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[Ashedragon]

Oh? This is actually quite adorable. I love the simple premise, and the graphical style is very quaint!

[Devilkay]

add more screenshots 

[Sketchwhale]

I like the visuals a lot, this seem like a perfect fit for nintendo switch

Thanks man! You know, I wouldn't mind that. I saw the people who made Pocket Rumble did so in Love2D, but apparently they have reasons to not divulge the process of getting it on Switch. Although, 4 years ago, the hungry market was the Switch, these days it seems more like the PS5 could use some exclusive love(2D) :D

[Beastboy]

but apparently they have reasons to not divulge the process of getting it on Switch.

Yea but you can always find a publisher who does porting and publish

[Sketchwhale]

Woah, I hadn't even seen that this was now two pages.

Oh? This is actually quite adorable. I love the simple premise, and the graphical style is very quaint!

Great to hear you like it. I hope I can keep the premise simple, and not ruin it by fleshing it out just enough to be comprehensible when playing.

add more screenshots 

I'll work on it I should also update the originals.

but apparently they have reasons to not divulge the process of getting it on Switch.

Yea but you can always find a publisher who does porting and publish

Hah, yeah, maybe. I wonder how that would work. Maybe once its done, someone will show some love and interest.

[Beastboy]

Worst case scenario you can invest some reading in tutorials and do the publishing yourself

[Sketchwhale]

Sound & Music

One of my biggest concerns for The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit has been sound and music. I taught myself to program to start this project, and drawing I just did as best I could, but creating music is a field completely inaccessible to me. I love music, I’m just comically tonedeaf and incapable of getting rhythm (doubly unfortunate when people who teach music always rely on people just getting the basics, and if they can’t, they’re completely lost). A dear friend of mine helped out with two tracks for the game a few years ago, but he’s a very busy man, and I really needed more progress in this area. Then some months ago, another friend of mine decided he wanted to try his hand at sound effects and we had some fun evenings experimenting with what sounded good for UI stuff (confirm, move cursor, cancel etc). Eventually he wanted to help out with music as well. I had been unsure of how to feel about this. The first buddy I mentioned was also very talented, but both guys have a melancholic flair to their art, and I was unsure of whether I could steer the talents towards my vision (I shudder at myself for writing that word, but it is what it is). My first buddy had initially made a track that was, in a way, exactly what I was hoping for. It was upbeat, fast and catchy. The problem was, for inspiration, I had sent him a video of a song that gave me those feelings, and though not the same, I couldn’t help but feel he had created a fantastic song where his heart wasn’t 100 % into it. The second song he made was also great, but I really didn’t feel like it fit. It was much more his own style, and really, it was a fantastic song.

Seeing as I had earlier failed at directing my super helpful and talented friend, I feared something like that could happen again.

It seems a bit uninspired to say this (as I mentioned the same game in the previous Boss post), but I was playing FFXIV, and was running the Great Gubal Library with Jon, when it dawned on me how incredibly varied, yet still fitting, the music in that game is. I thought I had been a fool, not being better at providing some general guidance for the music, and then accepting that a different person, an artist, was doing their thing. Very well. As I was working on designing Baalianargh, it was obvious that boss music was needed. My friend is a gamer, so I assumed he had a sense of what would put you into a fighting mood when asking for boss music. Furthermore, Baalinargh has his different stages, so some music that could change over time, or three smaller tracks? Would that be enough to work with? Would it be too much to ask?

He provided a great track. It was his style, but it was definitely also what I had hoped. I think people will get into a good boss-bashing from that music. His work on it inspired him, and he made another track. This too was good, but I hadn’t asked for it, and wasn’t sure what to do with it. It was closer to his own style I felt, and I told him this over text. I agonised about it, because I didn’t want to turn him down when he felt inspired, so after some discussion I called him on the phone and we talked it over. I couldn’t be sure how he took that conversation, but I know we don’t always know what to say in such situations, so I told he could of course call me back if he realised he had forgotten to talk something through. About twenty minutes later he called me. I had hurt him. I can’t 100 % repeat what he said and what I had said, but he was definitely right. I had managed to phrase my thoughts in a terrible way. I apologised, and I felt awful. And then curiously, a few hours later, I realised what to use that song for. God. Damnit. It fit perfectly. I had had a very specific mood for a specific situation, and I just didn’t know how to ask for that music, and here it came, just straight into my chat feed. Since then, my buddy here has been incredible. He created a bunch of original sound effects (many of which I immediately found a use for), and has created songs for all kinds of situations. I am incredibly lucky.

These aren’t the only things that’ve occurred recently, but let’s keep this focused with just a semblance of structure, shall we?

Worst case scenario you can invest some reading in tutorials and do the publishing yourself

At least for PC platforms :D

[Sketchwhale]

Summer Update - A New Move

Alright... two months... Yeah, feels like it. Vacation, couple of weeks of illness, and putting in my time here and there. Mostly improvements to gameplay, but also new music (oh god the music is so good). Updates have mostly been going on the garbage fire we call twitter, but this thread is so much nicer. One of the neater changes I came up with, was the realisation that I could get rid of my action points (I called them Oridama) and simply use one of the games ingredients. It would then recharge every round. An added side-bonus of this, was I could get rid of the Defend move (called Aegis Fold), cause ingredients all double as potential shield points anyway, but the Defend move made temporary shield points and it was just all very confusing. Simplicity. Ahhhhhh [imagine a capybara bathing].

By the end of my vacation, two major design issues (for me) were becoming very obvious. The first was the spell called 'Volatile Arcana'. It was just too powerful. It'd either need some delicate fine-tuning, or a major redesign. I tried both and so far the fine-tuning seems the right path. I simply liked its explosive chain reactions too much not to keep the mechanics the same.

