Branching storylines and learning about puzzles

 Hello LokiCastle here,

It's been another crazy week for me. moving again due to problems with place. So I've been preparing for that. While I haven't been able to do too much. I still got some stuff done. 

Lets discuss it,

Winter Themed Adventure Game

This is the first area fully ready for pre-alpha (berry area)

Little merchant area in main town

Screenshot from interaction * finished prototype area* (berry area)

One of the fun things about making areas is giving the player the ability to interact with the world. This ability to interact can and will create branching. Small changes over time can cause the players viewpoint to change. Creating the town folk and layout of the town was a real fun thing that added to a more lived in feeling to me. Instead of the town just being an objective. I wanted it to feel real in a way by giving a story to each and every one of the town folk. These stories can be found out by simple interaction or played out throughout the main story. the scene above isn't integral to the story but does allow for a deeper look into the lives of the town folk. That's the fun part if you are looking to skip the exploring you can. Does this take away from the experience. No it doesn't but exploring can reveal later aspects of the story that will be important in the long run. I also heavily believe that cause and effect matters. If you do A then B will happen. The story doesn't expect you to explore every little thing but, if you do. You will learn more about the world of  Lavdun. Flushing the toilet gives a achievement.

Puzzles

When I first started working with puzzles. I believed that it was based on the idea. That it should take up time. This was a horrible way to go about making puzzles. While researching I came across some great resources on how to make a proper adventure game. Here is a quick summary. Puzzles shouldn't be tedious. They should advance the story. They should never punish the player. The solution should make sense and a few other tips. In the end the point of the puzzle should a fun way to give the player a challenge but also break from the story allowing for a challenge and reward for the player. With these tips in mind I have decided puzzles will be put into the game once the story and writing is finished to add to the story and create for a fun challenge. 

Final Remarks/Goals

I am in a phase of my project. Where I don't have much to show apart from small snippets. I won't have a good product until I have gotten the project to the alpha phase. which means at least for the berry area it's only one more phase away. If  I were only to focus on it. I could possibly get it to that phase in a few weeks. I plan to weight my options and may commit to trying to get berry area to late pre-alpha phase or just focus on finishing more of the prototype areas. 

Do I see the AG ready for the April release schedule... short answer no with a maybe. Long answer if my personal and professional life chills out. I could see finding the proper time to getting at least half of chapter one ready for release. 

No matter what the AG will release in early access/in development on steam and itch.

Stay tuned for more updates!

If you would like to see sneak peeks please support me here: 

"https://www.patreon.com/SerpentLoki"

Discussing thoughts

LokiCastle here,

Today this post is less about giving updates but rather a more personal dive. If you're looking for updates on my projects. I will be posting my regular update on Sunday as per usual.

The Start 

When I first got into the concept of even considering game development. It was a few months before, a radical change in my life. During this stressful time, I spent the majority of my time getting thrown around in my daily life. The feelings of not accomplishing anything worthwhile crept up. It kept creeping until I finally decided. I would make a game! My greatest fear was that I would become 21 before I made a game and published it. (Spoiler that didn't happen) It had a been few months into 2024 when I realized I needed to double down and push myself to finally write a script for my Visual Novel "A Tale of Two Flowers." I loved the process of writing the script. While I've never been very social. I do enjoy talking. In a way, writing is a great way to talk without talking. The ability to convey ideas and stories is great. I love reading what others write and, I love writing. With that thought process a visual novel made sense. I don't play/read VN very often still I am still very fond of them. It was better that my first game was a visual novel instead of the game I truly wanted to make. which was an RPG. Yes, I am referring to the horror RPG I make updates about often. I had wanted to make a dark RPG for a very long time but felt like my skills weren't where I wanted them to be. Your first game is never your magnum opus. If you were to ask me how I felt about my first game “A Tale of Two Flowers.” I would say "Like May it's a deeply flawed and confusing story that screams first project." Simply put it was my first major undertaking and I knew it would have major flaws. I am proud that it was the first game I published.  

