1/12 (oops I forgot to start a devlog already and it's two in the morning where I am) - Day two

Hi!! I'm Felicity or TwoEyedGhost and I'm making my first ever game jam game! I've always really adored games like Yume Nikki, Cave Story, and Ghost Hospital, so I wanted to try to make a game that could reflect some of my favorite qualities from those games! Locked Door is going to be a story-driven, art-focused game about a character who finds that they can't unlock their front door. Their attempts to open their front door result in them finding a world far more esoteric and disturbing than she ever expected. I don't have a solidified name for the main character yet, so the current name for her is Radish! I'm hoping to make a game that creates a creepy, dreamlike atmosphere with at least four major characters including Radish herself. I'm also hoping to include heavily exploratory environments with light puzzle-solving.

My hope is that the final product of Locked Door will be fun enough for me to keep working on it after the game jam! That'll depend on what it looks like by the end, though. The last two days have been mostly about me getting acquainted with RPGMaker MV and it's file formatting, but I've managed to get a decent amount of art done so far!

Completing Radish's walking cycle took forever, but I think it was really worth it! I originally had made a much smaller sprite of her, but ending up using it as the basis for her taller, current sprite once I realized she didn't mesh with her environment being so tiny. Getting all the strands of her hair to bounce was probably the most time-consuming, but I really wanted her to look alive when she moves!!

This is just a test room meant to se how the art assets look together, but I think it's a really good way to benchmark the progress I've made! After creating all of those assets, I'm way more used to the RPGMaker MV system and Aseprite, so hopefully that'll let future art go faster! This is my first time doing pixel art outside of very crude art I made years ago, so I'm excited to be learning!

My hope for tomorrow is to create portrait sprites for Radish, as well as create a bunch of miscellaneous objects and sprites so I can start building the maps that I want to use in the game. I'm very excited to be in this game jam and can't wait to update you guys daily with the progress I've made!!

1/13

Today I focused mostly on getting Radish's portrait sprites done! I didn't realize how big dialogue sprites were at first, so I ended up redoing them a few times to get them to the point where they were good enough to be used. I had considered drawing them digitally and then pixelating them, but ultimately decided to draw them in pixel art from scratch. It was out of comfort zone, but I'm happy with the result!

I really feel like they give Radish a lot more character! I tried to make it clear that most of her face is tucked into her cowl, but I'm not entirely certain if that reads well. If it doesn't read well, I'll fix them later if I have more time!

Additionally, I made a lot of new sprites for use in the game! I was a bit busy today so I didn't have the time to make as many as I wanted, but I think tomorrow I'll have extra time to make more. I especially enjoyed making the big painting piece and the wall stains! I think that once I've made a sheet or two more of objects that I'll have enough miscellaneous items to mostly cover the rest of the game.

Finally, with all of these new sprites, I was able to construct the first official room of the game! Radish's bedroom has now been built!

I really adored getting to piece all of these sprites together so easily to make what feels like an actual room! Building it has made me way more exciting for when I have enough sprites to build more

!

This is the rough build of dialogue and interactions in the room that I made to test the portrait system! The sprite restrictions in RPGMaker meant that for Radish to have a tall sprite I had to install a few plugins and alter her collision boxes, so a major part of building this room was fixing the collisions on events since I could finally see how they'd work with her sprite. While I really enjoy the black void effect from the small room, I'm also thinking about trying to make a parallax background (I think that's what it's called?) to have float in the background to create a more surreal vibe.

Overall, I'm very happy with today and how development is going! Tomorrow, I'm going to focus on object spriting and room building exclusively, with the goal of finishing Radish's living room, bathroom, and possibly the start of the outside of her house. Good luck to everyone else on their game projects, by the way!! It's really encouraging to see how everyone else is progressing and I love reading the devlogs!

Wow! Can't wait to see how this turns out.

For me at least, I think you've communicated her face being in the cowl very well. Keep up the good work! ^^

1/14 - Radish has a home!!

Today was a really tiring but productive day!! I spent the entire day drawing object sprites to construct Radish's house with. I'm really lucky in that my hope that the backlog of assets would make future development much faster proved true! By the end, I was able to sprite her entire bathroom with only a few unique assets that I'll be able to find more use for later!

