Devlog #1: The Knife, Clues, and First Rooms

It's been a productive week, but first things first: your support and adding the game to your wishlist is the best motivation for me.

What am I working on?

I'm still focused on the same thing: the rooms for the first story, titled Cain & Abel. The concept is starting to take shape, and the core game mechanics are already assembled. The rooms are slowly being filled with clues and animations. You can already wander through them in a random order and try to guess the correct room.

The first story has 6 rooms (most likely to be 7). Five of them reveal "events," one explores the hero's inner world, and another is still a secret.

Why is it taking so long? Taking a knife to animations

The main reason is that i'm not an artist. I'm trying to maintain a high standard of quality, but I realize my current style is very labor-intensive for me. I don't want to sacrifice quality, but right now, I see no other way.

So, I took out a knife. And with a single stroke, I cut out most of the planned animations. There will be less movement in the scenes now, but this will allow me to focus on the details and atmosphere.

Clues and Story

Designing the clues turned out to be a real headache. Where should I place them to be both interesting and understandable for the player? After some thought, I figured out how to solve this problem.

The solution was obvious. I needed to write the character's entire story from beginning to end, take it out of my head. Then, I broke it down into several parts (the same number as the rooms) and mixed them up a bit to make it less straightforward.

Now, the task is to think about how to deliver this story through clues in a way that isn't too cliché, but also not too difficult.

What's next?

1. Finish the art: I plan to finish drawing all the rooms and clues by the end of next week.

2. The "Story Filling" mechanic: The next step is a system where the player will "place" the clues they find into the right spots to "fill out" the character's story. It's hard to explain for now, but I'll figure it out.

3. Music and sounds: It seems this will require a lot more effort. I think I'll be better at this.

4. Something else: Something I can't see right now.

5. And then... the demo release.