I still laugh at myself today when the realization dawned on me. I needed an online presence to even promote the game. Knowing I needed that. I proceeded to make a post on itch.io starting the journey of posting development updates. On the amazing interconnected web or as we call it the internet. 

June 19 2024 was the first ever post I made. 

On the subject of my first game

"I am almost done writing the script for my first visual novel. The actual reveal of the novel will be in about a month or so depending on a few development factors. Its word range is 25 - 30K and has three different endings."

(https://lokicastle.itch.io/a-tale-of-two-flowers/devlog/751842/on-the-subject-on-my-first-game)

For the first few months of the development. It was not a solo project. It had been a team of three. Due to conflicts I took full control and finished it. It had been a crazy journey from a single sketch to the full-fledged game it is today.

Friday Dec 15 2023 (May Gremlin sketch)

Reflecting on the progress

How often do you hear of people giving up when the going gets tough? Maybe very often or rarely depending on perspective. You hear about stories of people making it big but then reality hits. More often than not success doesn't come. Here I am writing about my thoughts of being a game developer in a multi-billion dollar industry. I don't have a team. I'm just one person who spends some of their free time developing games for fun.  Compare me to the thousands of full-time employees with years of coding experience. There is no winning. I'm not looking to compare myself to people. Rather I want to understand where I sit so I can strive to be the best developer I can be. This is a hobby. I want to tell stories and know it's gonna be tough. The reward is the effort I put in. I could list all the negatives about A Tale of Two Flowers. Talking about how it wasn't able to sell or get on steam, no one's playing it, etc. This mentality does raise one question? Would that be a useful way to spend my time? My answer is no. Instead of worrying about why my first game didn't succeed the way I wanted it to. I look back at the game as a great way to start my game dev journey. How often do people give up on their first project and let it collect dust forever? I took the chance and learned about myself and how to make a better game next time. I learned more about an industry I've loved for years. (A game developer who plays games. Who would have guessed?) Here I am in 2025 looking to publish my next game to Steam, connected to the same world as the previous game. This time I go in with better insight, experience, and proper knowledge to make sure this game gets the traction it deserves.

Final Remarks

I started this journey at the beginning of 2024. It's 2025 now and I'm not going to let life stop me from achieving my goals. Who knows what my journey will look like in five or ten years?

Stay tuned for more updates!

If you would like to see sneak peeks please support me here: 

"https://www.patreon.com/SerpentLoki"

Progress update: Name Boxes and Sprites

 Loki Castle here,

The last few days have been pretty productive. I have finally had time to sit down and get settled in, allowing me to get actual work done. I still don't have the best workspace, but it's up to a standard I feel allows for creativity to grow and thrive. 

Enough about real life. Let us talk about what I have done in the past week.

Winter Themed Adventure Game

I have about one month to get the AG(Adventure game) into its pre-alpha phase. which means, I need the game to be...

1. A playable state

2. graphics started 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYxN-DfNV2c

I was able to start exactly that. I have begun to add graphics and small touches to iron out the intro and pathway at the start of the game. I have also begun to add graphics for the MC's house. My top goal this week was to make the first placeholder sprite. This sprite will allow for a better understanding of the size of every character and will be what I go off for the rest of the development period. 

Art Challenge?

I will be taking a break from the art challenge every day and focusing on the AG. If I can find time in the day after working on the AG. I will make more art. My reasoning for slowing down the project is to allow for breathing room with my current workload. I still have a plethora of ideas for the challenge and will not stop. For now, I will be focusing on just the AG. I still plan to make a post about what I learned from the challenge when I complete it. 

Final Remarks/Goals

I want to finish a few more major areas of the AG getting the main meat of the game to 25% complete. I would like to create a full sprite for Hazel. The final thing I would like to do is try to finish 2 to 3 images from my art challenge by the end of next week.

Stay tuned for more updates!

If you would like to see sneak peeks please support me here: 

"https://www.patreon.com/SerpentLoki"

Hello to the New Year/What's to come!

LokiCastle here,

2025 is here. which means it's time to get back to working. 