Before that, though, was 'Scramble Arcana'. It randomized where new enemies would appear, and what loot they would carry. The meta-aspect of being able to change the state of the game behind the scenes was very appealing, but the level of randomness made it way too unpredictable, and in the levels I had designed for it, though the idea worked, it was too cumbersome to act upon.

After mulling it over for too long, I asked my girlfriend to help me. She's just really smart. We sat down for a brainstorm. I told her about the above, and the spell we came up with is tentatively called...

Material Arcana

I'm real proud of this one. It's a shop directly inside your inventory.

    

Instead of collapsing reality around an enemy, or destabilizing their very core, it opens a little menu.

    

You get a random selection of ingredients (and a button to purchase a new random selection), and you can queue up them up to build. It takes 2 rounds

    

You can also pay to speed up the construction, in case you need to move fast.

    

Once a move is finished, it is replaced by a random different ingredient (I cheated in the screenshot below)

    

So yeah. It's a complicated new action/spell/move, but it's definitely usable. I've described it as a spell for the meticulous battle wizard. Programming it was also kinda fun, cause it's a system that spans many parts of the game's systems.

Now that those two design hurdles are dealt with, I need to redesign some levels, design new levels, and do a lot more writing.

Cheers everyone.

[JobLeonard]

I am both intrigued and puzzled by your explanations of these game mechanics but it's clear from how you write it that you spent a lot of time thinking about it and working it out (insert person looking at floating numbers image here).

Simplification sounds good though, also makes the implementation less likely to collapse under its own weight on the programming side

[Sketchwhale]

I am both intrigued and puzzled by your explanations of these game mechanics but it's clear from how you write it that you spent a lot of time thinking about it and working it out (insert person looking at floating numbers image here).

Simplification sounds good though, also makes the implementation less likely to collapse under its own weight on the programming side

Oh I have definitely spent too long thinking about this. It feels like a game FOR game designers, at this point. And you're spot on with the programming-point :D That being said, the code is the re-animated body of a lich, that in un-life, was the bloated corpse of a pile of sewn-together zombies. It is BARELY functional  

[JobLeonard]

This is true for most code though so don't feel too bad

[Sketchwhale]

This is true for most code though so don't feel too bad

I would never! It's the other guy's fault 

[Sketchwhale]

September/October Update

I'm slowly implementing the system of acquiring new abilities through side objectives, but it's a hassle, since the system spans many parts of the game, and I haven't figured out the UI yet, for having both primary and secondary objectives.

In the beginning of September, I started to look critically at the numbers in the game (health, damage, etc). Since the beginning, I'd just sorta winged them. I researched the original Dragon Quest, contemplated more contemporary JRPGs, and even started writing an article that eventually was only peripherally related. It was both beneficial to this game, and a huge detour. It made me create a dynamic spreadsheet to control all the values and their side effects, and inspired me to create some new limitations that seem to encourage more diverse play.

As for the article… it's kinda boring, very nerdy, and perhaps too filled with an internal logic. Yet, I think it argues for some important and neglected aspects of game design, specifically JRPGs, and so I think I AM gonna finish it. I just wish I could make it a lot more personal.

Towards the end of the month, I've started to bug people personally, to ask them if they want to try The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit. I've definitely gotten some very useful feedback, so I'll probably just continue doing that. If you read this and are interested in trying a buggy, early build: send me a DM.

At some point I'll get to drawing more backgrounds, but until then, enjoy this assortment of various situations (also, I finally figured out both OBS and FFMPEG, so these gifs are just off the hook).

(EDIT: damn, the preview window is wider than the actual post width, so the images don't appear side-by-side. Looked better in preview.)

[Beastboy]

Good progress.

[JobLeonard]

As for the article… it's kinda boring, very nerdy, and perhaps too filled with an internal logic. Yet, I think it argues for some important and neglected aspects of game design, specifically JRPGs, and so I think I AM gonna finish it. I just wish I could make it a lot more personal.

Actually, that first part got me quite intrigued. And don't worry about the last bit, I'm sure most game devs here can read between the lines due to their own experience with game design

[Pfotegeist]

I'm a simple bunny. I see rabbit and I click.

[Sketchwhale]

Good progress.

Aw thanks man. Great that you kept up :D

As for the article… it's kinda boring, very nerdy, and perhaps too filled with an internal logic. Yet, I think it argues for some important and neglected aspects of game design, specifically JRPGs, and so I think I AM gonna finish it. I just wish I could make it a lot more personal.

Actually, that first part got me quite intrigued. And don't worry about the last bit, I'm sure most game devs here can read between the lines due to their own experience with game design

Oh, really? That's great. I'll double my efforts! The last two pieces I wrote for takunomi.space, I felt were good stories too. I suppose not all pieces can be like that though.

I'm a simple bunny. I see rabbit and I click.

Careful my lapine friend. Bad things happen to your kind in this game.

[wolfsden]

This game's title is pure gold 

[Sketchwhale]

MID OCTOBER UPDATE

Not so much to say. This week I've been down with a fever and my kids have been vomiting their guts out. Do you have any idea how bad half-digested ragu alla bolognese smells?

Before all these delights, I did manage to make side-objectives and rewards work, and that IS sort of a milestone in terms of systems needed for the gameplay, as I consider it to have been the final missing piece.

I've also been privately messaging cool people on Twitter to ask them to play my game and spar with me. It's been very informative, so thank you again to those people.

Finally, I finished the post I was gonna write on my blog about the numbers in my game and JRPGs, so that one goes out to you, JobLeonard, if you ever read this :D

Politics of Arithmetic and Terminology

This game's title is pure gold 

Thank you :D I'm getting more and more fond of it, every time people praise it.

[Pfotegeist]

Oh no. Those virtual bunnies can't get any stronger without you tweaking the code.