Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2023-10-27

Another Friday has come. It's the last Friday of October...

It was a busy week as far as personal life goes. So not a lot of actual game dev work happened, but I'm actually making good progress on the next thing. And I guess a lot of things that have been in the works for a while are starting to bear fruit too.

I'm adding new languages for EMDND, because a lot of my Korean artist friends have been wanting to play for a while (many of whom are actually featured in the game's guest art gallery). So I finally got off my butt and looked into professional localization services, and started the process for Korean and Chinese (simplified, for now) translations.

Above: Translated badly by myself so I can work on the code parts of KR localization while I wait for actual professionals to do the actual work. After hours of banging my head against the wall I gave up on using a correctly scaled pixel font for KR dialogue text, because everything I've tried looks like ass, and I'd rather have legible text than preserve whatever pixel art principles no one but me actually cares about

After those are done, there are a few other languages I want to do... after I can afford it, because translation for as many words EMDND has is really freakin expensive. I mean, I'd like it if everyone in the entire world could play my game in their language, but I'm also not, like, making undertale money.

Above: Nooooo

And every time I release an update, I also have to update the translations for all the languages I support, which is also really freakin expensive, and takes a lot of time and effort and LQA and blah blah blah blah, for an unknown return on investment, because it's a free update. Oh, well, you gotta spend money to make money, as they say. 

(I know there's the option of community mods or crowdsourcing or whatever, but I have even less time to do all the project management and QA for an official community translation, and as a stuck-up artist I don't have the stomach for people editing or making mods of my artwork. oh well)

Speaking of updates, remember last week when I talked about "Whiskey's Bar"? I liked the idea enough to expand on it and work on it for a free update to EMDND. I think it really has potential, just like the 30 other things I started and gave up on already. But this time it's different. Really.

Above: WIP background, the final version will be way cooler i promise

The premise is that (kinda spoilers for people who haven't played EMDND yet) Whiskey starts a whiskey bar after the events of the first half of the True Ending, before Penny gets her phone call from an old friend. Penny gets roped into being the bartender. She has no bartending training, so she has no idea what she's doing. It's the grand opening and Whiskey is too hung over to get out of bed. Oh no! Can Penny keep the bar running by herself until Whiskey recovers? Who will show up to the grand opening? Will Penny accidentally poison someone with undercooked burgers? Will the bar get shut down by city health inspectors? 

Above: Skye sprite is temporary, i'm making new ones ok

So it's mostly an excuse to just have a bunch of different characters show up and talk about what's been going on in their lives, with no real stakes that affect the main storyline (so I can save that kind of thing for the sequel). I also like it because I don't have to make a bunch of new backgrounds or locations. Of course, there still gonna be an overarching plot thing that ties everything together so there's an actual point to the story... Maybe some interesting new mechanics...

Above: Finally using the Hana sprite

Anyway, let's see how this goes. If history is any indication, I'll definitely still be working on this next week.

Switching gears: Tiger-chan. The plushie is finally ready for campaign launch, but Makeship hasn't talked to me about the dates yet. It's gonna be part of a glow-in-the-dark event thing, which I don't know when that is. Hm. Anyway, here's a sneak peek at the lil rascal.

Above: [sneak peek would be here if DHL had delivered the sample on time]

Of course that also means I really need to hurry up and think of a marketing plan for the plushie, which I think will just be me spamming twitter and insta and steam with pictures of the plushie instead of any cool comic or whatever, because I'm tired of making comics for plushies now. no! i'm tired! okay i'll make a comic...

Oh! Some other news:

Above: EMDND is an INDIE Live Expo Winter 2023 "Official Selection"!!!

I submitted EMDND for consideration in a Japanese online indie game expo, and was lucky enough to be selected as one of the 100 games to be showcased at their event this winter. The event starts on Dec 2 and lasts for a week. Hopefully it'll be a nice lil boost in eyeballs on the game, and I also get a cool badge to add to my awards section on Steam. More practically, it's a good excuse to discount and do a marketing push for the game.

Above: GOTY? Might as well shoot for the moon

Speaking of awards, Steam sent out notifications to add a suggested category for nomination for "The Steam Awards", which is happening during the Autumn Sale. Then the big popularity contest begins. I guess I could beg people to nominate me for uh... "Outstanding visual style"... or "Best OST"... or "Outstanding Story Rich Game"... (you think enough people will click the button to actually get nominated? I guess there's no harm in trying... except my ego when it fails)

Above: Okay, what now? (yeah i'm changing those post-it note sprites to like, napkins or drink coasters or something)

I think that's it for now. The result of my big research trip is... instead of working on new game, I'm just working on old game. Honestly, though, it's been nice to just feel like I'm actually making some progress on something for a change. 

It's shaping up to be a busy end of the year. Hope it goes well. Thanks for your support, as always. See you next week!