But for story reasons, this town is in decline and the player will help restore it, so I need other ways to make sure it feels alive.
What do you think? What makes a game town feel alive for you?
#gamedev #gametowns #npc #gamecharacters
I've been working on the townsfolk for my game. I want each character to have their own personalities and quirks, but I also have to be realistic with scope!
I know other devs get round this by making tourist towns full of NPCs that come and go with a few more permanent characters...
Being able to craft experiences for others (as cheesy as it sounds)! It's something I've been interested in since I was a kid. I used to want to be a film director but realised how much more fun game dev is.
P.s. if you want to play my latest #gamejam game you can find it here: dewlentdesigns.itch.io/solomons-sig...
8/🧵 Lastly, progress isn't linear. My first and third entries were buggy af, my second was undercooked, but I am beyond proud of my fourth.
What's important is that I always learnt something, even from the "failures".
7/🧵 The other thing I've seen is how far my abilities have come. I intentionally didn't open the engine until my first jam started. Now I'm making my own mechanics and graphics and having so much fun with it! It's not been easy but the resources available are so helpful!
6/🧵 It's also not uncommon to have issues when trying to upload your game close to the deadline, especially with large popular jams as so many people are doing the same thing! (Like the text slowdown just after midnight on new years eve as a lot of people are sending good wishes)
5/🧵 Try exporting your game early and semi often to make sure that it not only runs in the editor, but also when submitted.
Also, give yourself plenty of time to debug, especially for the final export and upload. My most recent jam required ~20 export and upload attempts before I got it working.
4/🧵 The other important thing is knowing that bugs are inevitable! In my experience they come at the worst time, with the weirdest issues or only show themselves after the deadline.
3/🧵 Speaking of assessing ideas, these were some of my criteria:
a. Is it close to my current skill level? (Coding, art, fx etc)
b. Is it doable in 1/3 the time? (Remember to leave time to debug & polish!)
c. Is it something I'd want to play?
d. Does it fit the brief?
2/🧵 First (and most importantly imo) scope and planning.
With my most successful jam, I couldn't start right away, which gave me time to think first; coming up with a bunch of different ideas and giving myself time to 'sleep on it' meant I was better equipped to assess my ideas.
After entering 4 game jams across just over a year, here are some of the main things I've learnt: 1/🧵
#gamejam #devtips #indiedev #solodev #godot
This is so exciting!
Want to know about my current project?
You'll play as a witch gathering herbs by platforming and farming, crafting potions with minigames, and befriending local townsfolk. Think Stardew Valley x Hollow Knight.
I'm hyped for this game and I hope you'll join me for the ride!
Want to enjoy #Silksong but find the difficulty just too much?
You'll love the game I'm making!
It's a cosy metroidvania where you play as a witch, gathering herbs by platforming and farming before brewing potions with minigames to access new areas and befriending local townsfolk 🥰
I'm making a cosy game where you play as a witch gathering herbs through platforming, farm them into ingredients and make potions with them! Plus there'll be NPCs to befriend too!
Currently working on the farming part of the demo, got the tileset made, currently working on coding all the tools!
Cool concept! Is it controlled by the mouse wheel? Do you have to scroll though each letter/number individually or can you press and hold a button and it'll auto scroll?
8 / 🧵 I'm now excited to build a world with depth and detail and while it felt really overwhelming at first, taking small steps like this really has helped me grow my optimism and rekindle my childhood desire to worldbuild.
Do you have any #WorldBuilding tips?
7 / 🧵 The thing that surprised me the most is how that creativity in one area (e.g. drawing the plants) fed into creativity elsewhere (coming up with "lore" for the plants and sayings based on them that I can put into the game)
6 / 🧵 By letting myself take inspiration from real plants and then adapt and be creative with them I've ended up with some really fantastical looking plants! (I'll share snippets soon!)
5 / 🧵 I then started naming the plants, figuring out their appearance, what biome they grew in and other little details about them.
This happened at about the same time, I'd have an idea of a name, then draw it and then adjust the name based on the design.
4 /🧵 Each plant would need multiple states (watered, wilted and healthy variants of all growth stages) so even adding one extra plant could add up to 40 images needed!!
I started by defining each potion's effect, then figured out 4-5 ingredient plants that I could mix and match for each potion.
3 /🧵 So I knew I wanted to use made up plants, and I wanted them to be interesting.
This game has ✨️magic✨️ so it should feel magical!
Also, this is for the game's demo! Since I want to get this out ASAP I need to be practical with the game's scope.
2 / 🧵 In the game you gather the plants in platforming sections, farm them then use them as ingredients in potions.
I didn't want to use real plants because they can cause real problems (like a whole group of friends in ITU because one of them picked the wrong mushroom and cooked it for everyone)
#Worldbuilding for an #indiegame can feel overwhelming. I wanted a world that felt vibrant and alive and storied, but I had no idea how to reach it.
I decided to put those worries on the back burner and take it one step at a time... For now, I needed fantasy plants for my cosy game.
1 / 🧵
**Sound on** Progress update!
Have done some work on the environment art of my #cosygame and composed some music too! Let me know what you think! (N.B. the collectable sparkles, enemies and character are placeholder atm)
artists!⚠️
this is your reminder to back up those couple of brushes you cannot work without. it will take just a few minutes.
get them up into a cloud, send them to yourself by mail or something, you never know when software decides to be stupid and you'll need to reset your stuff
*exports*
oh i found a bug
*re-exports*
oh I found a bug
*re-exports*
oh I found a bug
*re-exports*
oh I found a b-
I think bluesky also deserves to see this cozy swamp house
🧅
tbf I didn't know that either! 😅
we're all learning here! :)
