Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #42

Hey readers, thanks for reading the 42nd development log, the final one for 2017.

Selatria

 

To start off! We've obtained the domain www.selatria.com ! For now, it will re-direct to the Selatria page on our whimindie website, but we have plans to make this either a full-blown page in itself, or re-arrange the Selatria page on the whimindie website to look less cluttered and more pleasing, especially as we get closer to completing Part 2.

Speaking of Part 2, development is ongoing. After a few months and several re-designs, we got the base of The Endless Desert, one of the prominent dungeons to take place in Chapter 4. The next big part of development will be working on branching paths. Unlike previous chapters in Selatria, the second part of Chapter 4 will involve being able to do certain events in any order.

This content is not final and is subject to change.

We have put the Endless Desert in closed alpha testing this weekend for our in-house testers in order to fix bugs while we begin eventing out the next section.

Airship Concept Art - Art by Deborah Groves

Everett - Art by Deborah Groves

This is the first look at the airship that will be featured in Selatria. The design is modeled after a flying fish as well as after the head engineer who created it., Sir Everett. If you've played Selatria Advent, you saw a small cut-scene featuring him at the very end of Chapter 3.
 
On a last note, I had a meeting yesterday in Los Angeles to begin talks about arranging our midi sound files and turn them into a full blown, 112-track soundtrack that will launch alongside the full game. We're beginning talks with the music team involved with the creation of the main game music to see what will work in terms of revenue split, and I hope to have more information as we go on into the new year. 


In 2018, we'll be showing off more characters and special monsters that will be appearing in Part 2. Stay tuned!


Selatria will be going for $1.24 on Steam throughout Black Friday to Cyber Monday. Give it a buy and play through if you haven't. We welcome all reviews and feedback.

Working with SSD Studio for more sound effects!

 

Since this month, we've been working with SSD Studio, a small sound/audio company based out of Poland and they've been working on some new awesome sound effects to finish off Selatria's development.

You can also check them out on Facebook.

Appearances at the Reboot Game Lounge!

 

If you're in the Las Vegas area, catch us at the Reboot Game Lounge! Most months, we'll be making an appearance during their anime and game nights. We're going to be using that as a first place to test our new Selatria builds and new content out to the public before we release it, so if you want to get a first play at what's coming, check us out if you're in the area during their events! We'll also be showing off future games in development here too.

You can check out their upcoming events on their Facebook page.

LVL Up Expo 2018

 

We're also gearing up for our next big demonstration, LVL Up Expo 2018 which we will have some big announcements regarding Part 2 of Selatria. If you're in the Las Vegas area, come stop by and say hello and check out our indie dev booth. More details to come in the coming months. Our last appearance at the 2017 LVL Up Expo was very positive and we were able to get a lot of valuable feedback and new fans, and we want to do it again next year.

You can buy tickets for LVL Up Expo at their website.

If you're an indie developer, you can apply to exhibit their show as well.

The Dastardly Dairy Debacle

 

Unfortunately, due to some issues in the project, we have decided to postpone the release of our next immediate game Dastardly Dairy Debacle into the Winter. This will be a small side story that will be downloadable for free for PC if you own a copy of Selatria already, and will be available for Android devices as well.

=


That's about it for this development log. Have a happy holidays and I'll see you in 2018.

Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #41

Hey readers - back with the 41st development log! This entry will likely be a bit shorter than usual, but I also want to keep the monthly updates on our projects going. So let's get down to it.


Gameacon 2017

At the beginning of this month, we demonstrated Selatria and ANTics at Gameacon Las Vegas. Unfortunately, due to this being their first convention outside Atlantic City, it seemed to be a relatively lower turnout than we expected. That being said, we still had a few players come to try out our games and we got some valuable feedback on some of the upcoming content of Selatria.

Namely that our boss was way too hard! We are going to adjust the battle itself for when the game comes out proper, but if you want some extra challenge, the original designed fight we had for demonstration will be implemented as an optional Selactic Battle.

