Captain’s Log#1 - Nov2022 (Patreon)

Ahoy, my lanterns! 

We feel honored that you decided to join us on this journey! Welcome to the first of many devlogs, where we will share with you what we have achieved so far! 

(Devlogs will be published monthly as a summary of the development progress. A short summary is available at the end of the text!)

Our project has just started, and we are already so excited! 

   The first days were a very intense exploration for the right technical approach to the game. We tested various 2D/3D solutions through different software to determine our possibilities and verify expectations vs. reality since this would impact the gameplay and what's achievable. But now we know!:

   We are aiming for the unique 2D visual style you already know from Captain Popcorn animations!

         The Team Expands!

Say hi to Jack the Anchor, our Game Designer that is now part of the team! 

    It is SO exciting to have someone on board who can count with the knowledge to make of this game a truly unique gem for you. With Jack's help, we'll be able to create more unique experiences for you! This means we can start putting together the gameplay mechanics and testing them (Spoiler alert: we already tested some, and they are so yummy!).

   Saying this, we now enter the pre-production or so-called discovery stage. Fuelled by strong coffee, we are working on a comprehensive and exciting story, designing characters, reaching out to artists, eyeballing the pipeline, and testing the mechanics and core loop on a rough proof of concept. 

   We have way too many ideas, and it is so hard to choose the right ones! Yet we are winning this battle, and choosing only the best for you! It will take some time to create all the content needed to call it finished, but we are doing all that we can to choose the most efficient workflow for making it happen!

During this stage, we are fleshing out the game's story and characters, designing the game's mechanics and testing them on a rough proof of concept. We have a lot of great ideas, and we want to make sure that we know what we want the game to be before we move on to the next stage. This is an essential part of game development, and we want to ensure we do it right!

Pre-Alpha main menu blockout 🔼

   We have also designed quite a few characters already, and they are all cool in their own way, but we had to limit the number to keep reasonable development times :( We will open the gates to adding more stories after the main game is completed if you like it!

Early Characters Designs 🔼

   After a couple of weeks of intense exploration, we closed the main storyline logic and roughly planned the production tasks for the game. And boi, oh, boi. For a 2D game, many manual processes cannot be simplified or replaced; we shall have to paint each scene and character and variation! (Much coffee needed!!). 

   Despite all that, we only want to take the shortest time possible for the game to happen, so we are looking into expanding the Team and working to streamline the production process. In the end, there is only as much art as a Cap'n can do in a month!

         More Hands For More Strokes!

   What is that bone clinking noise? Our 1st mate is aboard and comes with a lot of experience from past lives to bring the best art and design yet seen!

   Finally this Cap'n can count with some extra hands on deck for making the wildest scenes to come true! So don't let yourself to be fooled for Sully's lack of eyeballs, for  this mad lad knows the craft!

   This Cap'n recognizes that we can't shine at everything when we are imposing deadlines to ourselves. Yet we are committed to make the best possible game for the best possible crew!!

   Enter our 2nd Officer Thorvald! Skilled writer, master fencer and great lid flipper!

Now we shall make sure that not only our sentences make sense, but also that this world we are building shall be meaningful and worthy of your time! An unforgettable experience for you, my loves! 

As you might have noticed, we grew from 1 full-time orchestra-Cap'n to a whole minivan trip! It is getting crazy up here!! Yet it is the price to pay for creating something as unique as we are planning. Because you deserve only the best!

   With our writer onboard, we are committed to create in-depth stories for each of our characters. We want to ensure that all characters have unique backstories, making them memorable and lovable, so we wrote stories for all of them. This way, we can get an idea of how they feel and what drives them, which will help us build a better game. Their stories will be completely different, so if you want to see all these endings, you should play more than once!

   'This goes over here, that goes over there', and you better believe it, because here is Polly, our manager and great cookie baker!

A project without management is a ship without crates: it shall get messy rather quick! And for that we have our fantastic Polly giving managing all the big and small things around, including finances, legal and media. So this Cap'n doesn't have to do everything around here! 

This is excellent news, my lanterns! Because it means we can focus on what each of us do best! And you can be sure yer Cap'n shall be having an extra bit of time fo leading the Team and ensuring we're all sailing in the same direction!! YAARGG!!

          An Exponential Growth

In the meantime, we're running many playtests and tweaking constantly to ensure the game is as fun and engaging as possible. So far, we've got a good feel for the chilled-out, relaxing part of the gameplay. We're working on the more active, fast-paced side of things too, and it's shaping up to be a lot of fun!

Check it by yerselves! Our game research and development notes!:

Before vs. After game development 🔼 

I know this is much talking and not much showing, me lanterns. And the reason is that big projects like these require a lot of planning, having discussions, writing documentation, then scrapping all the writing and starting all over, looking for references, and testing small technical bits and bobs in Unity to make sure we can achieve what we really want. Now we can happily wrap up the planning stage before we jump to actual game development!

Finally, I want to thank you for being part of this journey, for making it possible and for being such an incredible person! The fact that you are here means you trust in us, and we want to make sure that your trust remains alive and well. Let this be an incredible adventure, my lanterns. Let us enjoy it together!!

Yours, truly,

Devlog Summary (TL;DR):

• Project Launch! Woohoo!
• Game Designer joined the Crew,
• 2D Artist joined the Crew alongside CptPopcorn!
• Writer joined the Crew!
• Project Manager joined the Crew,
• Pre-production research is ongoing,
• Lots of prototyping,
• Even more playtesting,
• Technical tests and choosing the right technologies for the game in progress,
• Character backstories in progress,
• Early character design and concept art explorations,
• The main game story is in progress.