CRYSTAL SPIRE + New projects

But then we come to the development side of the problem, what mechanics fit to make this experience short? How long is the dialogue between characters? Should they only speak at the end? If it's a visual novel and it repeats so many times, how do I make the variance quick enough that it doesent become tedious and annoyingd privately and didn't particularly settle on anything. I had, in order:

• A hex based time loop dungeoncrawl
• A large tile based exploration time loop game
• A randomly generated map time loop game
• A deck based exploration game that played like corruptions of champions
• A dungeon generation game where you drew tiles from a deck and placed characters to "work tiles"
• And then several iterations on an SRPG combat system.

That last one was the one I spent the most time on, testing out multiple iterations and getting the game feel down. I ended up with something kind of workable, but needing a fleshed out skill system. I might do a write up on it later, but still ran into the problem of mechanics not serving the narrative.

So instead I turned the mechanics and narrative into "THE CRYSTAL SPIRE" Which I update on questden every other day here:

https://questden.org/kusaba/quest/res/1028895.html 

You can read the first few posts to see the entirety of the chart. I based it off of Towergirls and it's doing quite well on the site itself and when reposted on places like Reddit. Suffice it to say I think I'm going to try to make something good in this setting. Speaking of good, another thing I was working on was getting back together with UberWulf on some music. Attached is some theme music for the game. We're going for a sort of eastern influenced fantasy adventure, more Chinese instrumental influence from our references. 

But you're probably wondering, EDMANGO, what are you doing?

Mostly Questing really, writing updates, drawing when I have free time, and trying to come up with the thing I think will be the most interesting to work on. My current target in terms of game development is figuring out how I want to mechanically establish this game idea. I'm torn between making it a visual novel or a more fleshed out game like a short hike or a more rpgmaker-like. But let's talk about it that idea:

THE CRYSTAL SPIRE - (A LOOPING ADVENTURE)

This game would be a brief but heavily branching game with ending slides similar to fallout new vegas. The characters you collect and bring to the end of the game provide different endings with joke endings and other fun ideas. The idea is for the game to be short and easily repayable so that I can put in just a bunch of these.

But then we come to the development side of the problem, what mechanics fit to make this experience short? How long is the dialogue between characters? Should they only speak at the end? If it's a visual novel and it repeats so many times, how do I make the variance quick enough that it doesn't become tedious and annoying. Does the game then need to be even shorter, something minit-like where it's an island and you have a limited time frame so that time is forced short, or do we come to it in a different avenue.

Then I was wondering about nsfw content, how does it fit into this, would they be intractable animations, short, uninteractable ones, or something else.

And that's where I'm at right now. I'm hoping this is an Idea I can follow up on, the Misadventures of Rudy and Nipha game I talked about before was too much overhead for little perceived gain, so I scrapped the idea.

In the meantime, I'll be posting on twitter and updating [CRYSTAL SPIRE] on questden. If I get something workable or a good pdf for a concept I'll give you all another update. Until next time!

~EDMANGO~
P.S. Attached is a song wip from Uberwulf for the game. I've been using it to help vibe out the project, let me know how you guys feel about it!