Some pictures from the event!

Hope to see you at Gameacon in Las Vegas next year!

 ---

Selatria

Work continues on Chapter 4 of the Selatria project. Due to the amount of branching and mechanic heavy dungeons, development of this project is taking a lot longer than I had anticipated. We have completed the rough mapping of the Chapter 4-2 dungeon and its mechanics, a lot of it now lies on battle balancing and implementation/polish of cutscenes. Some new pictures below!

Gnats, desert beetles, and scorpions. Oh, my!

The Endless Desert is an expansive, yet dusty dungeon with two mechanics. The accumulating heat gauge which you take damage over time if you let it fill up (like in the bottom shot). Due to the size, if you get lost, look for the sand sailers path (shown on the top) to try and find your way out. In order to reset the heat gauge, you'll need to find shade (to have it gradually decrease), or water (to reset it completely). Stay hydrated!


Art development by Deborah Groves and Jenny Gilliland

---

Whim Indie @ Anime Game Night at Reboot Game Lounge!

One last thing before ending the development log for this month. Jonathan Dishaw from our team will be demonstrating some new Selatria content at the Reboot Game Lounge's Anime Night on Oct 7. If you're in the Las Vegas area, be sure to stop by!



That's about it for this development log. We'll have some new information about our other games in development in the next log for October. Please look forward to it!

Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #40

The 40th developer log! To maintain the promise of a new development log every month, I wanted to make sure that I finished this entry by August 31st.

We'll be at Gameacon Las Vegas from September 9-10 at the Westgate Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada! We'll be showing off Selatria and ANTics there. Come check out our booth for special prizes, stickers, and t-shirts! We'll also be selling itch.io codes for Selatria for $5.

Come and say hi!

  The new logo for our game!

In my last development log  we unveiled our upcoming PC/Android game "The Dastardly Dairy Debacle". This post, I'd like to show some new promotional art.

We are still aiming for a Fall release for this game, so please stay tuned to future developer logs when we'll show more screenshots and release information.

Dastardly Dairy Debable art developed by Jessica Jacuinde. 

Work is developing steadily on our flagship project as well!


First, some new art!

The Grandma who lost all of her cats! Any lost cats you've saved in the game you can turn int to her for rare prizes and rewards. Also, rescued cats will be able to be played with in the Cat Garden in the backyard!

Did you see him in Part 1? :)

Since the last developer's log, we've funneled all of our studio into prioritizing work on Selatria and Dastardly Dairy Debacle and ensuring we get these two games complete before we go off on developing other ideas.

With this change in structure, Matt Estrada rejoined the team and he's currently heading the development of the final dungeons of the game. If you've played Selatria Chapter 1 and 2, he's been behind the development of the Slime Boss, the Mirage Fairies, the Engineer fight, and the Wit puzzles in the Pirate Cove. If you like difficult content, you'll be very pleased with the way Selatria is going to end.  We also brought on a new intern by the name of Donald Alfieri who is assisting with development as well. Some screenshots of what's to come in the final chapter.

Sliding puzzles are here. And they get pretty intense later on.

The Ice Passage will have both indoor and outdoor elements.


As for myself, I've been doing a bit of everything. Mostly dialogue/cutscene implementation and checking over the voices and art to make sure everything sounds good for the second part of the game. Unfortunately, a lot of my work as of late can't really be shown in pictures just yet. As a bit of insight, I port the script into the game first, then separate it into scenes, and then fill it in with character movements and voices. Almost done with the Chapter 4 part of it, and by the next developer log, you will see some more screenshots of cutscenes that have been completed by then.

Anyway, you'll be able to check out some of the Chapter 4 content I've implemented at our booth at Gameacon so please check us out then!

Oh yes, almost forgot! WASD implementation is coming! So you'll be able to play the game with WASD, arrow keys, or the numpad if you please. A big thanks to Jonathan Dishaw who was able to mess with a lot of underlying code to get it up and running. Players at our Gameacon booth will be able to play some of the new content with this implemented.

