What you see now is not what once was

So the 'Caves of Gordaraella' started off as a different game with a slightly different style and with a slightly messier code base.

In it's first incarnation as the 'Pits of Toravalon' the aesthetic wasn't quite what I wanted. 

I tend to give my self one chance to start again because design tends to be an iterative process where you try some things to get to a place you like.

However like everything in life there is usually a deadline and pressure to get things done. There is also a risk that if you keep trying different things you're never going to get to the end. So try a few, get to a point  where you're generally OK with what you have produced and then go with it. You're never going to get whatever you're working on perfect, so go with something that is 'solid'.

In the case of the 'Pits of Toravalon' I wasn't entirely happy with the player character, and some of the other graphics. I'd spent a couple of evenings a week over 6 months building the game and learning about both GDScripts nd GODOT. These were all useful experiences but I wasn't quite happy with the result.

So I started from scratch again.

I wanted to lean in more to the pixel art aesthetic, and wanted to simplify the game a bit. POT was a little bit over complex for my first game in that you had some inventory options and the mechanics around what the faelings could do didn't feel like it would work so well, so I took a step back.

Some of the mechanics around the new version 'The Caves of Gordaraella' will be easier and I think the game will flow a little better. I've been workling on some game assests and I'll share those next week maybe in another post.

I'll also share some of the code I've been writing with the aid of AI and give some tips on how I go about structuring my code. Always a hard thing to do when you're starting out.