result still be the same? If Aerith and Zack are still dead by the end of the final game, then I can't see the trilogy as anything but pointless. They expanded the story so much only to reach the exact same conclusion. I would be fine with that, but if they were going to do that, they could have stuck with a simple remake and made it a single game, instead of a trilogy that spans what will likely be nearly a decade of game releases. There's legit potential here but if they play it too safe then I think it's going to rub a lot of fans the wrong way.

Finally, I am happy that they made Gilgamesh a big side character. He's a beloved series icon, one of the best parts of V and I've always enjoyed his involvement with Hildibrand stuff in XIV but I really don't like that they put his level at about 20 past what endgame was on average, meaning if I want to fight him I have to do an ungodly amount of grinding.))

[introdemodev]

How’s da game going?????

Here’s an update on how things are going. It���s three pages long. Cool.

Update 1.0.4?

As of now, I’m deciding not to proceed with the update anymore. I don’t want to rush through anything and I want to focus on the full game. I am still planning on a Fall/Winter 2022 release, but it’s possible that it could be out by the beginning of 2023 instead.

1.0.4 was supposed to focus more on accessibility features and update some older artwork. With the former, I want to spend as much time with implementing those features and figure out what needs to be added. Which segues me into…

Accessibility Features

I was just talking about this!

Some lines of dialogue do not sound right when read with a voice reader, so I need to figure out how to have it read properly when that feature is enabled. I also want the player to be able to toggle captions for sound effects, music, and cues. There are minigames that involve decrypting a made-up alphabet, so I need to find a way to make that more accessible.

I don’t believe anything I listed above in this section is impossible to do, but it will take me a while to implement properly. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around coding and I have a hard time grasping things that are more ‘technical’. I find these features to be very important so I would rather not rush through them.

These features will be in the full game at launch (along with some others) and you will have the option to toggle them on and off.

Art

There’s a lot of artwork in Introdemo, which is one of the reasons why the file size for the demo was so big. That, and some music files. 

I’m trying to figure out ways to not make the final size for the full game be 100GB. Saving images as pngs, then optimizing the images in png gauntlet, then saving them as png-8s cuts down on a lot and there’s no quality or color loss either. Moving forward, I plan on working with a more limited color palette, utilizing webms more, and….I dunno, I’m still thinking of other ideas. 

I also plan on updating some background art + sprites, but this will be saved for last. I learned the hard way not to update sprites in the middle of development, haha…..

Writing

I was about to make a spoiler joke, but actually, I have a few things to say here.

In the survey, a critique that came up a few times was that there were some scenes that went on for a little too long. One scene in particular was when Fennel meets Clyde in the hallway. There’s a lot of fluff that needs to be cut out. I do like long set-ups, but it’s incredibly difficult to pull off. Also, I’m kinda rambly and I think that reflects in my writing. This post is two pages long so far. Wow!

There were some scenes I didn’t have time to put in the demo. For example, the bathroom scene plays out the same, no matter what. I always wanted that scene to be a ‘checkpoint’, if that makes sense. If you had more bad boy points than good boy points, it plays out differently. It should give you an idea of what choices you should be making if you want a good or bad ending.

Also, proofreading. I will make sure to proofread everything thoroughly this time. Until 1.0.3., I did not think to use writing or proofreading software to catch my mistakes. Very stupid, I know. Of course, a program isn’t going to catch all of my errors so I’ll try my best to look things over and maybe look into getting a beta reader.

Gameplay

Introdemo is primarily a visual demo, so there’s not much to say about that. You read. You click to advance to keep reading (or hit the spacebar or enter key). The end.

Though, there are minigames throughout Introdemo. You do have the option of not playing them and you will not be penalized for doing so. Though, you are rewarded for playing them (sometimes). Choosing to play or avoid minigames reveals different information about the story and characters.

Anyways, I’ll try to talk a little bit about what I have planned for the minigames….

Look it’s Fridge and Bear from Fridge and Bear! 

