A Very Serious, No-Nonsense Update on My Game Nova Forever.
This is a no-nonsense update about my game Nova Forever. Let me tell you something: People on the internet expect excellence, so we write concise and consistent devlogs — always! There are no fun and games to be found here. Well, this is about a game, so disregard that part, but we **are** serious here on the internet, so you better *not* strap in, because this is *not* going to be a bumpy ride, but a rather smooth one with lots of toilet breaks and snack runs in between. Stretch out your legs and download some shows onto your tablet — Plur1bus is excellent for example. We could even stop on the way and visit some obscure attraction on the roadside. I heard the world's biggest tumbleweed is rolling around somewhere on the way. I'll let you know once I see the signs!
Update: I realized quickly that nonsense is way more up my alley! So enjoy this nonsensical devlog instead, please. Water sponsored this one today, so huge shout-out to water! It's healthy and keeps us alive and stuff.
I Am Making a Demo!
I am indeed working on the demo of a computer video game with features like full motion video, saving to disk, and stereo sound — it's a cutting-edge graphic adventure game called Nova Forever.
Making this demo is like I'm on this unstoppable bus — very much like that movie Speed back in the day — only that this bus is very slow, and also very stoppable. More like a small, battered soapbox car. It's really nothing like the bus from that movie Speed back in the day.
The Story So Far
The last time I talked about my game, I shared that I played through the prologue for the first time, which is also roughly the scope of the demo — more on that later. A lot of stuff happened since then. First and foremost I managed to launch the Steam Page.
Making the Trailer
I knew very early on that the trailer would be an important milestone that I wanted to get out with the Steam page. Why? To make myself happy! Also, to make a possibly better first impression — you only ever get one of those. That meant I wanted to put more work into producing it in order to represent the game and what it's about as best as I could. The result is far from perfect, but I was still happy with it in the end.
What you see there is gameplay and lots of excerpts from the game’s cutscenes. I even cast some amazing talent for the voices. Joey Lem is Cargo and Kymberley Cochrane is Nova. I had a blast working with them on this and I think they did a fantastic job.
Since I'm working as an editor, I was comfortable with this side of the production, even though it still was lots of work and tinkering. That's very normal for trailers, though! Producing it to represent as much of the game as possible also meant that I had to jump into the future for some parts of this and work on sections of the game that I haven't even completely written yet, in order to better represent the whole journey of the game a little better. The section with the vent and the elevator is a good example. All that stuff happens much later in the story.
I'm definitely breaking a bunch of rules in terms of how long this trailer is, how much of this is cutscenes, rather than gameplay, but as you know I’m trying not to sweat these things too much. I think it was the right call for now, because I think for game's like mine showing the actual fantasy of being in the middle of this adventure and this story you experience on an emotional level (hopefully) is more interesting for me to express than over-focusing on a gameplay aspect, that is honestly pretty simple to communicate in this case.
Getting the Word Out
When I launched the Steam page I also reached out to people to share the game. Some highlights were a shout-out by kotaku amongst a bunch of other great indies to wishlist and I could even talk a bit about the game myself in this massive collection of adventure games by YouTuber and adventure game enthusiast Tomasz. My section starts at 01:01:19. I talked a bit about my plans for the game and what it’s all about.
It’s definitely difficult to spread the word about the game, but I’m hopeful to get more people on board once I get the demo out and the actual game gets more tangible. Oh! What a supreme opportunity to talk about that demo now! Wow, I think I’m getting the hang of this writing thing, y’all.
Demo Demo Demo Demo
I’ve heard that a demo is important, so I’m making one right now! As I mentioned before, this is also the prologue of the game — so everything up to the accident that fuses Cargo’s mind with Nova. You’re going to get to know Cargo and his digital friends Boogie and Slushy, working on a remote asteroid dreaming of a better, more exciting life at The Plaza space station.
Let’s Look at the Demo and What Still Needs to Be Done.
Life is full of good things and bad things. There are also in-between kinda things, but those would blow up the scope of this devlog by thousands of percentages. Percentage. Percentágé? It would be a lot! So let's take a look at the state of things.
Good Things
All dialogue is written and currently being (heavily) edited.
All 6 locations of the demo are finished and implemented.
The tutorial section is finished and implemented.
The UI menus are all implemented and functioning, except for two features I'm still wrecking my brain about.
5 / 6 Cutscenes are written, rendered, scored and edited.
Soundtrack and sound design are both finished.
All but one puzzle of the demo are designed and implemented.
Bad Things
The demo is kinda short and does not feature a lot of gameplay & puzzles. Let's get philosophical about this one later!
One section isn't working very well, and might even get cut, further complicating the above point.
The writing isn't finished yet and thus keeping other things from being finished.
Internal playtesting hasn't started yet and will likely change quite a few things.
I still need to cast three more characters before moving on to recording voices for the demo.
We got quite a few bugs to get rid of, as well as some problems with the save system / game state stuff that need fixing.
All this summed up means that a public demo is still quite a way off, but I do hope to get some eyes on it soon to help with editing and finding problems in all departments.
What Does this Demo Even Have to Accomplish!?
I’ve got no idea, I’m totally new to this! I worry a lot about the length of the demo, but I also know that I’m overthinking this a little. Resources are finite, so while I’m striving to make the demo compelling and representative, I have to accept some quirks and flaws. The gameplay and puzzles are the biggest source of my headaches these days. There are not a lot of puzzles in the prologue at all, and the ones that are there are very easy for multiple reasons. The prologue is linear and does not have a lot of branching locations that would even warrant having lots of puzzle chains. Also, since this is the start of the game, I’m not super interested in even having these sprawling puzzles and brain teasers. The game goes into way more non-linearity and more complex puzzles, but all that happens later in the game. That whole topic of difficulty is a super interesting thing for a future devlog. I have many conflicting thoughts about it. Puzzles and difficulty are probably the most challenging things for me on this project. Who would’ve thought that it’s difficult to get difficulty right, huh?
On the other side of the whole gameplay-dilemma, you will see quite a few cutscenes in the prologue, introducing Cargo and his situation — this is the setup of the story after all! I’m constantly trying to make it snappier, but in the end I have to keep the entire game in mind. I’m breaking my manifesto with this one a little, as I promised myself to drop players into the game as fast as possible. We’ll see what people say and despair over all this another day!
I see quite a few games that put the players right into the middle of their game for the demo, but that approach was not an option in my case. Hopefully, my idea for the demo is to get a few players invested in the story, introducing them to the characters and the promise of a fun adventure on a space mall. Ending the demo with the incident that kinda kicks the story into the next gear feels like the best way to tease the journey ahead and hopefully make players excited about what happens next.
What's Next?
You'll be the first to know when things are moving towards a playtest or anything like that — so stay tuned for that, wishlist the game, visit my website for even more stories, or subscribe to my newsletter if you want to get notified via mail. I'll make sure to also announce it here and on Steam.
To celebrate the progress and get you in the mood for the demo, I have compiled this little musical suite of the score for the prologue over here on YouTube:
Featuring excerpts and cues from the demo. Perfect for the dancers among you, or as a second monitor chill pill. I'll see you soon!