Tuesday 28 November 2017

Development Log #1 - A game that might be called 'Departure Lounge' but maybe something else.

I haven't done a dev log for a long time, probably over 2 years.
I already know it's not going to be super regular, but I wanted to share stuff occasionally in a longer format than twitter posts.

The project I'm working on will take a fair few months before it's complete, maybe a year or even more, but I am expecting to be done with the bulk by summer 2018.

When I decide on a title I will make a WiP thread on Lemmasoft Forum, but I'll still add here on my blog when I have stuff to share.

So, I may as well talk about the title and some of the issues around naming projects, as I've already mentioned it!
I am toying with the name 'Departure Lounge' - it's thematic enough and doesn't lean too far into any particular genre, which works for the story I'm writing. But I like the idea of something a bit stranger, perhaps 'Avoid Conscious Thought', though that doesn't exactly match my story XD

Once I have settled on a title, in fact usually just before I settle on one, I research it with the search engine (Google, as well as itch.io and steam) to see if any other games or media has the same name that might make things difficult for visibility on release. Although I didn't find any with the same name, it's got the same problem as 'Apartment Complex' (one of my games from a jam in 2016) in that it's a generic term used a lot and doesn't have a unique element - maybe something like Departure Lounge 1 or something would help, but it can't just be an arbitrary number, so more thought is needed! Hence no WiP thread yet.
Though I can always make one with a working title if it comes to that O.O

I'll share a little about the concept of the story in my next post, by which time I should have a 15k word draft (it's already at over 12k).

So here are some character designs from last month (october aka inktober)


I plan to redraw the characters to further refine their designs once I am done with writing the draft. So I may also share some more art and maybe some music too in my next post, which will probably be in December!

I still don't know about that title...

I struggled titling 'Connection Pools' too, but I think it was worth the struggle in the end.

Ok. Til next time then!