What does throwing eggs have to do with Introdemo????? I wanted to test out a drag and click feature since it’ll appear later in the game.

Darcy’s minigame will be getting revamped too. 

Concept for it was helping Darcy brainstorm ideas for his romance novel. Mad Libs, but with decadent vampires. It’s a fun idea but it doesn’t add anything to the game or to the story. Instead of allowing you to type whatever, you’ll have a set of options you can select now. The minigame will still be about helping Darcy brainstorm for his book, but it will be relevant to Introdemo’s story now.

I’m still working on how I want the decryption minigame to play out, so there’ll be more info about that in a future blog post.

I also want to add an inventory list to Introdemo. Fennel doesn’t use/carry enough items to justify a complex system, but I believe having a list will come in handy. This game will be long so the reader might forget what Fennel is in possession of.

Other Stuff…

The reproductive health drive is now over, and I want to thank everyone who contributed to it. Some money went to itch.io, so I will have to wait until my fees are processed so I can give you guys the final amount. I will also be pitching my own money in too. 

The art book will continue to be worked on alongside the demo and will be released with it.. Another thing I learned: you cannot create a book overnight, did you guys know that??? I didn’t, and I spent a week working on that rough draft trying to figure that out. 

The full will still be free but the art book will be NYOP (as long as it’s a dollar or more).

That’s it for now. I’m sure there are a few things I missed, but I’ll cover it later. I just wanted to catch everyone up on how the game is doing. I’m just starting to work on it again after taking a couple months off from it. 

I want to thank everyone again for playing or checking out this blog! Thank you thank you thank you.

[skeletoninthemelonland]

Hey everybody!

I forgot to post this message before :P

I saw what's happening in the FNaF community right now, which is really serious (originally saw it on Twitter, certainly it was a bad idea). But I'm not bringing that up. I think we had enough of it, so don't ask me about it.

I wanted to clarify that I'm not leaving this Tumblr. Just got some personal trouble going on and had to take a looong long break. I don't know when, but I will probably start posting art very soon! (I have said this before? I can't remember...)

So, I won't take any longer here trying to make this announcement, but I've been planning too many ideas at this point. I want to show you what I have been doing lately, so here goes a big, BIG post. It's your decision to continue to read it. AAAAND I already apologize for any english mistakes.

You ready? Okay then, let's go!!!!

Back in 2019-2020, when I started getting into fnaf again, I started writing a story for a webcomic called "Familiar Trace". Something about a girl using the animatronic's plushies she finds while working in a horror attraction to get back in time to try to save the lost children, and in the end *boss music starts playing* Springtrap is her last enemy! But then I realized the story was too long and EXCESSIVELY DETAILED and I wasn't completely satisfied with it... So I wrote another one, a simple one, about children that, whenever they used the animatronics masks, could enter a minigame and help Mangle, Fredbear, Ballon Boy, Chica and RWQFSFASXC to save the lost children AND ONCE AGAIN!!! the idea got scrapped :')

I gave up on these comic projects because I saw I would not be able to keep up with them (I was really overwhelmed with school and with the pandemic at the time, ᵃⁿᵈ ᶦ ˢᵗᶦˡˡ ᵃᵐ ᵇᵗʷ) and other relevant factors.

And then, one mediocre night, I went to my room to play Ultimate Custom Night, added too many characters, panicked, got jumpscared by Springtrap and... wait a second.

Is this a train of ideas I hear? And it's going at full speed, about to struck me??? OH, OHOHOHO BOI IT IS

The next second I was thinking about every plot possible, and I saw so much potential in it that I couldn't stop myself from creating new ideas.

This is a project I like to call "UCN: Behind the Codes" and, originally, I was planning for it to be an animated series that I'll be posting on Youtube (which isn't a scrapped idea). The story isn't finished yet, but I can summarize what's about — Springtrap will be the main protagonist, and we will watch his journey inside Ultimate Custom Night, trying to escape the files into the real world. Yet, he still has to face many dangers, ally to the animatronics, and discover all that's hiding inside the game files in order to do that. Along with him, his best-ghost friend Tom and our beloved old crew, with Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, Foxy and so many others!

