New Year News (Patreon)

Hey everybody! Welcome to 2024. It's been quite a ride for us at Wan Wan Games, but we're pretty relieved to have survived the last year unscathed. It's good to see you all made it too! Now that we've all convened on the other side, let's get right down to business. The test build for the rhythm game is coming up quick, and should be available in the coming weeks so you can test out our initial vision for the game. I've been hammering away at some visual elements for the build over the past month, and I think we're getting a satisfactory result.

Here's some quick concept work I did for the timing indicator on the main gameplay UI. DD's idea to show the player their accuracy in hitting notes was one that lent itself to the idea of a scale, and I savored the chance to work in another symbolic element. It will likely be the next element you'll see me finalizing in our gamedev streams, after some conversations about what information needed to be conveyed I was able to refine my initial concept into something that reads a little more clearly. I'll need a little more work on the colors, but the inclusion of a plumb bob already helped the scale to be a lot more immediately readable. It can be quite challenging to balance the dry conveyance of the game's mechanics with the artistic instinct to illuminate, but with just a bit of work the two standards can be married successfully.

The same can be said for this quick mockup, showing what the animation I had pictured for the player's health bar would look like. As an an animator I often have the instinct to embellish movement wherever I can, but in this case motion has to be kept to a minimum so as not to distract the player away from the action. Some subtle flame effects will be present, but otherwise changes happen quite abruptly and without fanfare in this part of the screen. The layout for the main gameplay screen as shown previously might shift slightly as we introduce more final assets into the game engine and reevaluate visual priority, but the health bar is an element meant to command less attention, only serving as a quick indicator of the player's status. Still, no element in the game is without opportunity for building the tone of the story, and candles are a universal motif related to transcendence of the physical across cultures, so I think the flame demands at least a little animation.

An element of the UI that does require a little more scrutiny from the player is the combo counter! Here's the most intricate part of it, since the player will often be checking their performance this area of the screen will require a little more beautification. I chose the lotus as a symbol of purity, suiting the metaphysical theme of the game but also literally referring to the perfection of a run without any misses. The flower will open and spin faster as the player achieves a higher combo, one of several dynamic parts of the interface meant to drive the energy of the gameplay experience. It's a rhythm game after all, so everything should be a little musical! This animation took the bulk of the month's work, but other parts will soon follow.

We have high hopes moving into the new year, and we're looking forward to assembling all these pieces and giving you all your first taste of gameplay. Other artists such as Imp have expressed interest in achieving this goal, and we don't anticipate it will be much longer before the test build will be available for patrons. Please keep an eye out for the test soon! We wish you all a prosperous, fun and safe new year, and we sincerely can't wait to contribute something positive with this project to everyone's lives. Thanks so kindly for staying with us, your support makes it all possible!

-Julian