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Atonal Dreams: ~2 Years Of Progress

3 years ago6,907 words

Atonal Dreams was meant as a short standalone prequel to a longer reimagining of the MARDEK story - itself a reworking of another project I'd started on earlier - which I intended to finish within six months to a year. It's been either about a year and a half, two years, or two years and four months since I started - depending on where the start is considered to be - and the finish line still seems distant. In this obnoxiously long, image-heavy post, I want to look back over the entire development journey, to see how the game has evolved each month.

Well! Like with the game itself, I vastly underestimated the time it'd take to make this post. And the length it'd end up being! It was enlightening spending several days looking back over everything, though, so hopefully you'll get something out of this too, if you've bothered to click the link at all!

I looked through old blog posts to see what I did each month, but they're LONG, so for the sake of my sanity I mostly just skimmed them to look for relevant images. A lot of them are gifs or short videos, and since they're many of them are stupidly hosted on my own site and are usually several MB each, there might be some lag while they load. I haven't covered absolutely everything in this post because that'd be madness, but I hopefully have chronicled all the main developments.

Now, let's dive into this monster's maw together like the maniacs we are!!

Muddy Beginnings

It's difficult to know exactly where to start, what would be considered Month 1, because it's not as if I sat down one day and deliberately planned to make Atonal Dreams.

After my first attempt to return to game dev with 3D games I'd release on Steam, Memody: Sindrel Song, hadn't exactly been the shining success my recently-operated-on brain naively hoped it might be, I wondered for a while about what to do next.

In ∞ this post, from 15 August 2019 ∞, I talked about a game idea called Belief, in which you could convert your enemies into allies mid-battle, causing them to physically switch sides and become controllable. That gif shows what I'd got after three days of prototyping:



This was followed by a week of eager idea development, during which I planned these three protagonists for the game, who were roughly based on Mardek, Deugan and Eme(e)la from MARDEK:



I also made a human base model as a way of deciding on the character proportions:




I still like many of the ideas behind Belief, and I can't quite remember why I never continued with it. I think it's because I assumed it just wouldn't sell well enough, and people continued to show interest in a MARDEK continuation - this was before I ported MARDEK to Steam - so that combined with Memody: Sindrel Song's poor sales made me wonder whether I should be doing something related to MARDEK instead.

∞ This post from a few weeks after that (12 September 2019) ∞ is where I first started seriously considering whether to make some remake or reimagining of MARDEK (again; I'd already tried that with Taming Dreams around 2015).

And in ∞  this post from a couple of days after that ∞, I included this image, which I hoped would show how I intended to use some aspects of MARDEK but to explore them in a more interesting way than they were originally:






∞ I went into more detail about that in this post. ∞



In ∞ this post from the 25 September 2019 ∞, I talked about some ideas for a battle system which used weapons of light and dark, with the mechanic from Belief where you could convert enemies into allies, causing them to physically move over to your party... but didn't do much with it.

(Apparently at this point I was still keeping separate personal and development blogs (Taming the Mind and Alora Fane, respectively), and only combined them around late October 2019. I also added the newer commenting system around that time (which I tested with fake comments on ∞ this post ∞, which just made me cry with laughter). Didn't realise it was that recent!)

By ∞ 13 November 2019 ∞, I already had Belief working enough to have a video demo:



That means it'd taken 3 months of not-especially-focused work to get from an an idea and a prototype to a working video demo. It's why I thought 6 months was doable! (Memody: Sindrel Song also took about 6 months, and that was while recovering from the major brain surgery I'd had just months earlier.)

∞ I wrote some more about how I intended to do more with MARDEK ∞: both a re-release of the original (which I hadn't yet done) and this remake, which I seemed to be considering Belief to be? I had this diagram of my plan:



That is, this Belief game was going to span several chapters, which would take place before events that would become the then-yet-to-be-named reimagining of the released MARDEK chapters plus a conclusion (the events of the original MARDEK 1 and 2 would be combined into a single chapter 4, then MARDEK 3 would be chapter 5...).