It's basically a "behind the scenes" alternate universe (which I think someone has already done at this point).

I'll be posting some art concepts any time soon. Feel free to ask any questions, I'll try to answer them without giving spoilers/unsteady ideas that may or may not be scrapped.

Also, thank you much to everyone that messaged me in my inbox asking if I was okay. You guys are really caring... You are amazing!!! 💞💞💕Thank you for your patience!

See you soon! Here, have some pizza~🍕💖

[llatimeria]

for all the flack it gets, bdsp is the most fun ive had with a pokemon game in a While? my mom got me the bundle for my birthday and at first I was like 😬 but since they're 1:1 remakes of diamond and pearl theyre still like. pretty dang fun. its def Easier than the original dppt but thats less due to handholdy mechanics and more about quality of life changes, like showing type effectiveness in-battle and always having the exp share on by default.

as much as I wish i was being challenged a teeny bit more I never actually finished any pkmn games when I was a kid (...without cheating) because i'd always get hung at a part where I'd need to lvl grind my whole damn team and it was so slow and tedious and painful that I hated every second and while grinding mechanics aren't inherently bad . it Sucked in the early gen pkmn games and you can't change my mind. removing some of the grinding has made it so I can just... have fun playing the game. still though ilca theres a balance to be struck here with reduced grinding and not ohkoing all the gym leaders . i'd like both please. ilca please . ilca

and wrt handholding . again bcus 1:1 remake it feels like a Return To Form for pokemon to me. When I was a kid like 90% of the appeal to me was not actually doing the gym quest or battling (i avoided trainers on routes like it was a stealth minigame and nearly Always had repels on), it was just. getting to vibe in this really awesome and unique fantasy world and make friends with every animal I saw. i gave very few fucks about the plot. I just wanted to run around and look at all of the places and find all the creatures.

im a stalwart defender of sumo overall and still had plenty of fun with it but god I wish it had more opportunities to just Vibe before the postgame. Time Pressure was always a Thing in sumo, someone was Always waiting for you Somewhere and it was Urgent so you Couldn't Dilly Dally, and then like. when i was released into the postgame I realized I hadn't explored a lot of the places that weren't directly on my path between Plot Locations and then subsequently realized there weren't that many places left to explore.

but in bdsp it's just like. heres a world. you're a kid. you're doing the gym challenge. go on an adventure. and its just.... SO refreshing + nostalgic. instead of "ill be waiting for you in the next town be sure to arrive soon so the world doesn't explode" theres a lot of "hey, you should head towards this place. it could help you on your quest :)" which is Sooooo nice

anyways probably the most Handholdy mechanic they added to bdsp is that on the pause menu they added a little text box that points you towards your next goal - i.e. "defeat the pastoria gym leader" or "head towards lake valor" or whatever. which i think hits the spot Perfectly, at least for me personally, bc I know I just. straight up would forget what I needed to do when I was a kid (less so now. but still a little now) without dragging you from place to place by force yknow

also the chibi art isnt that bad. the game looks... fine. could definitely be better . definitely IS better than that first trailer. definitely still prefer the pixel sprites and definitely still clinging to my pet theory that being forced to switch to a 3d art style instead of continuing to build on the pixel sprite style was a stumbling block for the franchise and they have yet to recover. but it doesnt feel like the chibi style is at fault here

anyways ive been having a good time playing shining pearl and really missed this pokemon playstyle more than i realized and even though i was planning on skipping them im glad they were given to me bc im enjoying it. thank you for coming to my post

[daughterofmyth]

Finished Kingdom Hearts 3

The plot is completely incomprehensible and moved along by everyone but Sora. While I was fucking around in Toy Box, Riku and Mickey found Aqua. Every character we gained was saved by SOMEONE ELSE. 

