Hello everyone.
I know I haven’t been the most vocal member on the forum yet, so it’s time for me to catch up and introduce myself and my project a bit more seriously.
It will be long, it will be boring, you may eventually fall alseep once or twice. Good luck
Ok.
I’m that typical 33 years old who grew up with all the good old classics games we all learned to love,
Lucas Arts and
Sierra were two names that held a very special place in my heart. Games build around great stories, funny situations, characters we loved to accompany during their often crazy adventures.
I think it’s not a stretch when I say that adventure games paved the path that led me to dedicate a huge part of my childhood and later existence to work, write and build on my own stories.
A passion that nourished my existence for the following 20 years, and often helped me to overcome some of those not so great moments we’re all confronted to in our lives. But whatever, that’s not the important part
When I lost my job a few months ago -ending a 13 years long “career” as a video game store manager (“woaaaaaaaaah -0-”… oh, shut up…)- I decided that now would be the perfect time for me to start working on that project that haunted me for so long, using all the tiny bits of “artistic knowledge and know how” I gathered in my life.
After a few months of struggling, of learning how to tame that powerful beast that is Visionaire (and annoying some of of you guys once or twice, thanks again btw ! ^^), after one full restart from scratch, here’s what I came up after 3 full months of work.
About the story.
Well, back to classics ! Kinda.
Belode Woluk tells the story of a young girl -Miono- as she walks on the path that will lead her to fulfill her dream of adventure and the beginning of a journey.
And on that path, she’ll encounter many simple but strong themes she’ll have to deal with : it’s a story about growin up, friendship, love and hate, win and loss... And all those other amazing little things that make lives feel like heaven or hell ^^
To some extend,
Belode Woluk is more about saving a soul than saving the world.
…
Oh, and there’s humor too. A bit
Ok, there’s a lot
And puzzles. Maybe even a sliding puzzle, cause we all love them.
Now, those few screenshots are just the tip of the iceberg (I hope they're showing
)
I have a full demo ready, which represents the first day of the game, something like 60 minutes of gameplay.
For those who are really curious or perhaps even motivated to help a guy with some advices (or simply any kind of friendly support, like talking… cause eeerg… I’m drained from all that lonely work… X0X), here, have fun (or not
) :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bxl1n2ktmaexhtf/BelodeWoluk_Demo_v...(I had an issue on one computer where I tried it, cause it was missing some redistributable. Here’s the link for it should you have that message too :
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30679#)
And now some technical crap…
There’s sadly still a lot of polish that needs to be done... (but I wanted to have an honest opinion first, to know if that project is indeed viable ^^)
• I’m not satisfied with the text placement when characters speak - that’s cause I didn’t crop the image files (I wanted to have all image data in the same size), and thus there’s too much alpha above their heads. And I dunno if it’s possible to correct that with scripts (which I really have no clue how to use… I copy-pasted one to place the text bellow the characters, but that sucks…). I guess I could crop all the character images files… which are… over 500 at this moment… but imagining how I’d have to do that work scares the s***t out of me XD
But it would surely be the best thing to do, as it would probably improve the performances too…
• Another thing I’m struggling to decide… Should I keep the dialogues on screen til the player clicks () or should I rather set individual delays for all the lines (). The two players who tried it so far preferred the first version. So I started to redo all the lines in the game, but as there are MANY, I thought it would a good idea to ask for more advices maybe.
• I didn't add a save feature... I didn't expect it to be that long actually...
• Music needs obviously polish, and a few more tracks should be added.
• Many, many “pointless” interactions haven’t been done. The funny ones, when the player tries to use a random object on something else. So far, nothing happens, few exceptions are there though… can you find them ? OoO
• Hi, how are you ?
• That intro movie… well… I know, it sucks *bows deeply*
• That cursor is still a placeholder too. But for some reason, I grew really fond of it, that’s not good ! XD
• A propos placeholder… many sounds aren’t done or complete yet neither. And many won’t stay as they are. Farewell, your amazing cicadas…
• I should probably add small arrow on dropped items, to make it easier to see where to click with them.
• English isn't my native langage (I am French), so I apologize for any typo I may have left in there. As I also speak German, I intendo to translate it into all three langages too.
• Lots, lots, lots more ^^ Could someone kill me please ?
Regarding some other things like voice acting…
Well, as I’m doing that game all alone, and as I’m sadly lacking the wonderful skill of schizophrenia, I’m afraid I won’t be able to realize that task without any outside help. At the level I’m working on the game, I’m afraid voice acting won’t be a possible thing… and this worries me a bit… almost sounds like “premature death” in my ears.
And asking friends to do it would be difficult too… I mean… woah, holy crap ! There are like 3 characters in that first day part ! That’s insane ! I don’t even know that many people ! D8
Now…
What are my intentions with that project ?
Well, obviously to make it a finished game.
My intention is to release that “demo” to gather some feedback, maybe attention, and then to try to start some Kickstarting campaign so I can finish the remaining story days (which would make an additional 12-15 months of work)
Therefore, any advice or recommendation would be welcome
Don’t be afraid and be as mean as possible with your critique ! Punch me in the face, kick me in the balls ! I’m ready to handle anything !
Cause after all those months of work on it, I guess I need some awakening slap, should I have gone in a very wrong direction ^^
And if there's some tiny bit of potential, any advice to help me carry out the project will be welcome, I carried it as far as I could all by myself, but now I reached a point where I need some advices to keep going
Thank you !
Whoa… you really read all that stuff ? Thanks !
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