itch.io

February 2021

The next thing I had in mind for the game was to make the player shrink in some way to the size of an insect, and the surrounding was going to be huge, considering the new perspective of the character.  I've always been afound of the small perspectives since I played The Legend of Zelda - The Minish Cap, and also Kingdom Hearts when you travel to the Alice in Wonderland-world. 

The plan was to make the character shrink after breaking a magical mirror, and meet up with a mouse who is guarding its hole in the wall. The mouse will let you pass through in exchange for some cheese. So you have to collect a piece of cheese in the kitchen and return in to the mouse, but to get access to the kitchen you first have to climb up on the cats shelfs, then go out via the cat flap, climb the house facade and finally get inside through the kitchen hood. 

Shrinkage and encounter with a hungry mouse:

The house facade. The goal on this level is to master the climbing mechanic, and avoiding bugs and spiders. 

Kitchen! Getting closer to that cheese. Since the dog didn't break any mirrors, he remains at his natural size. 

Thank you! I've updated the devlog; The ducks later became the crows, wich is something of the first level-enemies of the game :D

Welcome to my devlog!

I started developing Missing Mildred around October 2020. It's a puzzle/platformer where you play as a detective in the search for your missing cat. Your magnifying glass can shoot concentrated light beams from the sun. 

At the moment there is a playable version, estimated 1.5 hours of playing time.

Since I haven't written any devlogs during my development, I thought I should write it down in a retro perspective way. 

October 2020
After watching Shaun Spaldings GameMaker platformer series I had my first simple prototype. A detective protagonist with a magnifying glass, shooting birds. 

The next thing was to add the protagonists sidekick - Kepler the dog. I also added some death animations. (And some terrible background mountain and trees.) The weapon is now held sideways with both hands.

November 2020
Backgrounds where changed, added some birch trees, and a start of the protagonists home - a red house!

The inside of the house where added, and you could change room to the outside of the house via an invisible door. Also experimenting with the ground tiles. 

At this point, I only had this first level as a concept of the whole game. The goal was to find the cat wich was stuck in a tree. 

Then I started to add some new mechanics. A floating umbrella, moving cloud-platforms, and you could also "climb" up and down via stairs.

The idea of the cat in the tree never came to life. I had bigger plans for the cat! The moving platforms now had some gravity, and you could unlock secret ways to the underground.

The adventure had to be bigger than my front yard. This photo inspired me to make some night levels. 

I tried to make some sunset effects. You are leaving the house and starts to explore the world. The trees where updated aswell as the duck-enemies wich became crows.

The main vision of the game world was as follows:

1. You would start in your garden 
2. Explore the road to the village
3. Jumping on rooftops in the village
4. Some sky level
5. Crossing a bridge
6. The church, followed by a graveyard
7. An underground level
8. Some mystic forest
And then you would find the cat, return to your house and the game was supposed to be over. 

December 2020
Going back to the first level. What else could you do with this piece of software? I tried to make some throw ball-physics. Also some kind of "dog AI", wich was really hard and glitchy.  This was just a fun mini game-thing and I had no intention to include this mechanic in the game at this point.

Now with most of the mechanics (umbrella, moving platforms, breakable rocks) at place I started to make some level design and some of the levels in the "map" from earlier. The road, the village. The enemy crows had taken over the village.

And they were all ruled by their King - Martin the Munching Magpie - the first boss in the game.

The boss fight takes place in the tower of a church. The boss was built from a crow-enemy, with more health and the ability to shoot laser. He also had a silver shield wich would reflect any sunlight-beams shooted at him. The secret to beat him is to knock down the church bell in his head. To trigger this bell was real struggle to make it feel somewhat natural. Lots of adjustments were added to this boss fight later on. 

The soundtrack to this boss fight was inspired from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 boss theme, with that bam bam bam bam rythm, if you catch my drift.

Time for the underground level! Inspired by Gollums cave in the first Bilbo movie I decided to go for a blue underground world with pillars rising from the water.

With the ball throwing thing from before I came up with a new mechanic - the teleportation ball. Wherever it lands it gets you teleported to that spot. (Obviosly inspired from the ender pearl from Minecraft.)

The goal  was to find your way up to the surface again.

The surface turned out to be the graveyard.

This photo was used as a reference:

The birds had now become skeleton birds. At this level the player would explore more of the teleportation ball, combined with the umbrella and such. 

The graveyard soundtrack was inspired, at least the theremin intro, by the Scooby Doo theme from 1976. Because theremins are very graveyard-compatible!

January 2021

By this point I thought I had wrapped up the world nicely.  So I decided that the game should be finished.

I had to scratch out the bridge level, the sky level and the forest level. But at least I got my garden, the road, the village, the church, the underground and the graveyard. 

Then I tought: well this was fun, lets continue.

Check out Missing Mildred if you like to! :)

https://johannesid.itch.io/missing-mildred

Missing Mildred

https://johannesid.itch.io/missing-mildred

You can ride a skateboard, play as a mouse and defeat a Butter Blob named Bobby.

Let me know what you guys think :)