Every villain was coming to tell me their evil plans???? And I still don't know why? 

There was a subplot about some Organization members betraying the others, which came to absolutely nothing 

The graphics were pretty enough that all of that can be forgiven. Also, all the minigames and stuff. And building the Gummi Ship 

Choices of locations that Sora can visit is... odd. He can go to Arendelle, but not actually... into Arendelle. Or Elsa's castle. Can't go to Hallow Bastion, Yen Sid's Tower, or Destiny Island despite cutscenes happening there. That was pretty frustrating. Also, Twilight Town was downsized to two areas. 

 Has Roxas and Ventus so everything can be forgiven.

There was absolutely no reason to include the music from Frozen if they weren't going to include the music from Tangled. Especially during the exposition. 

WE NEVER FIGURED OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO ANDY???? WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THE WHOLE TOYBOX PLOT?

 The Carribean world was the best. Fight me. I am a pirate.

 KAIRI CAN'T BE USEFUL FOR A SINGLE FIGHT?? WHAT HAS SHE BEEN TRAINING FOR??? Merlin sucks as a teacher. Why didn't Yen Sid train her?

Oh, also Winnie the Pooh was completely unnecessary and added nothing to the plot. Merlin really needs to stop putting Pooh through shit.  DOWN WITH MERLIN!

11/10, a pleasure to suffer through

[darklightescape]

my personal assessment of the mysims games

MySims: personally i think this is a good alternative to animal crossing for people who like the town-building + friend-making aspect but could do without the real-time stuff. constantly being stuck with unreasonable essence requirements (seriously, half the mid-to-late-game sims ask for like 60 essences on an item whose most intricate blueprint is six blocks) is infuriating though. solid start, kind of wish there was a remake or true sequel that ironed out the gameplay wrinkles and added in the characters from later games. 8/10 MySims Party: i didn't play this. 7/10 because i mean, it's a party minigame compilation, the sole requirement is that it's playable and i trust it to be at least that MySims Kingdom: this one marks the first instance of the series flirting with the idea of having a plot. since you no longer have to build every single item you use from scratch it's usually less grindy than its predecessor, which is good. unfortunately it did take out some of the mechanics i liked from the first game even if they weren't huge game-changers, like certain sims giving sad or scary essences instead of happy ones if you were nice to them. i have a meme in my head that's like "royal academy likers vs spookane enjoyers" because i am too old and too gay to have any sort of investment in hetero high school love triangles and CANNOT relate to anyone who says royal academy is their favorite island. 8.5/10, with the half-point being deducted because why the FUCK was there so much herding MySims Racing: karts! basically just a fun little kart racing game. fast/10. MySims Agents: genuinely i think this is the best game in the series and also just an excellent game in its own right. it kind of gets away from the original series concept but when you take everything else into account it’s hard to care. has a slightly more mature (think going from 4-8 geared to 8-12 geared) plot without going fully over the deep end into “why did you make me watch justice imply dr f committed a war crime” like sky heroes does. my only complaint is that the ending comes so abruptly that i had to check and see if there were any confirmed problems that resulted in something being scrapped and wouldn't you know it, not only were there some levels scrapped there was an entire sequel planned but shelved. no word on why but judging by the release dates i think EA made the (incorrect) decision to focus on sky heroes instead. we were ROBBED. 9.5/10, half point deducted for the abrupt ending. MySims Sky Heroes: it's not like...BAD. i just cannot for the life of me take lines like "diplomacy!? the enemy's guns aren't loaded with conversation, selena!" seriously when the character saying them was just a "cartoon bully who still thinks 'oh yeah well your FACE is whatever you just said!' is the most devastating insult ever" trope in the previous game. also playing these games where he's a real actual threat just makes me miss the og and kingdom versions of morcubus where he's just kind of a hammy weirdo who talks a big game about being a dastardly villain but never actually does anything. air combat seems fine to me I’m just not very good at air combat in general. 7/10 because the gameplay isn’t bad I’m just kind of baffled by the decision for the little cartoon chibi people to have seen the horrors of war

[moonanagames]

June Devlog: Gameplay details for Keylocker

This gonna be big, I spent too much time living as a hermit, hiding all of this, I’m bursting. Also, monthly devlogs will be a thing from now onwards.