I did a lot of planning for the whole story and its cast of characters, including art which I only hinted at:




Exactly 2 years ago (I'm writing this bit on the 27 December 2021), ∞ I wondered whether I could call this MARDEK reimagining Divine Dreams ∞, which I then confirmed in ∞ a post from 5 January 2020 ∞.

Perhaps for the sake of neatness I'll consider January 2020 the beginning of this project, even though it was built on months of work I did for Belief, and wouldn't actually be spun off into Atonal Dreams - which I consider a separate game from Divine Dreams - for several more months.

Month 1 - January 2020

I spent a week around the end of December/start of January prototyping a fairly straightforward JRPG battle system, which resulted in this:



As the plan at this point was to reimagine MARDEK, I composed this piece of music for the very start of the "Mighty Heroes" intro section:



I also did some lore planning stuff, including roughly sketching a map... which was received with opposition because it was different to what MARDEK fans were familiar with (this would be a continuing theme).



In terms of technical development, I got this 3D tile-based map system - with separate 'diorama' rooms that faded in and out - working really quite quickly:



I had the dialogue system - with varied facial expressions - essentially working, too (though it was heavily based on work I did for Belief a few months earlier):



I also added models for Mardek and Deugan (in revised versions of their Taming Dreams designs), and a basic menu system:



This always seems to happen: there's this huge explosion of progress right at the start which leads to essentially a working game in a very short period of time... then it takes months to actually mould that into something final.

Month 2 - February 2020

Already I was thinking of readying a playable demo, which I decided would focus on an area from near the start but not the absolute beginning: the Dreamcave, which would be the equivalent of the Gem Mine from MARDEK 2. I tried making this first.

I was still trying to figure out the visuals, starting with a deliberately blocky look:



Unhappy with this, I experimented with rounding the corners and modelling the walls to be more rocky. I also added ally following, and the ability to switch which character you were controlling (which didn't stay):



I started designing the game's first monsters (apparently called 'miasmon' at this point):



I also designed and made models of four protagonists who were based on those from MARDEK: Mardek, Deugan, Emeela (with two e's, as in Taming Dreams), and Steele:




Unlike the rather bland 'Royal Guards' from MARDEK, they were 'Cherubim': recruits of the Seraphim, which was an idea I first used in Taming Dreams.

I further refined the cave tileset, added treasure chests, and added monsters to the map with auras around them which would trigger battles:



I added saving and loading and added a title screen here too:



I added the characters and monsters to battles, for which I'd also modelled a background...



...but the battle mechanics were fairly bare-bones and vague at this point, so I experimented with a bunch of different ideas. Notably, characters had 'Body' and 'Mind' stats, though I think Mind was basically an alternative HP that magic affected, and which would result in KO if depleted. I seem to have spent a lot of time wondering about buffs. Skills were simple and apparently bound to - or learned from - equipment:




Characters could also equip monsters as 'essences', but I think their only value was modifying stats.

Month 3 - March 2020

I spent a while trying to figure out what weapon Deugan could wield; early signs of veering away from the 'boring' swords-and-shields stuff. Reactions also apparently existed at this point.



I added a gameplay mechanic called 'concords', which granted various bonuses between pairs of characters based on their story-based feelings for one another:



I found it interesting, but bloaty, and have used the concept for something else instead.

I also experimented with particle effects for spells, but apparently the gif is 70MB so I'm not including that here!

I also composed music for the Dreamcave and 'Casual Battles'...




Both of which I like but am no longer using!

Month 4 - April 2020

At this point, after about three months of work - if you don't include stuff I did as part of Belief, at least - I had enough working to make this 14-minute-long video demo:



I just watched that, and I have such mixed feelings about it! On the one hand, I'm really proud of what I had there, and enjoyed watching it. The characters are familiar and charming, in a simple, silly way, and the game feels relatively solid and complete. So there's deep regret - and annoyance at myself - for not just sticking with that...

But I also feel that the gameplay mechanics are vague, all over the place, and that what I have now is hopefully more interesting. But I don't know. So much of this development has been plagued by uncertainty, as we shall see...

