Opening • Statement
Hey, hello, and hi, it is I, flower baasket here. Bet you'll never guess what this Steam Post is gonna focus on. Truly, it’s exciting.
But, before that, I usually like to take this time to talk about music, and this post is no exception. But, it's not exactly just a song this time. This month, I saw the Project Sekai movie in theaters. My thoughts? Well, if you've played ProSekai, it's an absolute treat. Long rambling incoming.
Let me start this off by saying that I'm not even the biggest fan of the game. Sure, I'll log on every once in a while, maybe read a story or two, but I don't play often. I watched all of Nightcord, the introduction of WxS, then promptly dropped it. Only picked it up a week before the movie released so I could catch up on the lore.
And I still loved it. Seeing all the characters interact and Vocaloid references was so fun, I especially love the theater reaction. Some people came dressed as Ren and Lin, people were hyped up from the back to back performances at the end, it was wonderful, everyone there was as much of a nerd as I was. And nobody was overdoing it, either, it was one of the best theater experiences I've gone to.
Special shoutout to Tsukasa, who I came dressed as. Guy was clip farming in every scene he was in. I'm already seeing videos of his reactions, he truly was a star. DECO*27 and crew cooked with the six songs, this movie is going to live rent-free in my head for months. Come to streaming, or re-run the movie, I need to watch it again.
...But I suppose that's enough rambling for now. Don't leave me to my own devices, or this post will be 90% Project Sekai. I'm moving on while I still have the chance.
We have...actually some pretty interesting things to go over this month. If I did nothing but UI work, I'd probably go insane, so there's a little bit of everything here.
Story • Progress
101% - Fully fully complete!
...Starting off with something that I finished as early as devlog 1, the story! For testing reasons, I was going to publish a playable build of the game on Steam, so I decided to playthrough the first chapter to make sure that there weren't any game breaking bugs or anything. I Played through the story about three times, and I was pleasantly surprised with the results.
It takes about an hour to complete (while I skipping the dialogue), sometimes longer depending on the items I got. If that doesn't sound like a long time, keep in mind that this game's gonna be like $4 on release. And there's more to do, ya know!
I ended up polishing up some stuff, giving a new sprite to one of the units (it's basically a reskin, but better than nothing), and, at the request of some of my close friends, added 4 new items. There's still some jank elements that I'd like to fix before release, but I'm chalking that up to the UI, and not the mode itself. So, once again, we're done, and better than ever.
I'm putting a cap on adding new content to the game. I know I really should have done that earlier, but adding 1-3 new items isn't that difficult, especially since the base for everything is practically done already. An hour long detour never hurt nobody.
Reminiscent • Progress
90% - Almost Done!
...I knew I said I wouldn't do anything with this mode until the end of May, but my bad, I had a really good reason for that, I swear.
I kept thinking of which faction would be the 2nd one to come on release, and I had some really good enemies. Too many good enemies, actually. I'd design an entire deck, then think of another enemy, and this cycle would repeat, and now I'd be stuck between which one I liked the most. I designed 5 separate decks for 5 separate factions! In less than 2 weeks!
Obviously, if this continued, I'd have about 50 different factions to choose from when June rolled around, so I decided to just bite the bullet and stop stressing over it. And so, here's the winner of the gauntlet: Station Ai Research Subjects!
School girls? School girls with necklaces!
...More interesting than it sounds, I assure you.
They aren't quite finished yet, the sprite for the 2nd enemy of this faction isn't even done, so I'll go into them more in the next devlog. Once they are finished, though, I'd like to have a couple of friends playtest the finished Reminiscent Mode. If everything's good, then that means I can finally put a cap on Rem, leaving me with nothing to do but balancing and UI changes.
With RemMode being almost completed, I would like to celebrate this occasion the only way I know how...by making a Discord Sever and giving out steam keys giving myself more work. Everyone, give a warm welcome to the new progress category!
Misc • Progress
Achievements: 60% - No Progress
Challenges: 10% - This game's gonna have challenges...?
UI: 60% - Slow Progress.
Challenges? Woah, nobody said anything about challenges? That's not even on the Steam Page!
Yes, challenges were always planned for the game, though at the time of making the Page, I was unsure of their addition, so I did not mention them. Until now, that is.
I dunno if I want to rename them to something more dream related to fit with the game's theming, but we're balling for now. Don't worry, challenges were taken into consideration when estimating the game's release date, so August still seems like a fairly reasonable task.
The game will be releasing with 8 different challenges, each of them giving an item as a completion reward. Think of Isaac challenges, they aren't designed to be difficult, but fun, unique runs that showcase the more interesting mechanics of Snow • Fall. Most of them aren't even full runs, actually...
As for their progress...I got nothing, sorry. I finished the challenge menu, but that's more of a UI thing. And speaking of UI things...
This is a UI post, how could I forget about that? That's right, a majority of the work for this month went towards finishing the awful looking or unfinished menus in the game. How did that turn out? Erm...I...finished the achievements menu. And redid the death screen...and the challenge menu, but I already said that.
There are genuinely not enough words in the English lexicon to describe my distaste for designing menus. When it works, it works, and I'm satisfied, but when it doesn't, it leaves me feeling like shit. If the game gets delayed, the fault lies with UI. The character selection screen in particular is haunting me, I haven't even touched it for the past month, and that's because I have no idea what to do with it. Even now, I'm drawing blanks, I don't know how to make this look good.
I think I also finished the item encyclopedia menu? I'm very torn on it, I can't decide if it's fine or not, and I think that just means that it's missing something. I think I might have an idea on what to do with it, let's see if I can get it done.
Sorry, I don't have a lot unlocked, I'm very bad at this game :(
Thank you creasion616 for that Griffn art, by the way. Never got the chance to say this anywhere, but it wouldn't be the same game without them, they're an amazing artist, truly. Lucky to have them on board.
Once again, now that everything is mostly finalized, let me restate: Mika Side Story - Severance will be releasing with 50 base items (16 unlockable), 46 base Cubes (or cards, 21 unlockable), 8 challenges, an infinite mode, 34 achievements, and a ~hour and thirty minute long first chapter! I really coded all that?!
It's incredible to see how far this has come, and I really hope I can keep going. This is the end of the devlog. Thank you for reading, and happy 21st!