Devlog 34

First of all, I'd like to thank you all for your support! I really appreciate it! God bless you all, and may hardship never touch you.

I've started work on a new update. Right now, I'm in the drafting and planning stage. This is going to be a new chapter, with new characters, new scenes, and so on. This time, I'll try to do everything in a more organized and efficient way.

The rough work plan for the new chapter:

-Draw a HUGE pile of sprites (camps, icons, characters, new UI elements, etc.)

-Draw and animate 10 scenes, plus 4 negative variations

-Draw and animate 2 sets of sprites for the peeking minigame

-Write and translate dialogue texts

-Write the text for 3 more endings

-Draw about 20 more illustrations for the endings

-Implement a random event mechanic and notifications about them

-Go insane putting together and testing all of this in Unity

-Somehow get the game onto Steam (despite not being able to due to sanctions)

All of this will be split across roughly 3–4 updates.

Last time, I kept switching between different areas of work, which was more often a drawback than a plus. When you stick to one thing, even for just a couple of hours a day, you more or less stay in the zone—work flows efficiently. I was jumping from writing dialogue to animation, from animation to programming, and so on, and it was very, very painful. You might think that doing different things is more fun, but the cost of context-switching and re-adapting was way too high. The only switch that wasn't hard was going back to drawing—but that's my bread and butter. Everything else, every switch, felt like learning from scratch again. And time doesn't wait, but there you are again, trying to remember where to click or trying to get back into a working state.

Now I've changed my approach a little to minimize that. The main idea is not to leave planning and ideas for later. Instead, I immediately do the foundational work, and I do it completely, even if it won't be needed for another six months.

So far, that means: dialogue scripts, concept art for new characters, rough scene sketches, ending texts, and rough ending drafts. This is what the rest of production will be built on—everything is interconnected, so I'll finish this part first, completely.

I've already done most of it; basically, only the endings are left, and then I can move on to the real work.

Rough character sketches. Who do you like more? Though I already know. We've got nothing but bad guys here. Hehehe

And very rough scene thumbnails, just so I don't have to write everything out in text...

Some things will probably change during the process, but this is a very solid foundation that's going to save me a ton of time and mental health...