This post will show off my road map for 2025 and the next few months in general 

Quick footnote,

Let's start off with a simple injection. The last few weeks have been extremely feverish. I've had little time to work on my RPG/other projects. The reason for my lack of time pertains to my settling-in period. In other words, moving and getting back into the groove. My internet is not helping.  I've been working on small projects and small edits to my games until I have my workspace back up and running. Which could be 1 to 2 more weeks. 

Outline

Here is an overview of the outline I use for my development roadmap that all my games follow.

Prototype 

The core aspects of the game are made. (lessons, main engine, etc) General assets are used. I make the actual pathways and events for the game. A fancy outline that I will follow to build the framework of what will one day become a fully fledged game. This phase is categorized as having mostly pre-made assets. depending on the size of the game I will split certain areas into phases calling them Prototype Phase 1, 2, and so on.  A lot of time will be spent in this section to verify that the game runs properly. 

Pre-Alpha

I begin to add graphics and animations. I will revisit the code to verify its integrity. Drastic changes can and will happen in this section. Mostly everything from this version will stay in the final version and is not subject to removal. While testing should be going smoothly. I don't believe that the game is ready for external testing. 

Alpha

At this point, I will have what feels to be a game. While it will have rough edges the game will be in a playable state for the playtesters. There are 15 to 30 minutes of playable finished gameplay at this point with a fully integrated menu. Still, the game isn't ready for the public and needs a lot more polishing before demos can start.

Beta

The game is done. It will still need polish, bug fixes, and small other quality-of-life updates but all in all. The game is ready for release. Any subsequent updates won't add anything big to the game.

Extra

Reevaluation

This requires a significant amount of time to pass. Once the time passes I will replay the game and rebuild the game from the ground up. Fixing old errors and applying better techniques. The earliest possible time to reevaluate a game is a year after its release but should be longer.

Rework

If any time during the development process. I decide to change the core aspects of a project I'm working on. The project will go into the rework phase. this is different from the prototype phase as core ideas can be completely changed in this process from the game engine to genre. 

Road Map

January 

Get settled in and start work on winter VN (now an adventure game)

February 

Get Winter AG into Pre-Alpha phase. Complete the 30 day art challenge 

March 

Have playtest began for Winter AG. 

Get winter AG into beta

Release demo on steam and itch 

April

Fully release chapter one of Winter AG on steam and itch

May 

Switch active project to RPG

Ramp up development for Horror RPG 

Complete Prototype phase 1 

June 

Work on Prototype phase 2 

polish areas for pre-alpha

July 

Prepare level G for pre-alpha 

get ready for alpha 

Have playtesters try out level G 

August 

Prepare for demo release 

In-depth January

The start of January 2025 I spent a lot of time working on both my RPG and a Winter VN. Over the month I slowly started to favor the VN due to time constraints and other reasons. 

Horror RPG 

Here is what I was able to accomplish for the Horror RPG. I worked on the skeleton of around 50 maps in the game. I started to add graphics to about three maps. 

One of the three maps

Maze found in level G

I finished a proper outline of the first two bosses giving a revamp to the first boss I also went back to previous areas and gave the dialogue some touch-ups. 

Shop NPCs opening dialogue revamp

Development past this point was small changes here and there. 

Winter VN (Now AG)

Close to the end of the month, I began to finish writing the entire script for the VN. After a few days, I decided to change the direction of the game from a VN to an AG(adventure game). Using the same script I made the first interaction. 

The story still follows the script but gives the player the ability to explore the world more. this is the current prototype. by february I would like this to be in pre-alpha. Nothing else major has been done for this project.

30 Day Art Challenge 

Art is a lifelong hobby/skill. It needs constant challenge and effort to push the limits of what one can be comfortable with. which is why I decided to challenge myself to draw and color 30 Art pieces for 30 days. Once done I will do a long post discussing what I learned, whether was it fun, and whether will I do it again

Here is day three (today) 

Stay tuned for more updates!

If you would like to see sneak peeks please support me here: 

"https://www.patreon.com/SerpentLoki"

Last Update before hiatus

 Hey Loki Castle,

From the 24th to the 28th I will be on break. I may work on stuff I may not. Really depends on how I'm feeling but friends and family will come first. This update will be small.

