Devlog #3- Creating a Prologue

  Hey. In this devlog I’m gonna go over some major updates I’ve made to the project over the last few months.

-A NEW TITLE-

If you were following previously, you may have noticed that I change the game’s name to Nagayami Nights.

The game takes place in a world where the sun has disappeared, and because it’s an event that will be referred to multiple times in the story, I wanted to create a word for it. After a lot of workshopping, I decided on Nagayami- A combination of the Japanese terms Naga meaning Eternity, and Yami meaning Darkness. I also like that it sounds similar to Tsunami, because it’s also a Japanese-borrowed word for a natural disaster. My main goal was to find a word that sounded good in English, but my Japanese friend said it sounds pretty cool in Japanese too.

After coming up with it, I realised it would be a great alternative to the more-or-less meaningless name I created for the original Jam version, and as an added bonus, it still keeps the same alliteration.

Game titles are really important, especially on platforms like Steam where they require your game title to feature prominently on all icons on the store page. So, I spent a long time making sure that the title would be interesting, even at a glance. Personally, I’m a big fan of when games/books/movies do something cool with their titles, adding in references to the game itself, and I’ve tried to replicate that in mine.

Here's the design I decide on. I’ve left it in a semi-draft state for the time being, but overall I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

-A NEW RELEASE PLAN-

Scope creep is definitely a problem I face when designing games, but I think I’m doing okay so far. The main game loops and systems have stayed surprisingly consistent as I’ve made progress on the game but I’m realising how huge a project it is for one person. So moving forward I’ve decided to pivot just slightly, and decided I will focus on creating a prologue with all the main features of the main game (turn based combat, multiple characters to upgrade, exploration, focus on characters and story) but in a more condensed couple of hours of gameplay.

The idea of a demo is tempting but thinking it through, I don’t think that approach suits a story-driven game with a focus on long-term objectives like mine. Also, a demo would require a lot of extra work that would likely be scrapped in the full release.

I’ve found an interesting part of the story that can be told as a stand-alone prologue, focusing on the character Mila who you’ll know if you played the original jam game.

If all goes well then I plan to release it on steam, but I’m not deciding on a release window until I can very clearly see the finish line for the project.

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I have created a private demo (images above)to share with my friends that covers the first 15~ minutes of the game, and while I don’t want to make it fully public yet, if anyone is interested in play-testing it for me then hit me up on twitter and I’ll send you a link.

I’m spending a lot more time on the game, and it’s becoming more polished and playable every day so I’ll be releasing devlogs more often. Thanks for reading!