I kind of left my blog last on a somewhat somber note. But I feel I should put in at least one more post for the month.
I've been improving my work/life balance lately, and finally feel up to the task to start making my life a bit tougher by potentially taking on new full-time work. If hired, this new job will potentially allow me to work from my local studio office most of the week, which frees up the time I would have spent four hours commuting to be able to work on my game projects.
As for gaming, I've finally overcome my burnout with Coil and undertaking the Final Coil of Bahamut. I've completed Turn 10 (no echo) and Turn 11 (5% echo), and going to start learning Turn 12.
The friend zone is an okay place to be in, I'm not exactly certain why people think it's this vile place or an undesirable state to be in. People have friend zoned me, I've certainly had my share of friend zoning others.
The issue isn't the friend zone, so to say. The issue is feeling entitled to be out of it.
No one deserves another. You can't change someone's feelings, if they don't see you as a friend, then you have to accept it and move forward. Feeling that a person is supposed to like you because you're nice to them doesn't make a relationship, it creates resentment. You shouldn't be nice to someone because you want them to do something or manipulate them, you should do it because you're simply that, a nice person.
An equally bad person is one who eggs on the attention knowing they're leading someone on. That is just as bad as someone who feels they're nice because they're entitled to someone.
Friend zone isn't the problem. Entitled people and attention-seekers are the problem.
Hello readers, back with the 32nd development log!
Development Team:
We recently had a group picture of our development team. Not all of the members of the team are featured here, but pictured is a good variety of the types of talent we have working with us on the studio grounds!
The Whim Indie Development Team
Back Row (L to R): Leigh-anna (Programming Intern), Paul (Business Admin/Executive Producer), Jon (Game Designer/Programmer), Myself (Producer/Director), Cameron (Game Designer Intern) Front Row (L to R): Deborah (Character/Sprite Artist), Shadoe (Sound Engineer), Matt (Director/Game Designer), Jennifer (Quality Assurance Intern)
A special thanks to Patrick Davidians for providing the photography for our studio!
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Selatria:
Development is going strong on our main RPG!
Auditions are currently live for voiced roles for the game, we are currently inviting potential auditionees to come to the studio and try out for a role. A list of roles can be found on our auditions page! We are going through the first round of auditions on April 18th and making a decision on any current auditions or decide whether to open them up to Voice Acting Alliance.
As for the development on the game, Selatria is being developed in four phases: The Story, the Art, Game Design, and the Music!
While we're wrapping up the base development on Chapter 3 and moving onto Chapter 4, we're going to soon be releasing Chapter 2 content as an exclusive to our 2013 Indiegogo backers (who contributed to the respective tiers) in May!
This will be the first time pushing content out exclusively for our backers, and we apologize for the two year wait. We wanted to take the time to upgrade our visual style of the game since the campaign, as well as provide a quality experience with the funding obtained in the past two years.
More information on the Chapter 2 playable content as well as a release date will be available in the next Development Log, but I would like to show you a preview of one of my personal favorite scenes from the chapter. (For the voice of the fairies, we took the voice actor of Melanie's laughing and made it really high pitched and fast. Worked out well!)
Another aspect of the upcoming playable demo will be the first
demonstration of using the in-game Journal. For players that take a long
break between play sessions, we want to make it easy to catch up and be
filled in on where to go in-case one gets lost. In the May demo, we
will have a basic version of the Journal implemented for Chapter 1 and 2
content.
Preview of the Journal. Content shown is for demonstration and is subject to change!
Last but not least, we wanted to provide a preview of one of the themes of a dungeon that will be played in the final chapter. This is a theme that will be playing in one of our Ice Dungeons. Composed by Christopher "H2o" Nuño
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ANTics:
A screenshot of the new Paid Version coming soon to PC. Can you beat my records?
A new version of ANTics has been uploaded to Android. This includes some changes:
More than one sugar cube can now be places simultaneously
Removal of levels/shop and restructure of the game into a high score/survival mode
Powerups are now only obtained by smashing rare ladybugs
Tutorials and music can now be toggled in the Option menu
New "Boss Mode" which includes the bosses from the old version are now only in the Paid Mode with a requirement of 250,000 high score from the standard mode.
We implemented these changes in order to encourage re-playability and reduction of massive installation and load times. Feedback from the first version indicated that beating the 20 levels had little replay value and the app was then de-installed. We wanted to address these concerns for a more enjoyable experience.
On another important note, ANTics will be coming to iOS and PC! The version being released will include the changes made to the Android version. A trailer for release on these two platforms will be soon released, and we are currently looking into avenues to which we can release the PC version. The iOS version will be going public on the same day as the release of the trailer. More information on release timings will be available in the future.
For pricing for iOS and PC version, please refer below:
For iOS: Paid Version is 99 cents (No Ads) and a Free version will be available that has the boss section locked with advertisements.
For PC: Paid Version will be $1.99 and a Free Version will be available that has the boss section locked.
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Fiverr:
Last but not least, we have started offering our studio's services on Fiverr! If you would like to commission us to help production on your game project, we are happy to assist. For the time being, we are only offering limited character concept and QA services for projects. But we would like to expand in the future to do other services.