So guys, this game is fully done in pixel art! Portraits and menus are also in pixel art and everything is the same pixel size. This was a step up for us since doing the portraits is now 10 times faster, and it'll allow for us to do palette swaps on everything. Big step up for consistency as well! We also added a slight chromatic aberration effect for a more retro/80s general vibe, as I was graphically inspired by PC Engine titles and 80s anime for this game. You can take the effect off if it bothers you, though! Now, check this very attractive menu palette swap:

Now, for the fun part: Combat!

The first major difference from Virgo is the absense of Purity.

In this world, Music produces Electricity.

This means you'll have to use your personal Electricity Points (EP) in battle as well as your overall health represented by Life Points (LP). By itself, Electricity doesn't do much, but is your base fuel for your LIFE moves. You can generate more EP by playing music with ELECTRIC moves.

In battle, you'll juggle between Life Attack, Life Defense, Electric Attack and Electric Defense. Each with a different purpose. Each of these slots can be customized with several types of equippable items, but in general, you'll equip weapons to LIFE slots and musical instruments to ELECTRIC slots.

With Electric Attacks you'll use your instrument to attack the enemy and steal their Electricity, dealing Life damage if their EP bar is empty. Like so:

With Electric Defenses, you'll generate Electricity after playing music with a rhythm-inspired timed-hit, but that also causes enemies who hit you to damage your EP instead of Life.

After you have built some EP, holding the attack button will begin charging your Life Attack, adding your EP into your next Life Attack damage, equal to EP spent, like so:

With this you can control how much damage you deal to an enemy. This is why draining enemy EP will be so important to stay alive, as it's a constant potential damage bonus.

Holding the defense button will though add EP into a third bar, which functions like proto-purity; deflecting the next hit you take into a counter-attack, which will function differently per equipment you use. Like so:

About Equipment

Most equipment pieces will be equippable on more than one slot.

For example, the KATANA can be assigned to Life Attack or Life Defense depending on your preferences, but a GUN BASS can be either Electric Attack or Life Attack. Depending on the slot you put an equipment in, their animations and effects will be different. Some other items may be more specialized into a single function.

HOWEVER, equipment won't feature a Skill anymore, as the effects of skills will be acquired from the Talent Tree (more info on that on a future post) and will apply to any equipment you have. We don't have the Tree implemented yet, but we have an idea of how it is and plan on working on it soon.

This doesn't mean equipment variation will be just cosmetic!

Apart from different timed-hits, equipment will define skill speed (faster speed = more turns you'll have, with Ben's new speed calculations!), targetting (if the attack is melee, ranged, area, etc) and if it's on the Life Defense slot, also define how the Counter will play out.

Equipment will still have stat ups and downs, but unlike in Virgo, it's going to be 1 up, 1 down, because Power and the baseline ATK stats have been synthethized into Minimum and Maximum damage.

(That's something I really liked about how old CRPGs handled damage, with things like "Damage: 22-48" instead of an average, since I believe there's going to be some sort of min-maxing relative to EP spent, so knowing your absolute highest roll for an attack is more important than ever)

Quality of Life changes

So, now you’ll have battle loadouts, you can put a certain array of equipment in a loadout and change between them in the battles. A lot of people asked for access to equipment during battles, but that would make the difficulty gravely decrease, so we’re adding an alternative instead that can help everyone!

Palette Swaps

Not fully implemented for Bobo, her Alpaca, Rocket, or any NPC and enemy yet, BUT we can already change menu colors as you saw already. This is mind boggling to me and when Veyerals and Ben made it I wanted to cry it was a very emotional moment :( BUT in the future you’ll be able to change BOBO’s hair and jacket color on the saloon, as well as Rocket’s metal color.

