I have finished implementing the mobile phone, add menus for the contact and the messages. I have spent a lot of time on the refactoring of the project. Now everything complies with LVL 4 warning (visual studio) before that everything was compiled with a LVL 2 warning. Hopefully, there is not a lot of lines of code to fix, but there are things to optimise such as moving getters and setters in the header file to let the compiler inline these methods.

I am also trying to integrate new mechanisms such as mobile phone or computers where you can search something on the internet or get SMS.

But every time I introduce new mechanisms the puzzle became more complex, so the challenge here is to balance the puzzle with the story. The goal is to create what help the story without making the game uninteresting. I think I will have a lot of polishing to do for the story  to feel right with the gameplay.

This week I am experimenting with colors for the level 4.

The level 4 will be the biggest level of the game so I will probably spend a lot of time on it. Here is a drawing of some character. The level will contain a lot of characters and also a lot of animations.

The level 3 is done! I have finished checking the last maps and implemented a terminal.

There is still some things who need more polish but I can start making the level 4 and all the tweaking will go at the end of the development. Same thing with the dialogs, adding more text can definitely help the player with some clues. Currently, there is very little dialog so most of the time the player will not know what he is supposed to do and that can be frustrating.

The struggle continues with backgrounds, I try to make them polished enough but every time I find something to fix… The level 3 progress slowly but once it’s finished I think I will have more fun with the level 4.

I have released TakeTen on Game jolt and Kongregate and I had more feedbacks on Kongregate. It seems like on game jolt nobody cares about games with graphics that stand out. With Hope I had a little more comments but nothing big. I understand the market of indie games is flooded. in a sense, I find that a good thing because it let freedom for people to choose, it’s like movies or music. But the problem with games is that you need invest more time to fully understand the game. I like the analogy of story driven game with books because it required concentration and sometimes efforts to go through a game. The goal of the game developer is to convey the idea that the game deserves their time. It became tricky with games with average graphism, the person evaluates the game simply on the trailer.

The goal of the game developer is to convey the idea that the game deserves their time. It became tricky with games with average graphism, the person evaluates the game simply on the trailer. They are successful games with “bad” art such as Undertale or Minecraft so word of mouth is the most efficient way to have people play your game.