Arbiter - Monthly Recap - September 2024
Hey folks,
Another short and sweet update this month. I'm feeling really good about the project right now, but life continues to throw hands from time to time. I'm still dealing with some of the personal stuff from last month, so work has been something of a peaceful escape as I sort myself out. I've taken the opportunity to really dive into planning out the rest of the project, mostly in regards to finishing the script, studying different aesthetics, and outlining future commission work. It's not the most fun work per se, but it's been great for my mental health and quite reassuring to finalize these details.
Unfortunately that stuff doesn't make for great recaps though, so sorry about that. The monthly recap format honestly sucks in situations like these as the behind-the-scenes work can't really be shown, but rest assured: we are still cooking!
As far as the script goes, we're about 85% there. I'm finishing up the last few scenarios and then I'm gonna review it all from top to bottom, see what I can get away with cutting/simplifying, and organize all of the scenarios into different categories of encounters and cutscenes.
For cutscenes, I'm using the script as a means of determining what I want to be fully animated scenes, simpler in-engine scenes for dialogue exchanges, or just in-game dialogue alongside gameplay. I'm an animator by trade so I'm not too worried, but I'm still trying to be budget conscious to keep things manageable. The cutscenes will probably be one of the last things I do, but they do inform a lot of both the high-level structure of the game's overall pacing, and the low-level structure of the individual levels, so it's something I wanna lock down now so I don't have to worry about it later.
I'm still in the early stages of bringing my art lead on, but we've started diving into the visual direction we can take the project and the different aesthetics we can pull from. We're still feeling out the details, but we're generally looking at doing something more minimalist and stylized, leaning heavily into the light and dark aesthetic with a bit of cosmic vibrance sprinkled on top. Lately I've been setting up several documents and references outlining the art I'll be commissioning, with the goal of diving back into level design once we've got it all figured out.
As I've mentioned before, this is genuinely my first time really bringing someone into the project like this, and it's tougher than I thought! There's a lot of information to share but I'm trying to do so in a way that's not too overwhelming, which is admittedly a bit of a challenge for me as a certified yapper. Overall though, it's actually been going quite smoothly!
Something I'd severely undervalued with teammates is simply having someone to validate your ideas. Criticism's fun too of course, but while I've spent years on this project I've never really had the experience of someone else getting excited about it with me. It's one thing to get that support from fans enjoying gameplay videos, but it's another entirely to get it from a friend I deeply respect—especially when that excitement is tied more to the story and characters. It's been incredibly reassuring to say the least, and I didn't realize how much it was something I needed. We've still got some details to sort through but we should hopefully be starting on environment concepts sometime this month! Yippee!
Anyways, I'll call it there. I realize we're in something of a hibernation arc right now and I really am sorry about that. I'm genuinely so grateful to you guys for sticking around to support the project through its highs and lows, regardless of how long it's taken. It feels nice to finally feel like I'm doing things "properly" for once, and I'm really hoping that once we lock down this concept art I can just dive into asset production and start clearing these levels once and for all. Thank you all so much for supporting me and the game as we work through this process though. It's kept my soul aflame.
Cheers,
Jordy