It’s great to be back making games full-time again! Since my last post back in April a lot has happened in my personal life. I had to recharge for a while and make some decisions to be happier overall. This decision has led me to get back into making videogames full-time! So without further ado, let’s jump into it!

  • Made general improvements to the game and did bugfixes

  • Reworked the start of the game

  • Added music

  • The PICO8 version is gonna release soon & I’m working on a demo release in the near future!

When I left the game, it had a lot of functionality and semi-polished ideas that needed a lot of work in order to be reliable. Last week, I’ve been busy trying to pick up this work and make the game playable without running into a game breaking bug or small inconvenience. Some of these additions, fixes and changes include:

  • A redone sail animation to work with the actual wind direction

  • A fix for the boat turning fully for a < 5 degree turn (doing a full 360 every time)

  • A fix making enemies spawn a little bit more consistent

  • Make docking easier by just colliding with islands

  • Screenshake when you use spells

  • Reworked cloud animation in map view

These changes make the game a lot more coherent, robust and finished.

A lot of work has been done to make the beginning of the game a lot more straightforward and easy to get into. The original design had the player choose from an array of randomized spells to add to their spell book. Most playtesters found this confusing and after evaluating the design, it was actually pretty obsolete. Now the player has the ability to add 1 spell to their spell book to improve their changes of navigating the harsh seas. After a first play through, the player has access to more advanced, but one-time-use spells.

Besides that, the player now has access to smaller heads up messages on the bottom left of the screen. These messages will let you know about objects you can interact with in the world. A lot of players seemed to be struggling with finding out what they can do on the ship and this seems to have resolved that problem!

I finally got over my irrelevant fears related to making music. I haven’t done a lot of music making ever but I decided that this is the game where I wanted to give it a shot. This week I took that shot and got some really decent sounding tunes. They’re not the best in composition and they could use a little bit more work to feel like really nice and coherent songs, but the base vibes are set!

TODO: Import audio

The title track is meant for the opening sequence of the game where the player gets their impression of “Clarice Clairvoyage”. Hopefully, this track will set up the expectations of the game!

This track is meant for most of the travel and sailing gameplay. This tune is accompanied by a soothing sound of waves in the game, to give the player the feeling like they are really out there, commanding their boat towards adventure.

So, now that we have most of the game ready, what are we waiting for? Well, a couple of things. The game is still limited to the inherent limitations of the PICO8 console. Hopefully, I can release the PICO8 version of the game with most of the gameplay in there soon. Afterwards, I plan on porting the game to Love2D where we can fully explore the possibilities with the spell system and Clarice’s world.

When that happens, I’ll be ramping up to making a full demo of the (eventual) Steam release of the game. We’re currently working on getting everything ready for the Steam page launch. When I need your help, I’ll let you know!

Thank you for reading; I would really appreciate if you follow me or the project on Twitter. You can also shoot me a message over there. Also, I’m available for hire on your Godot projects, so hit me up if you need help!