Some Virgo things you can expect to return in Keylocker but will be discussed in future posts:

Battle Rows

Difficulty options

Try again

Party members

Buffs/Debuffs/Instants

Item crafting/upgrading

Battle Items

Interaction with ALL objects

SHMUP minigame (representing the HACKING sessions, we're very inspired by Nier Automata's hacking minigame)

Big meaty choices

More posts this month to talk about the characters and any small things we do! Development posts will resume normally now, so expect me to be more active around these parts of the internet! :D

[satoshi-mochida]

Tobyfox has provided a status update on the second chapter and beyond of Undertale sequel Deltarune in celebration of Undertale‘s fifth anniversary today.

First, here are the latest screenshots from Deltarune‘s second chapter:

Get the full update below.

Introduction

Hi everyone.

If you’re reading this, you must have been sticking around for about five years.*

I want to express my gratitude for everyone that has supported and encouraged me over this time.

Thank you.

I’ve said it many many times before, but I didn’t expect the simple game I made to receive so much attention. Because of that, many interesting things have happened, and now I can even spend my time making another game.

It seems both of us received a lot of happiness from this occurrence.

If it’s okay, I would like to keep striving to do things that make both of us happy.

Let me know what you think about that.

*Since the Undertale demo released in 2013, the game has really existed for 7 years. It’s already been more than 25% of my life…

Deltarune

I will make another.

I am making a game called “Deltarune.” It is the second game in the Undertale series.

The game will be released in many “Chapters,” the first of which I released two years ago on Halloween. Since that time, I’ve been working hard to figure out the rest of the game.

However, it’s a game that’s much harder to make than Undertale.

Graphics are more complicated and several times more involved.

Systems are more complicated.

Exposes the weak points of my creative and artistic ability.

Plot is much harder to tie together (more characters, more important locations).

Significantly more content than Undertale in one playthrough (especially cutscenes).

I have only made one game ever.

Unlike Undertale, this is the type of game that would normally have many designers working on each aspect of the game.

A story writer, a composer, an audio director, a map designer, a battle designer, a minigame designer, and an overall director. Instead, all of those roles end up handled by me.

The good news is that a few months ago, I completed a significant milestone regarding the game’s design. I completed readable outlines for every chapter in the game, including first-pass dialogue for almost all the cutscenes, examples of the music, etc.

Although certain details are still hazy, the flow of the game and all major events and battles that take place are now clear.

In summary, I largely spent the past two years writing, composing, designing, and drawing. However, that’s not the whole story.

We had actually attempted to develop the game since the time too. Development started around March 2019 and a 99% work was spent on investigating engines alternate to GameMaker, which I used for Chapter 1.

Without getting into the details, I decided a few months ago to go back to GameMaker after all. It still felt like the best fit for the project. So using Chapter 1 as a base, we’ve started creating Chapter 2 since May 2020.

A lot of progress has been made since that time. I believe we can complete this chapter, content-wise, before the end of the year (not accounting for translation, bugtesting, and porting).

I feel very confident. And the strange thing is, even though we ended up using the original engine, I don’t regret the lost time, either. Not only was I still busy designing the game, but during that long period, I was able to think of many ideas that make the game’s story and characters better.

I’m glad that I’m making the Deltarune that I have now and that we are making healthy progress.

Deltarune Status Estimate

■ Chapter 2 (04.15.20 – 08.13.20)

Phase 1: Design

Main Design: 100% (dialogue, etc.)

Initial Setup: 100% (stuff involved setting up people to make the game, adding debug tools, documentation, etc.)