Let's get to the meat of what happened since the last update. Basically only one goal was accomplished. Considering how busy this week was for me. I consider that a huge plus. This week I skipped any work on my RPG focusing entirely on my VN.

*Quick goal focus at end 

Winter VN

When I first started writing the script. I kept hitting a stagnant point. The stagnation that I couldn't find a way to write the story without including gore. In the climax of the story, I wrote two major characters fighting in a proper duel. Due to the nature of the world I had created. It made sense to have the loser die at the hands of antagonist due to their warrior honor.  After a while I figured out how to write this part without the more gory aspects. I completed the outline. The outline was the hardest part. Without the outline I didn't really have a way to gauge how the story would work. Why it would work and where it would play out. I feel if I had more time I would have finished the script by now. The script is 25% done. If given 3 to 4 days I can finish the rest. Time during the holidays is hard to find. 

Concept Art Piece 

Arty first concept sketch

Say hello to Arty. One of the main antagonist. While this is not her final concept. It is a general gauge. I plan to add a skull of a creature. She killed in combat on her shoulder and also adorn her with charms and weapons from her many conquests throughout her many years of fighting. 

*This was the only concept piece I was able to finish during this past week.

Final Remarks/ Goals

If I have the time. I plan to work on the script and finish it. I still want to finish my terraria fanart. 

I believe that for now. I will slow down and, take some time to enjoy the holidays. I have some gifts to make and a few holiday plans. I've been resting a lot more lately due to work demands and the ending of the year. This has been a productive yet tiring year and I think my body wants a break.

Merry Christmas/ Happy Yuletide 

Enjoy the holidays and I will be back to start working again after the chaos of the holidays are over. Expect the next post to talk more about goals then actual updates to my work. I might post some art on my socials before the end of the month possibly holiday themed. Have a great holiday.

Stay tuned for more updates!

If you would like to see sneak peeks please support me here "https://www.patreon.com/SerpentLoki"

Small Update Horror RPG Working on quest system

Hey LokiCastle here,

I am back again with a quick update about my current progress. So for a general overview barely any work was done on my VN. Which means I will be skipping any discussion about it today. 

*Except for a quick goals plan at the end

Horror RPG 

Last time I talked about my RPG. I was working on map areas and adding little things to get the outline of the project done. During this week, I shifted my focus from mapping areas to quests. Quests are a great way for players to track progress. While the history of games may have started without quests markers. Quest journals are a huge part of gaming today. I wanted a way for players to be able to keep track of what they are doing while also providing incentives to do things. The best example is seemingly random side quests that reward the player for doing something repetitive or boring. While I don't plan to have fetch quests or quests designed to fill out time. I do plan to use quests in such a way as to hide joke items, weapons, and resources behind unimportant quests. 

*Think like the random overpowered spell/item behind a pointless fetch quest* 

The major problem I'm currently having with the quest journal isn't making quests but the code aspect of it. This is my first time messing with anything like this. The hurdles make it hard to get a good amount of things done in a single session of work. Even with these hurdles, I am still making progress in my own way. 

How the Quest Journal looks in game

As of now, I have plans for about 18 main quests 

Five side quests and 3 Character quests

(Side note) Character quests will follow the three main characters and are specific to the character you play. they don't have a real reward but allow you to explore the history of the character

*In the end I think the holidays are making it hard to keep myself motivated and focused on my goals. I want to work and polish more of the game but it's not easy when most of your time is taken up by random variables.

What's Next 

I want to try to focus on the bosses of level G. I had originally planned this before the journal took up most of my time. My reasoning for implementing the quest journal before finishing the boss events came from the fact that many objectives of the main quest are intertwined into the two boss battles. With the quest journal set up, I can start making an outline of what scripts will need to be used for the bosses. 

Final Remarks/Goals

I'm looking to work on some fanart for Terraria (As a tribute to the game and to test my art skills). I would like to make a few concept sketches for the Winter VN. The final thing I would like to achieve is finding time in my busy schedule to get work done consistently every day  

Stay tuned for more updates!