Art development by Deborah Groves and Jenny Gilliland



That's all I have for now. See you in the next development log or at Gameacon!

Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #39

Hey everyone! Back with the 39th development log!

First and foremost - our new 2017 team picture!

E3 2017 picture

L to R:
Matthew Estrada (Director/Game Designer)
Christopher Huber (Game Programmer)
Jasmine Baro (Game Tester/QA)
Ryan Homme (Writer)
Toria Bell (Voice of Melanie/Fairies/Writer)
Myself (Producer/Director/Game Designer)
Deborah Groves (Co-Lead Artist/Social Media)
Matthew Hawkins (Game Programmer)
Jenny Gilliland (Co-Lead Artist)
Shadoe (Sound Engineer)
Jonathan Dishaw (Programmer/Battle System Designer)
Leigh-anna Griswould (Game Programmer)
Jessica Jacuinde (Artist/Video Editor)
Paul Vela (Administrative Director)
Kevin Flores (Game Tester/QA)
Geno Quesada (Artist)

Since the last development log, we have since come back from two conventions: LVLUpExpo and E3! I'll be lying if I said I still wasn't pretty exhausted from all of it. LVLUpExpo was pretty fun and interesting, we had quite a turnout at our booth. 

Shadoe, the sound engineer on our team, is also very talented at cosplaying, and came dressed up as Shopkeeper and Mage for our booth!

Jen also worked on brand new art to be displayed for the very first time at LVLUpExpo, showing some of the new characters from the second half for the very first time!

LVL Up Expo was our first time demonstrating our games to a large convention-sized audience. It went mostly well, and we are excited to announce where we're heading next!

Next Whim Indie stop: Gameacon!

Our next showcase will be at Gameacon 2017 at Westgate Hotel in Las Vegas at the beginning of September! If you liked the special challenges and prizes we had at LvLUpExpo, we’ll have more challenging obstacles and fun things to show at Gameacon!

If you can complete the challenges, you'll be able to get special stickers of Selatria characters like what you see below!

New game announcement: The Dastardly Dairy Debacle!

First and foremost, we kicked off our with our own E3 announcement, our third game "The Dastardly Dairy Debacle", coming later this year for Android and PC. It's meant to be a small mini side story game that will keep you entertained.

For the project, we have Jessica Jacuinde with the art development, she previously worked with us on the trailers for Selatria: Advent of the Dakk'rian Empire and ANTics, Christopher Nuño, who worked on the soundtrack for all of our other games. Programming it is Matthew Hawkins who developed some of upcoming Chapter 4 of Selatria. Here's a preview of what to expect!

More information for this game is to come, and we’re aiming for a release later this year.

More information can be seen on our website!

Note that some content shown is not final and subject to change.

Selatria Development

Patch 1.22 will be coming later this month! It will feature unique sprites for knocked out characters (both in-cutscenes and battle), difficulty adjustments to certain boss encounters, and unique cat sprites! We also plan on making some adjustments to Chapter 2-3A Mirage Forest with visual cues to assist those who are hearing impaired.

If you have already collected the cats before this update, fear not! We will be implementing a special area in a future update where you can see all of the collected cats frolicking around.

We are also working very hard on cutscenes for Chapter 4-2, some of the sandstormy screenshots you'll see below is a part of a dungeon called the Endless Desert. The later screenshots show a preview an example of the new cat designs and the new fallen KO sprites for each character. Chapter 4-2 will be implemented with the release of the second half, and as mentioned previously the cats and fallen sprites will be updated with the release of Patch 1.22.

 

New voiceover casts!

We have started the casting for the character of Roussell. I know we previously had auditions for this role, but major errors on our part for getting the tone of voice, the accent, and character background prevented us from getting the auditions we were looking for. For that reason, we’ve since reopened it for people to give the role a try, and auditions are open until July 14th (a week from today!)

Auditions are available on our website.


-

That's about it for this development log. Until next time!