Phase 2: Implementation (05.01.20 ~ 08.13.20)

Art: 90%

Cutscenes: 80% (90% are started, needs 2nd pass)

Bullet Patterns: 70% (enemies are mostly completed, bosses are about 40% done, needs 2nd pass)

Non-Bullet Battle Elements: 30% (Some ACTs are done and enemies are fightable, but interactive ACTs need to be completed and polished and the bosses aren’t programmed outside of bullet patterns)

Audio: 80%

Maps: ??% most are started or placeholder, most need 2nd pass. NPC interactions are completed in all spots where written.

Other: 65%

Phase 3: Finishing

Balancing: 0%

Bugfixing: 0%

Translation: 0%

Porting: 0%

(Honestly, a lot of stuff FEELS like 80% to me, but the truth is that what’s there is quite rough now. Polish ends up taking a lot of time, so the real actual time value may be around 50% done…? We’ll see what happens. It’ll be a lesson for everybody.)

■ Chapters 3 and Beyond

Phase 1: Design

Story and General Game Progression (first-pass): 100%

Cutscene Dialogue (first-pass, lacking cutscene instructions): 95%

Map Design (textual): 70% (varies per chapter, earlier chapters totally completed)

Map Design (drawn): 0% (this takes a lot of wrist energy so I don’t do it until we start programming)

Enemy Design (conceptual): 90% (all bosses are known)

Enemy Design (bullets / visual): 80% (varies per chapter, earlier chapters totally completed)

Music (concept): 95%

Music (completed): 50%

Visual Design:BG Concept (first-pass): 75%, Important Character, Bosses (first-pass): 100%

Phase 2

Sprite Art: 20%?

Other Content Creation: 0%

Phase 3

Release Readiness: 0%

(These numbers can be somewhat deceptive though. My true design style is to reach the moment where we have to make something, then suddenly think of something different at the last minute. This is always how it’s been with me and my work. It feels like no matter how much I plan, everything comes down to what I think of at the last second…)

Team and Disability

You may have noticed from my phrasing, but yes, there is a team helping me create the game. Other than me, there are about three active team members working day-to-day, with a few other people pitching in from time to time.

Their roles of the main members are overall content implementation and organization, bullet pattern implementation (part-time), and art (Temmie). Other than designing, I still have the role of system programmer.

I’m extremely grateful to have a team helping me carry out my design especially because of my disabilities, which have also made development more difficult.

Although I have long suffered from wrist and hand pain, about five months ago my wrist was the worst it’s ever been. I could not play the piano, use the mouse, and barely could use the keyboard. I navigated everything through voice to text.

Through weightlifting, exercise, and various equipment I have been able to somewhat increase the stamina of my wrist to an extent. Various solutions have included trackball mice for each hand, using voice to text whenever possible, using a foot pedal to click the mouse, etc.

Now I can use the mouse and keyboard for a certain amount each day provided I take frequent breaks. I wish I could work without stopping. Once the world situation improves I would really like to take physical therapy again and/or investigate surgery to repair my wrist.

Future Plans

Once we finish Chapter 2, I would like to use it as the base to create future chapters from. After gaining experience from this chapter, I think making future chapters will be easier.

Part of me wonders if we could make the game faster if we increased the size of the team and did something insane like create multiple chapters in parallel. However, another part of me understands that, adding more people doesn’t guarantee that the game will be created faster if it’s not done properly. I’m already just barely avoiding becoming a bottleneck on development even with a team of this size, due to my physical limitations.

To that end, I am interested in making a list of people that could potentially help me make the game. I’m not 100% sure if I’m going to ask anyone to help, but I think if I could find just 1 person that works well with me, it’s worth asking.

Chapter 2 is proceeding at a good pace, so if we do take anyone on, it will probably only be for Chapter 3 onward. So please understand that anything you send in may not have an immediate result.

People I Am Looking For

Feel free to send in your portfolio if you have the following qualifications:

Worked in the game industry before

Worked under NDA before

Have professional references

A degree of creativity while also being okay with just following directions

Fluent in English

People I Might Actually Use

Music Transcription / Basic Arrangement (Part-Time)

I usually start making songs by playing the piano and singing. An important step after this is to take this basic outline and transcribe it into melodies and chords. Though there are not too many remaining songs to transcribe, it would still help my wrist to have someone else start this process for me. Although I know many musicians, I’m sheepish to ask for help to them, because the main role is actually just to help me compose my own music…

Helpful qualities:

Good at transcription.