Apparently I was having strong doubts about the battle mechanics around this point, and spent the rest of April revising them. I first added these UI 'statues' here:



I'd also decided to reuse the conversion mechanic from Belief - where you could tame enemies to your side - and now Mind was used for that (interestingly though, I wasn't sure what'd happen when a character turned fully dark, and considered them entering a berserk state, similar to what I have planned for the wakefulness mechanic). I'd also decided to reuse runes and arousal from Belief as damage modifiers.

I was still figuring out how to handle skills though; at this point their usability was tied to a range of arousal, dumping an additional big purpose to a stat already used for speed and damage modification:




I also drew these species head things this month?

Month 5 - May 2020

I seem to have been focused on the Steam port of MARDEK around this time rather than Atonal Dreams.

I modelled and animated this Fungoblin monster:



I'd also added the ability to tame your foes, and for your allies to be lost to the opposing side in the same way:



Skills also had levels and gained XP. I wasn't sure how skills would be acquired though, and imagined each character having a small arsenal unique to them, gaining them either through story events or equippable 'memento' items.

I think I spent a lot of time wondering at this point whether people would dislike something that both was and wasn't the MARDEK characters they were familiar with... so, anticipating negative reactions for defiling precious memories - plus a personal desire to do something more lore-relevant - I reimagined the main protagonist. The dark-skinned version of Mardek was from Taming Dreams, when the African-inspired Mhandisi race were one of Alora Fane's six barbari species, but I'd since replaced those with the demonic-looking Lucen. So a half-Lucen Mardek would look like a 'pink elf', as I comically put it back then:



To further separate him from the Mardek people would already have feelings about, I considered a new, more thought-out name: Dayvha.

Month 6 - June 2020

I released the Steam port of MARDEK this month.

Perhaps with that in mind, I was wrestling a lot with the idea that people wouldn't like a revision of MARDEK. I wrote ∞ this post ∞ about that, and how I'd already revised the essential MARDEK story many times since its simple origin... but that maybe moving away from it would be a wiser course of action.

I further refined the half-Lucen 'Dayvha' character, as well as similar equivalents for the MARDEK/Taming Dreams characters Deugan, Eme(e)la, and Elwyen, which resulted in these new protagonists:




I also considered giving them musical instruments instead of standard weapons, including a pair of resonars that Dayvha would play like a violin, due to the devil's association with the fiddle:



I was worried a lot about the scale of Divine Dreams, also. The plan was to essentially retell the entire MARDEK story plus a conclusion, and I knew the whole thing would take years. What if the first was a financial flop? Would I be bound to make the rest despite that?

I fell into deeper despair than any I'd known for a while, entirely discouraged.

I wrote ∞ a post about some ideas I could try instead ∞, including a shorter, standalone prequel to Divine Dreams that I could use to gauge whether there'd be enough interest in a series without being unfinished if there wasn't.

I liked that idea enough to run with it - it'd mean the last few months wouldn't be wasted, after all - and devoted some time to writing out a story plan (which I think has for the most part remained unchanged). I designed the four protagonists, who I first hinted at through silhouettes:



Apparently I dived right into it, though, because the very next week I already had models for Savitr and Collie completed:



I'd also written this little scene to get a feel for their personalities:



Both Savitr and Collie used resonars as swords, and I'd already added them to the game and animated them. I'd also added an external tileset, and a battle background for it:



It surprises me, looking back, how many of these things all happen in a sudden explosion of productivity. While actually doing the work, it feels as if everything takes forever.

Month 7 - July 2020

I apparently spent time on story planning, as described in ∞ this post ∞. This included finalising and refining the four primary characters: Savitr, Collie, Pierce, and Ossoum:



I made models for Pierce and Ossoum, and like with Savitr and Collie, I wrote a dialogue scene exploring their personalities:



I added ∞ an info page ∞, which I'd completely forgotten about and haven't updated since last August! Whoops! I suppose it conveniently describes the gameplay mechanics, characters, etc, as they were at that point. I tried to include a progress bar to predict how long things would take... which proved to be a fool's errand. (The page says I'm hopeful for a release before the end of 2020.... ha.)