This object sheet has grown so much

I especially enjoyed making the rug patterns and the new painting! The toilet is so ugly but it was the last thing I made so I guess I was sort of out of energy by that point.

With all these assets, I was able to fully build Radish's apartment!! Building the apartment was fairly easy, but I did end up spending a decent bit of time fixing collisions and making sure everything meshed together alright.

This is her living room and kitchen! Seeing it all put together like this really makes me excited because it's starting to feel like an actual game!

I've also added more small dialogue interactions!

That's all for today! Tomorrow, I want to make the opening cutscene as well as use the apartment environment to create a basic tutorial to the puzzle mechanics of the game. I might also try to add custom parallax backgrounds if I have the time! Since I haven't made cutscenes in RPGMaker MV before, I'm not exactly sure how long it'll take to develop. We'll see, though! I'll update you all tomorrow ^^ <3

1/17 - I got sort of sick 

I ended up getting sick while working on my game, but I took a day to recover and I feel ready to start again! I did make a very, very rough intro sequence while I was sick but it’s not very good. I may or may not take the time to improve it later. Regardless, I’m hoping that tomorrow I’ll be able to finish the tutorial aspect of Radish’s house and start working on the outside! The time loss definitely has me a little worried, but I’m hoping that I’ll still be able to finish the jam with a playable, though maybe short, game! If I’m lucky and get a bunch done tomorrow, I might even be able to add the first few NPCs!!

Oh, I'm sorry to hear of your sickness :< Glad you're feeling better now, and I wish you luck with your remaining work!

1/17 Part 2! - It's  technically a day later but I'm up super late. I got a bunch done, though!

Hi again! I felt a lot better today and got back to work on my game! I managed to implement a lot of gameplay related mechanics, most importantly the ability for players to equip items and use them to interact with the environment! So now, the main puzzle and explorative mechanics of the game can easily be put in.

It's a little crude for an interface, but I think I won't bother changing it since it's not that important in terms of what I need to spend time on.

Hoppy can now forfeit the deposit on her apartment! Interactions like this are going to be really commonplace so I'm happy to have finally gotten it implemented!

In addition to building the whole tutorial sequence, I was also able to create a new character and the beginning to the main area!

It's very basic right now, but Radish is no longer the only person in the game! I've decided that instead of creating an outside world, I want to build a heavily enclosed, "backrooms"-esque environment. Dot is going to be one of the people Radish can meet!

Since she's a side character, I only made her a single portrait, but I'm really happy with it!! I also realized that she was a lot easier to draw than Radish, so I think I'm getting more adept at spritework!

Finally, the opening scene of the game is implemented. I made it when I was getting sick, so this is actually older than everything else I've shown today! It was really weird and frustrating to make, but I think that was just because I was getting very sick and my head hurt at the time. Ultimately, it served to help me learn a ton more about event sequencing and effects, which helped me implement a lot of what I did today!

For tomorrow, I'm hoping to create 4-5 new areas. In these areas, I want to create two new characters to inhabit these areas! I'm hoping that an expansive environment like this will allow for a lot of secrets and exploration to be done and that over time it will reach a stage of complexity to the point where I can make the end point and then spend the rest of the jam polishing and adding additional content! Good luck again to everyone in the jam!!

A Brief Post-Mortem for Echoed Eyes!

Hi everyone, unfortunately, I lost motivation to finish a decent, playable version of Echoed Eyes for the Jam. I got very sick after the first week and then a medication I've been taking has kept me very tired and out of it. It's not all bad, though!! I genuinely loved working on the project and my skill with RPGMaker, Aseprite, and game making in general has increased a ton! I got exactly what I wanted to get out of this project. I've learned a ton and am interested in doing more in the future! I realized that I don't really enjoy puzzle-crafting, but love building environments and doing spritework! This is really what killed the project, since I'd built so much with the plan for puzzles but then realized that none of the puzzles were really fun or interesting to make or play. However, I don't think that this project is dead yet! Radish, Dot, and the scraps of ideas I've made for this project are still very much alive in my mind, and I'm hoping to take this project somewhere else in the future! If I do, I think I'll focus more on RPG mechanics and story with puzzles being reduced massively. Despite my loss of motivation, I really loved this game jam and am so thankful to everyone who has participated for sharing their work and leaving replies on mine! I do intend to submit what I do have, but it's ultimately a starting area and isn't much. I hope you all like it!