Oct. 14 2021 Gamedev Meander

Hey everybody, Angie again. I don't really have much to show in regards to updates this week, because I've just been... all over the place mentally. If you follow my Twitter, you'll know that most of this week has been me getting depressed and unhealthily into Minesweeper. Even as I'm (hopefully) recovering from that now, for some reason it's just been hard to open up SRPG Studio and want to keep going. So in this devlog, I'm going to try to examine why that is, and also talk about the various ideas I've had this past week.

I have done stuff for AniSRPG this week, but it's mostly in the form of ideas for later acts. I'll talk more about those ideas later, but what strikes me is that I just don't want to do the chapter I'm working on? Part of it is because I do the writing of these levels last, and the time between now and the game feeling fun feels like ages. Part of it is definitely the lack of character in this level, like there is a funny bunny and some goons with a dynamic, but I don't think it's going to be as interesting as Audrey was and Velma will be. Either this is a level I'll just have to push through until I like it, or there's some big revelation waiting for me.

I've been thinking about whether I really want this game to be released episodically, one chapter at a time or not. I'm definitely going to stick with this format until Act Zero ends, but I'm not sure about the tradeoffs yet. Theoretically, this format means I release a chapter every two months, each one embodying maybe 10 to 15 minutes of gameplay. That's a bit of a deceptive framing because the game has multiple paths and reacts to your choices, but most players aren't going to play a chapter multiple times just to see how the game slightly differs. That said, the players who have done exactly that make me very happy, and remind me that I'm truly making something amazing here. I want to release things consistently, and show people what I've been doing, but sometimes that isn't much at all, and deadlines can be stressful when they're a constant. Feel free to let me know in the comments what you think.

For the game itself, I've been thinking about the game's future, specifically in the context of the setting's history. Basically, AniSRPG is a video game adaptation of a tabletop game I've been working on since high school. It's like a Fire Emblem-style SRPG that over the past few years has accrued a lot of cool characters. (Only some of them are usable here because this is a prequel set 30 years before the current campaign, but also that campaign was a prequel to a D&D Birthright adventure that never happened, and sigh, just bear with me here.)

A fan-favorite character who's also usable in AniSRPG is Nymphae (I'll probably rename them), a Dancer who resides in the country you're in (Myria) and is known to lift the spirits of its people. They're a very cool knife-wielding support unit, and their attack stat is probably quite high because if you dance for a living you damn well have to be strong. Since the campaign they were referenced in was played by a good few kids, I left the fact they're a sex worker merely implied, but that will be made explicit when they appear in Act One. I want to tread very carefully here. Even though I'm coming from a place of good faith, there's a tendency for people like me to speak over/for sex workers without asking or like, checking to see if they're right. This is especially true in video games, in a way that's more complicated and thorny than certain game critics would have you believe. This will also likely intersect with Act One's story which is almost definitely going to have cops as a primary antagonist, so, you know, hold me to account if I fuck something up!

I think, through all this, I need to remember what this game really is. This setting was always a way to play around with ideas both serious and silly, an expression of myself in a way only a game can be. If there's one decent thing that came out of my dysphoric spiral earlier this week, it's the realization that the raw and messy emotions I had in high school when I was playing D&D with friends are still in me. The full story of AniSRPG is one that has yet to be told, in more ways than I can properly articulate. I can put in the awkward rawness that used to be there, and it can be just as powerful now as it was then. And now I have so many people helping me out in making this, and an audience that wants to see it. I thank you all, and hope I have more to show you next time.

-Angie Nyx