If you would like to see sneak peeks please support me here 

"https://www.patreon.com/SerpentLoki"

The Holiday season, coming in hot!

 Hello Loki Castle here, 

With the moving and holidays approaching like a freight train. I have had a lot of trouble making significant progress on my projects. Generally, during the holidays I slow down due to gift-making and time spent with friends/family. I plan to do a few more updates before taking a hiatus from the 24th to the 28th.

My current projects right now are my main project The Horror RPG and A Winter VN that will be part of The Winter VN fest 2024. My main goal is to finish the outline for the winter VN. Including the script. I will be adapting the story of the Nutcracker to tell the story. A traditional holiday story that has always interested me on a personal level.

  Horror RPG

Since the last update,

I spend a lot of time working on M3, M4, and M6. There are three different areas in the game. (On the same level) When made the entire map of the game. I calculated that each level would consist of about 20 different areas. Each map consists of multiple big areas and a lot of secret areas. As of now only two iterations of the map exist. the original entire game map and, the smaller village and starting level. My current hurdle with each level is. The starting level still has a lot more polishing required. For future reference I will call this level G and the other level V. G is the map all players will see after going through each of the character tutorials. It will be a less dangerous area compared to most levels but will also host special challenges. The two major bosses in this level are intended to be easy to fight and kill. When playtesting I noticed that enemies were so fast. It made it impossible to get away even with a small head start. This goes against the main idea of the game using stealth to trick and escape battles. While they are areas in game meant to be more of a chase some areas are too small for a cat and mouse game. So I made them slower making it possible to escape but not likely. The new changes to the main areas helped flesh out the main idea. I've been working with in my head. I added more events, enemies, loot, diaries, and traps. Still without any proper graphics it looks more like a skeleton creating a stark difference to more polished areas. 

Examples of the maps I worked on

When using base assets. I have to remember that this isn't the final product but an outline to be carved into something more keen to my liking. While it doesn't look like much right now. I need it to work on the base level before I can move any further.

Visual of Area/Maps in Level

Sometimes, I don't even understand how naming works. I don't even name the areas correctly. I have gotten lost trying to figure out which area is which from time to time. M doesn't stand for anything similar to how everything in the village level (V) is named T (T stands for nothing). 

 Plans before the next update 

I want to finish the events and battles for the main two bosses of G. After I have polished most of G. I will move to V. The only thing that worries me is V will be too big of an undertaking for the demo. V is as stated the village. where the most NPCs can be found. It is also where the majority of quests can be started and ended. While having a central hub is a great way for players to easily get to and from different areas and levels of the game. It also has the most happening. Compared to most levels. V is the level with the most content, interactions, characters, and etc. This sounds great. Giving players a lot to work with is fun. I want this game to be fun even before it's fully released. It really depends on how long it takes me to get through G. I want to finish the concept sketches for all characters and finish a few more sprites. A few of the main characters will need multiple sprites during their introduction. This shouldn't be too hard depending on time. It will be necessary for the demo. Wrapping it up I believe that I should have more success after the holidays die down. Allowing for me to wrap myself back into a proper working schedule.

Winter VN

For my upcoming VN. It still needs two things done. The rest of the script which should take a week. The characters have already been created being borrowed from the Lavdun universe. The art itself shouldn't be too hard as I plan to keep it simple. The game will have a few backgrounds and only three different expressions. If I had more time it would be longer and more complex possibly including live 2D. Something I have wanted to add to one of VN for a very long time. Due to this project deadline approaching. I will be focusing on it more than my RPG.  The story is heavily inspired by the nutcracker and follow a famous witch named Hazel. It is canon to the Lavdun Universe, diving into the backstory of Hazel. While this VN will not be dark. Hazel's main VN that is currently in script phase is. It follows her descent into madness as she goes from a healer to monster. 

-Hazel is mentioned as the creator of soul soup in  "A Tale of Two Flowers"

Stay tuned for more updates!

If you would like to see sneak peeks please support me here 

"https://www.patreon.com/SerpentLoki"