I was wondering at this point whether at least some skills should use music, and I added this additional form of reaction where you essentially had to tap to the rhythm of a brief melody:



It muffled the background music slightly so the melody didn't clash with it, but the whole thing felt awkward and like it disrupted the immersion. The tapping mechanic got old fast too. I think only some magic skills worked this way.

I also worked on a potions system. I forgot about that! Is it even in the game anymore?? I can't remember!

Month 8 - August 2020

I worked on adding combat mechanics/animations/etc for Pierce and Ossoum, including this potion spray that Ossoum would use as his primary battle action:



In hindsight, it feels like a waste of time, though, as I don't think I'll be using much of what I made here.

I further developed the four main characters by composing musical themes for them, with silent 'lyrics':



I still love these! Except for Collie's, which I remade not too long ago as my understanding of her character grew.

I did some map work:




The plan at this point was for there to be a single 'overworld' of several connected islands; I'll probably split them into separate areas though.

I wondered how the player might cross between islands, but wasn't sure at this point.

I also designed some monsters for this first area, the 'Sprouting Isle':



I made models for some of them:



These included Pawnite, which at this point was just intended to be an early-game common monster.

Month 9 - September 2020

I wasn't happy with how skills and equipment worked - a continuing theme throughout development - so I revised them here, introducing the six-item radial menu for the first time:




Those lists of properties shown as icons seem too cluttery, in hindsight. I'm not fond of the black bars that appear when selecting a skill, also.

I'd finally replaced the Divine Dreams title screen with this one, which I'm still using:



Up until this point, battles used a fixed camera. I added a dynamic camera, which you can see in this short video (which also shows stuff like the UI and skill revisions in action):



For that, I made this circular arena model, which took some fiddling around with to get to where I wanted it:



I have mixed feelings about the dynamic camera, especially after looking through the old versions with the fixed camera. I'm unsure whether to keep or remove it (I don't want to add a toggle option because I'd have to keep whatever I decided on in mind when making a lot of decisions).

The UI at this point had the 'statues' at the top and bottom, and the turn bar awkwardly in the upper left corner, which doesn't look good:



I also added these damage predictor things, which at this point showed for all targets:



Apparently I had the thought about the awkward UI around this time, because the very next week I revised it to have the statues on the sides, which makes much more sense:



I'd also removed the fairly pointless, cluttery property icons on skills and replaced them with a bigger XP bar.

I added these 'zone completion' things which filled as you defeated members of a monster species in an area:



Seems I started wondering how I'd go about releasing a demo, assuming it'd be happening soon (spoiler: it didn't).

I seem to have got distracted from the game to devote myself to promotion research, which ate up the rest of the month.

Month 10 - October 2020

I wrote a lot about my uncertainties regarding how to do a demo - and whether or not I even should - and findings from researching marketing stuff. I feel I know a lot more about all that than when I released Memody: Sindrel Song, but I'm still hardly an expert and I'm still unsure and concerned about it all.

I wanted monsters to play some role in character development, so I expanded on the 'essences' idea I'd had from the start, and had equipped essences visually appear as little sprites following their character:



Characters could equip up to three essences, which they'd level up by 'feeding' them. They provided bonuses in addition to equipped items and were unrelated to skills.



I started on making an introductory battle against Pierce:



Wow, that looks hilariously rough compared to what I have now! Some bits are still the same though.

The next week, though, I'd cleaned it up and composed music for it, which improved things immensely, I'd say:



This is also perhaps the first example of a music piece with multiple sections that change based on what's actually happening, which I'd build on later.

I also did a lot of plot writing/revising here.

Month 11 - November 2020

Motivation and productivity waned here, and I seem to have struggled with some bad mental issues this month too.

I did more plot writing stuff, which included deciding on three important factions: the Seraphim, Blight Wolves, and Beyond Ponderers, which I designed symbols for:



I also made this tool for myself to aid me in planning:




Also as part of the planning, I decided that Collie was a member of the Blight Wolves, and planned for dreams to play a big role in the gameplay and story (which makes sense given the title and themes), with the characters appearing differently based on whose mind was forming the dream. Here's how I imagined Savitr and Collie would look in her dreams:



I was ∞ insecure about Collie's design, fearing it being interpreted as sexual objectification ∞, for which I'd be criticised.

