WinterBringers Devlog #1: Building a world

Hi everyone,

Thanks for taking the time to  check out WinterBringers, a game i've been working on as the solo-developer for the last 7 months. Right now i'm getting really close to having my first playable alpha build of the game, which is really exciting, as I can't wait to dish the game out and get some feedback. I've only got a few trello items left to tick off, and that's a great sight, because that trello board was once bloated with a ton of stuff that I'm glad to say is now in the game fully... and some other total shite, which is in the bin!

So one of my last items is to fill the world out a bit more and make it feel more alive, which is exactly what I've been doing. This has given me the chance to further develop the pixel art style that I want to be associated with the game. I really hope this style will help the game stand out! While I am no artist (far from one) I'm really proud of how the visuals in the game are looking so far.

One of the big tasks I completed was reworking the main town - Blaven, a place the player will spend a lot of their time visiting. The gif below shows the original layout of Blaven.

It was a bit of a throw together of wood and stone buildings, something that began to irritate me more over time, so this has been reworked and Blaven now looks as follows:

I also felt Blaven was too building heavy. While it wasn't exactly a bustling metropolis originally, space is precious in sidescrolling games, so taking away some of the buildings and adding the circle of standing-stones really helped provide a bit of relief from the constant surrounding of buildings.

That's been most of my work for this week. I hope you've enjoyed this insight into WinterBringers development, for the next week, I'll be further improving the town and also populating other areas of the world, such as - The Wicked Graves and Eyre, the dead village.