When Neverspring Chronicles was released in March of last year, there was really only one regret. That I wasn't able to afford proper artwork. I had to rely on a lot of mismatched graphics and RTP in order to communicate the world properly... The truth is, there's just not a lot of assets out there for Neverspring's niche genre. But now, one year later, I've been able to take the money from the game sales and completely reskin the game with a single, uniformed art style.
(Screenshot - Ashbury Fen)
It was actually more of a challenge than I had expected. I purchased work from several different artists over on Itch.io to test out different looks but where one style would be too much, another felt like not quite enough. Neverspring Chronicles takes a lot of inspiration from the 1990s SNES games, Final Fantasy 4 and Final Fantasy 6. The story and game world is supposed to be somewhat gritty like FF6 but the characters are somewhat brighter and more hopeful, akin to FF4 in my own mind. That's always been an important part of Neverspring, that idea of bright hearts in dark places. I needed an art style that captured some of that.
(Screenshot - The Lower Sewers)
Like I said, I had bought work from several different artists to try out different styles. I was starting to feel like I might never find the right look when I stumbled upon an artist here on Itch.io known as Electric Lemon. Just the right balance of pixel and grit! And so, I'm happy to say that I have finally been able to completely replace the old clashing graphics. What's more, the base assets were a simple enough 16x16 that I've been able to edit a lot of the work to suit Neverspring's needs rather effectively.
(Screenshot - Ogin vs Rakzasha)
But the art wasn't the only problem... I did not carry any expectations with me through the game's development, only the hope that people might play the game and let it stand on it's own merit regardless of it's engine. Neverspring Chronicles is all about striving to keep the player immersed in a well-paced story. While very few people were actually nasty about the RPG Maker engine, I could tell that there were moments when players were distracted from enjoying the immersion by slight reminders of the game's RMV roots. I didn't want to necessarily hide the fact that Neverspring is made in RPG Maker MV. I actually chose this engine on purpose because I wanted the game to be as retro as possible. But I do want players to enjoy the experience even if they are RM users themselves. So another part of this major update was dedicated to finding ways we could alleviate those moments that scream RMV.
Easier said than done, of course... After some research and testing I decided that, other than the graphics, the next biggest "tell" that you are playing an RM engine game would be in the windows and messaging. So I wrote up some new window animations and touched up some of the menu scenes. A new save screen, animations on the item window, the skills... added in some minor audio effects to menu selection, et cetera. Then the fun part, I went through every piece of dialogue to tag everything for a new custom dialogue system.
(Screenshot - Bridgeton)
This is a pretty major update. Beyond the graphics reskin and the window system rewrites there's also a few bug fixes (the bugs are thankfully few and far between these days), several performance tweaks, and some combat additions. I also added in a couple requests from player feedback. All-in-all, I hope players enjoy the new polish.
Thank you to all the wonderful people that have showed their support thus far. Without people buying the game, I couldn't have purchased the assets from the artists over on Itch, so thank you. o/