Month 12 - December 2020

A year in, a year ago!

I was ∞ concerned again about Collie being interpreted more sexually than I meant her to be ∞. I was also apparently distracted and unproductive.

I made some more UI and battle mechanics revisions, adding a mental defence stat and room for status effect icons:



I also see that I was talking about re-releasing my old Flash games, and working on a 3D combination of Alora Fane: Creation and Belief... both of which are thoughts I've been having recently. Hmm. I'll write about that in another post, maybe.

I started uploading ∞ albums of my music to my new Bandcamp account at this point ∞.

Month 13 - January 2021

Speaking of music, I composed musical themes for the three aforementioned factions, which I posted to ∞ my Patreon account ∞ rather than the blog.

I posted an ~8 minute video of the essentially finished Pierce intro - and a subsequent after-battle bit of dialogue - which was originally intended to be the very start of the game:



I put a lot of time and effort into that - or at least it feels like I did because I had a 3-month gap between starting and finishing it - so I'm still using it with only a few changes, though it's no longer the beginning of the game.

I revised skills yet again, removing the arousal range requirement and adding property icons on the UI button things:




Progress was slowing at this point, with changes being made to relatively minor features - like how status effects accompanying damage are shown - rather than big new ones being added.

Month 14 - February 2021

I added these things called maelstroms, which are essentially boss encounters with several waves of monsters back-to-back:



I also spent a while trying to decide how this building - an elemental 'mausoleum' - should look...



...before deciding on a fairly basic pyramid:



I wasn't happy with the game's colour palette, and played around with some post-processing filters to make it look more harmonious:



I also added a second battle against Pierce to end the intro island, and made a new monster that accompanied him.



I was talking a lot about doing a demo soon; seems I wrote more about that than actual work I'd done.

Month 15 - March 2021

I seem to have written a lot about poor physical and mental health around this period, and my productivity was low. I think it's because I was having to figure out stuff I usually avoid - like making a Steam page, setting up some Patreon stuff and connecting it to Discord - and I had an upcoming brain scan checkup thing I was getting fairly severe anxiety about in case the cancer was back, but I'm not sure; I can't really even remember this period.

Apparently I distracted myself by doing non-game-dev stuff like redesigning this website a bit (that feels like forever ago!).

Seems I did put Atonal Dreams on Steam at this point (that feels more recent...), but I've not really been publicly talking about it since then since there are a few things I'd like to change before drawing attention to it. Like finalising the mechanics, etc. The gameplay's changed a lot since I created the page, after all, and I don't want to mislead people.

Month 16 - April 2021 - Alpha Test!

Finally, after months of expecting it to happen 'any day now!!', I enlisted the help of a few wonderful volunteers to test the game and tell me what they thought!

One thing that's worth noting here in the future though is that I probably ran the alpha test both too early and too late... it's hard to know the best time. I might have avoided some issues if I'd got earlier feedback, but I also feel that presenting the game in this form gave testers the impression that they were playing essentially the final version - with just minor bugs to iron out - when I still didn't feel even the basic gameplay mechanics were finalised at this point. I made a lot of fairly fundamental changes since the alpha even though they weren't exactly asked for, because I was still in the process of working out what I wanted to do with the game. If that makes sense.

Based on the feedback people gave - it wasn't clear that taming was an important mechanic, or even a mechanic at all - I started wondering whether to combine the monster essences - previously just stat-boosting equippable items - with skills in some form. I still intended to give characters unique 'innate' skills alongside them though.

I made this mock-up of the idea the week after testing:



I also got thinking, based on the feedback, that the intro was too abrupt.

