Devlog #35: Forest

The draft for the trailer is done with the idea and timing set up, now I'm just filling in the placeholder parts. A lot of that is still in the works, so another short devlog this week. I've spent most of the week editing, but I spent a bit of time animating and working on sprites.

-----------------------------------------

Trailer animations

I'm still polishing most of the animations for the trailer, because I usually swap back and forward between them so I can see them with fresh eyes. Here’s one that is mostly finished (and I spent way too long on):

Ghosts ambushing the player is a big part of my game, but the regular ambushes are not flashy enough for a trailer, so I decided to make a weird one that would really stand out. I think it'll make for a fun little encounter in game too so I might lean into more stuff like this in the future.

----------------------------------------

Forest Area

The opening to the trailer is going to focus on the ‘open world’ part of the game with lots of different areas of the game shown off, so I figured it’s time to get together one of the most different looking areas of the game- The forest area.

This person’s dream is of a time before the Nagayami happened so it's still green everywhere, although still night time and perpetually raining. Here’s a little mockup I did of what the area will look like:

The area will be made of lots of small single screen forest areas like this one that make the player feel lost and have to follow the patterns in nature to find their way around. I've designed the whole area but I’m just gonna focus on polishing a small section for the trailer because it’s a side area and I still want to focus on the main questline before deviating.

---------------------------------------

Goals for next week

-Finalise forest visuals
-Work on cave visuals (for scene with snowman)
-Polished POW finisher animations x3 (dreading these)
-New NPC ghosts x4

----------------------

I took it pretty easy this week, partly because it was my birthday and you gotta treat yourself a little. A sane person might reflect and come to the conclusion they’re wasting their life away making a game that nobody cares about, but I still have some hope. I’ve got my heart set on making games, and hopefully by my next birthday I’ll have a game released and be working on the next one. Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading!