Aster's Lament Dev Log 0.5 (Patreon)

Hello there! I'm finally reaching a point where I feel like I can (hopefully) post something about my game once a month! I wanted to take this first post to sort of explain what's going on with the game and its development so folks can get an idea of where it is and how it's progressing. I'll make another post in the future going over the premise and genre and whatnot for the game. 

First of all, let's talk about programming and the engine since that's the least developed thing right now. Initially we were going to be making the game in Game Maker Studio 2. One of my programmer friends had created the movement and collision systems as well as rudimentary interaction and text implementation. You can see a screenshot of the old debug scene here!

However, upon learning that GMS2 was going forward with a subscription based model I opted to switch engines to Godot since we were so early in development. We have the framework set back up to do programming work on the project again and hopefully things will start moving along there soon!

Now let's move on to the art side of things, my main domain! The above concept art has been posted before but it serves as a good foundation for the general vibes of the game's main setting. The bulk of the game takes place on a small artificial island. I wanted it to have a mix of rustic and sci-fi magic-y stuff for the aesthetic. 

Here's concepts for a post office that I'm currently in the process of converting to a pixel art set piece.

And speaking of pixel art: I've been working on solidifying the look and feel of the main cast by making short emote animations for them. I think they've really come a long way from their first iterations and I'm stoked to see them all in motion. Here's a couple of the ones I've made so far for Melody and Aster:

on top of all of this, I have completely laid out the entire map for the main island and have been making strides in the story department as well. There's a whole bunch more stuff I've made, but I can't share all of it! at least not right now. I'm more excited than ever before to be working on this game and I hope to be able to share this world with all of you as soon as reasonably possible. I won't put solid dates on anything so early but I'll mention milestones and predictions as development moves farther along.

Thanks for the support and please look forward to future updates!