I hoped to spend a week or two fixing stuff up before running another test. That was 8 months ago, and no second alpha yet! I did get to work surprisingly on my new ideas, though, and had this two weeks after the alpha:



I'm surprised by this! It's very similar to what I have now, but I thought it took longer to work up to that point. The skill 'capsule' things reached their current (and in my opinion rather aesthetically pleasing) forms this week, with a gradient coloured according to both the skill's element and rune:



I also worked on a lot of little details, like revising this damage predictor thing:



I also revised the intro battle against Pierce to make the taming mechanic clearer. This involved designing and making a model for a monster he summoned from his mind:



I thought some more about how Savitr would get around between islands, and imagined this boat thing being dragged by a horse monster:

Month 17 - May 2021

I changed the colour of the overworld's grass from yellowish green to teal. I'm surprised how recently I did this!



I also did a lot of work on adding clear tutorials to the beginning of the game, as a lack of clarity was one of the biggest points of feedback.



I also composed some new battle music this month, 'Healers of the Wounded World'. I really like it, but it, too, has since been replaced!



I also started wondering about whether or not characters should have resonar weapons and innate skills at all, or whether they should summon monsters exclusively. At this point, Savitr and Collie still had lightsabre-like crystal sword resonars, and to summon monsters they just put their hand to their forehead:



I started feeling that stressing the monster summoning aspect might be a wise course of action, but it would be a big change.

I also wondered about what monsters should be called, and considered 'tulpas' as a possibility.

I made the decision that all skills would be summoned monsters, which meant the weapon resonars were vestigial. As a replacement, I gave characters 'amulets' and 'bracelets' that they'd equip:



Though they weren't exactly visually interesting and I wasn't exactly ecstatic about the idea.

Since the weapons were now replaced by summons, I made a new basic monster, Palade, that'd basically be the equivalent of a starting sword slash attack:




And I made another, Celestronaut, that Savitr could summon as a healing skill:



This short video showed a lot of the features at this point:



I also first had the idea here to add a new intro, set in a nightmare that Collie was having. Seemed fitting for the dreams theme, plus it was essentially a darker, more plot-relevant version of how MARDEK started. I made these alternate skins based on art from a few months prior:

Month 18 - June 2021

One thing I'm noticing from looking through my old blog posts is that they became less frequent during 2021. I think?

I started this month with another attempt at making a mode of transport between the islands:




Seems I was talking a lot about being tired, unmotivated, unproductive, etc.

I made The Beast, for the nightmare intro section, this month:



I had more thoughts about whether or not characters should wield musical instruments; the amulets and bracelets just didn't feel satisfying. I made these violin-like resonars which both Savitr and Collie would use (each in their own way):



I liked those a lot, conceptually and aesthetically, but a problem that had plagued development for a long time remained: if characters played melodies, they interfered unpleasantly with the background battle music. This video shows three separate attempts to get around the issue, none of which I felt was adequate:



I also started on making the nightmare intro, beginning with a battle arena mockup and some dark Pawnite/Pawnight monsters that accompanied The Beast:

Month 19 - July 2021

I experimented with another possibility for integrating the musical resonars, where usually-hidden tracks would play while characters used their instruments:



I felt like I was getting somewhere... but composing those additional tracks was painful - especially for a piece I'd composed without that in mind - and it got really muddy when Savitr played his violin sounds during the more lively, violin-heavy parts of the BGM. In hindsight, the reaction system being completely separate from the music also seems unharmonious.

I did some more work on the nightmare intro. I added this 'Preyloot', a manifestation of Collie's guilt about the innocent victims she preyed upon:



I also wanted to depict her idolising Savitr in some sense, and here I imagined him as a superhero she read comics about, for which she was berated by The Beast:





"I've almost finished the intro, but not quite!", begins a post from 5 months ago. Oh, how naive! Turns out I wasn't exactly wrong though, and I did have this (bizarrely low quality) video to show of a 'completed' version of the intro this month:



The whole thing took place in a single battle, which I felt at the time was the most efficient way to make and present things, but after actually building it, it felt like too much being dumped on the player all at once. Some details were just confusing, too, like Collie sitting reading a comic one moment, then standing with her sword out the next.

I had a rethink about how exactly Savitr could be portrayed during this scene, and the topless hunk I had there wasn't really working for me. So I revised him as a sillilly generic JRPG protagonist, which seemed more fitting for the genre:



I spent some time rethinking things.

