Ever since I decided to call it quits with game development, I was thinking about looking through my old files and doing some spring cleaning. 18 GB of sprites, CGs, planning and script documents, GUI and logo attempts, special artwork (like the advent calendar I did for two years) and loads of WIPs that mostly stayed sketches. Tonight, I started the spring cleaning and thought: “Why not share some things on the blog?”
Of course I’m not going to share those atrocious 5+ year old sketches or anything like that, but with that much data, I can already think of a bunch of topics. There are hundreds of folders in total, though, so I guess I’ll just post things randomly as I find them. Let’s start off with… memory issues.
Tenkei Tales I: Levellia
You may remember the little progress charts I made for this game, split up in seven categories to make them fit with the colors of the rainbow. Now, the 2nd iteration of these charts – for the first time I tried to remake the game – somewhat reached the halfway point before I stopped working on it. The original game’s chart, however… was completely filled, and I was a bit confused when I saw that. It’s been so long that I genuinely can’t remember if there ever was a fully playable version; one with proper ending and credits even.
There, that’s the original game’s progress chart. It’s from March 8 and, as you can see, all the bars are completely filled. I wonder what happened. Did I realize that the game was super boring, or simply became fed-up with my art again? Makes me wonder if there’s a fully playable version somewhere on this PC I kinda… forgot… since I was focused on all those remake shenanigans. I really don’t remember :’D
This is the last progress chart I ever did for the first attempt at remaking the game. I remember adding characters and a little extra scenario you could access by making the right choices. Of course, at some point I became unhappy with that too and stopped working on it yet again. For the final remake attempt in 2019, I never made a new progress chart.
By the way, I’m sorry if this posting looks a bit wonky. Even after all this time, WordPress still isn’t a fan of properly putting graphics and/or text side-by-side.
Anyway. Even though I remade the sprites two times, and half of the CGs once (the very first version didn’t even have any), that doesn’t change the fact that the story is boring. It’s basically a fetch quest with some minuscule riddles in between and at the end, which is probably okay in an atmospheric horror game… but if you walk through a brightly-lit house on a normal day and with nothing really interesting going on, it’s just a drag. So unless I have some genius idea to improve the story, this game will definitely stay shelved forever.
All the work with this stupid basement for nothing. How depressing.
But I still like Tsukasa’s and Setsuya’s room, even though round buildings kind of suck when it gets to event placement and walkable tiles. Should’ve just made a rectangular lighthouse.
Well, I guess I’ll move on to the next thing. For nostalgia’s sake, I’m not going to delete any of the old assets, just some unneeded SAI files. Because, dang – this folder alone contains almost 4GB of stuff. That’s what happens when you keep trying to remake something over and over…