hello everyone!
another four months have gone by and naturally the game has progressed a little. i wish i could have gotten more work done but school and burnout are my main two obstacles right now and so unfortunately progress has been very stagnant, hence why i waited until now to post another update on the game's progress.
as a reminder, studio apart(ment) is a life sim x roguelite where you play seven days of a life sim before the map resets. right now, my work is focused on introductory related content. i don't want to spoil exactly what this entails, but there are some story details that remain relevant for now. this does include a tutorial, however, since i really want to get playtesters to be able to start the game and get playing without handholding from me. currently, i'm having to explain the whole game to someone everytime they do anything, which makes getting feedback tricky.
the intro is more or less done, however. instead of being dumped into the city, there is finally a progression to the start of the game. it is not fully complete yet, as i really want to polish these scenes and make the experience of starting the game fluid and fun, most of all. despite that, this is super exciting! pressing on a save finally feels unique and interactive, compared to the previous (and now unused)
old:
new:
animations
i'm definitely trying to include a lot of animation sequences here, but my main philosophy as a designer is to let the player jump right into the game without watching 30 hours of cutscenes. i think this creates a more engaging and player-driven experience, which is what makes a game fun. here is a sneak peak at one of the animations for now.
story??
while this is a life sim at heart, a vague story is required to bind together the roguelite and life sim elements. i really struggled to think of an idea that wasn't too outlandish for the vibe i wanted, and i think i've finally come up with one. obviously, i'm not going to reveal it right now, but i think it fits right into the game and will feel really natural.
bugs
the last month has been really good for development. i want to quantify how much i've been able to work on but one month of development is admittedly hard to show when much of it is code and backend work. some (extremely stupid) bugs i've fixed are:
- after dialogue is finished the ui would not be unloaded
- if you loaded a save file, went to the menu, and then back to that save all the input was turned off
- player starts with no clothes (oops)
- if you are prompted for your name and you click submit without typing, your name gets set to "what is your name?"
i wish there was more, but that's it for now. over the next year i'm going to finish up the introduction completely, revamp the procedural generation code, work on npcs, and hopefully, get the first BETA BUILD of studio apart(ment) which i'm so insanely excited for. september marked the two year anniversary of starting this project, and i'm really happy with how its come out so far. solo development is really time consuming, and i'm glad i'm finally able to see some sort of an end in sight.