Month 20 - August 2021

I felt that the nightmare intro being a dungeon made more sense and would be more appealing to the player, as it'd introduce more mechanics and the various scenes would have breathing room between them. I made a deliberately unnatural-looking tileset for it:



I also made this monster, Monstrife, which was based on the first Monsters you encounter in MARDEK, as that too started with a dream so this dream intro was kind of an equivalent to that (plus Collie's main concern is being a 'beast', so these represented beastliness):



I also made the concept art of JRPG Hero Savitr into a model:



Feeling that the Celestronaut summon was too big and majestic for the start of the game, I made a smaller version, based on a design from a couple of my previous games:



I also decided it should be Savitr - not Collie - who's able to tame at first (since he tamed her, and it's something she admires him for), and since that required a monster to use as a skill, I made this Bridove:



I scrapped the idea of comic books about superhero Savitr, and replaced them with more genre-appropriate tomes about Savitr as a fantasy/JRPG hero, which the player could read at their leisure, and which opened book portals that allowed you to travel around the nightmare:

Month 21 - September 2021

I apparently decided on the name figmon for monsters around this point, and wrote ∞ this post explaining my reasoning behind replacing all skills with figmon summons ∞.

Seems I wasn't very productive this month? I improved the battle arena for Collie's Psychepelago:



I also did more plot planning stuff, including drawing this concept sketch of the small area the game takes place in:



I also did bits and pieces of writing for the intro, integrating the JRPG version of Savitr:



But overall motivation and productivity seem to have been very low, and I took some time off Atonal Dreams.

Month 22 - October 2021

I seem to have got back into it during the middle of the month, but mostly just trudged through a bit of dialogue for this intro:



I'd revised it all several times and was quite tired of it all.

I also revised Savitr's transport monster - his steed - yet again, to what I hope is the final design:



I added the beginnings of a simple world map of sorts, too:

Month 23 - November 2021

I finally mostly-finished the intro section, and got started on connecting it to the starting island I had from months earlier.



I also revised how speech bubbles are positioned. Exciting stuff.



I made two new figmon - both inspired by designs from my old games - to fill particular niches:



I revised the figmon species icons and character mini avatar things, which I'd been meaning to do for months:



Still unhappy with how the resonars interacted with the background music, I was inspired to try another idea, where battles would have a non-melodic battle track, which the player would trigger melodies over the top of using a timed system that replaced reactions:



I finally felt like I had a solution to this long-term problem that I was relatively happy with!

Month 24 - December 2021

I continued developing this 'Dynamusic' system - as I called it in the code - which involved recoding the whole thing three or four times as I tried to figure things out. Tedious! But I got it all working in the end in a way that should be okay to work with in the long term.



I also added UI stars that you fill through actions - primarily dealing damage - to raise or lower the global 'intensity' value, which changes the background music and results in global damage modifiers at the extreme ends.

And this is where we are now.

Final Thoughts

Am I happy with how development on this game has gone so far? Honestly, I don't know. I wish it hadn't taken this long! But I also feel - looking at everything in context here - that all the revisions have led to a better game than if I'd just stuck with my first half-formed ideas.

I'm really pleased with the figmon-as-skills and musical battles systems, as they combine a lot of things I've enjoyed in other games in ways that I find personally satisfying.

Having just two explorable areas after two years of work is a bit frustrating, but I'd like to think I've been mainly laying a foundation, and that once I'm secure about the gameplay mechanics - as I feel I almost am in a way I never was at the beginning - actually building story event stuff on top of them should be a relatively smooth process.

But I suppose we'll have to wait and see. There have been a lot of peaks and troughs in motivation and productivity over the process - I can't imagine a prolonged project where that wouldn't be the case - but recently I've been motivated and excited about the game again, and eager to tidy it up to the point where I can do another alpha. Hopefully that'll happen within the next couple of months, but clearly I'm absolutely terrible at predicting how long things will take so who knows!!

If you've stuck with the development of this game so far, thank you enormously! I really do wish it was a quicker process, but since it's unfortunately not, I suppose we all have to be patient with it. So I greatly appreciate those of you who have been!