Can stand listening to me sing.

Optional: can use an old version of Fruity Loops.

Bullet Pattern Programming (Part-Time)

I’m looking for someone to help me program bullet patterns into the game. These people will work from text and visual designs to create fun battles that match the feeling of the game. I already have one person helping with this, but I think a second person would help a lot. You have to be able to use Gamemaker Studio 2 to manipulate objects on the screen / okay with using pre-existing scripts to accomplish this.

Helpful qualities:

Sense of fun and understanding of player perspective and gameplay balance. This aspect is [many times] more important than programming ability.

Reliable.

Able to make patterns based off of visual/text instructions.

Fine working with a poorly made battle system.

Able to sprite bullets.

Good visual / timing sense.

Minigame Programming (Part-Time)

There are a few minigames and small interactive events in the game, which appear in and outside of battles. These could take any kind of form… who knows what I’m thinking! Have you made a game before?

Helpful qualities:

Same sense of humor as me.

Some level of spriting ability is useful.

You have to have made a game that is fun.

Ability to work together with me.

Unlikely to Hire, But Send Me Your Information Just In Case

Cutscene Programming (Part-Time)

Besides the battles, the largest amount of content in the game is definitely the cut scenes. You will have to understand Gamemaker Studio 2, but the majority of the work is simply using a scripting system that I created to make characters move around the screen. The most important quality you can have here is not programming ability but the ability to efficiently use the system in order to create scenes with a good sense of humor, timing, and emotion.

I’d strongly prefer to hire someone I know to do this because it involves the story. So I most likely won’t hire anyone else.

Helpful qualities:

Can take text instructions and impart a proper sense of timing, humor, and weight to them.

Fine working with a custom scripting system (or smart enough to make something better that makes the game easier to make).

Art (Part-Time)

Sprite art—Temmie has already drawn a massive amount of art for the game, and continues to do so. And I actually already have a few other artists that have helped me that I’m more than happy to keep working with if things become more overwhelming. So currently I actually don’t need any more artists.

However, personally, I’d really like to build up a portfolio of available pixel artists and even concept artists. It’s not as if this is the only game I will make during my life. Anyone chosen for this game needs to be able to match the style of the game, but I’m interested in seeing people with different styles as well. Knowing that I have different options can open my mind up to different creative pathways.

Helpful qualities:

Can take bad looking sketches and turn them into art that looks good (magic).

Don’t mind if your work gets completely drawn over or thrown out.

Anyone that can draw cute or cool poses is good.

Uninterested in seeing people that have an art style outside of the scope of the game.

Write (Full-Time)

Someone needs to transform into a new wrist for me.

Helpful qualities:

Flexible.

Doesn’t hurt.

Musical sense.

That’s everyone I’m looking for. The only other kind of person I might hire would be a single jack-of-all-trades type that can do any sort of things such as cutscenes, bullets, or even system programming, with a good degree of visual flair. (But if you can do those sorts of things, aren’t you busy making your own game already!?)

Anyway, I’ll show you the e-mail now. Just make sure you read these rules first:

Don’t send in e-mails about anything else!

Don’t send to other team members, Fangamer, etc. about helping out!

Got it? Then please send your information to this e-mail address:

deltarunejobs@fangamer.com

Since Fangamer will be sorting through the e-mails for me, we’ll stop taking e-mails at the end of September so they don’t get overwhelmed. Ultimately, I’m only looking for one or two people, and to make a list of the rest of the potentially helpful people in the world.

Undertale is available now for PlayStation 4, Switch, PS Vita, and PC via Steam and GOG. Deltarune Chapter 1 is availble for PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC via Deltarune.com.