Lost (Me Too)

Bit of a content warning: Lots of profanities being thrown around, mainly in the actual "game" (if you can call it that: it's currently in the state of barely qualifying as such). Please understand orz

With that aside, this project was a WILD ride that I couldn't have seen coming. 

Initially, this project was supposed to (probably) not be published by me and by someone else instead, as I had a team of 2 other people: one programmer, and one sound designer. The project the programmer had pitched was basically "Darkest Dungeon but happy, where if you got TOO happy, your head exploded. Oh, and can we have eldritch abominations thrown in there too?" And with the hot panda pallete, we all got to work...

But instead, I was left on read for a little less than half of the jam's length, which is rather impressive, given how this was a much longer one than I'm used to. Thusly, I had to switch gears, and FAST.

Negativity aside, I'm genuinely surprised that something came from this, yet a lot more was abandoned. As such, I'd like to spend this space to show you everything that I managed to complete and talk a bit about it, since I was primarily in charge of art for that other group. 

The Player(s)

Now, while in the actual submitted .zip file, all 3 of them show up, only Renata (left) is playable. That's entirely because of personal preference, even though Høtji (middle) would've been way easier to animate, but I digress. 

The overall vibes of the initial project was boiled down to "goth/edgy/emo people have to fight their way through happy land," and as such, landed on 3 main playable classes: Kitten summoner, DJ, and Edgelord Larper. Somewhere in the mix, I heard something about a goth mommy, and thusly Renata was born. The other two? Honestly, I just pulled the designs out of my ass and called it quits. I didn't think I'd have any more time to think about them too hard, but now that I look at these designs, I could've probably just made a VN using Twine and called it a day. But alas, Unity is my gods-forsaken home and I just love making things complicated for myself. 

Also fun fact: there was a sketch for the cat that Renata could summon. I just never finished it from time constraints and changing priorities. 

The Enemies

There were 3 zones planned: Candy Land, Mystical Forest, and Circus. 

Candy Land

Candy was honestly somewhat of a cop-out. While (I think) they were going to be the first or second zone, I was incredibly creatively bankrupt at this point. As such, while they're simple, I can't be bothered to put much more thought into them. Sorry lil guys, you deserved better :(

Mystical Forest

Now I know what you're thinking: "why is this offset?" That's because I was so lost at this point, I didn't know what to do for the third one! I had some ideas: fairy, pixie, heck, even Titania as a potential boss, but I just didn't feel motivated to finish any of the sketches I had, and at this point, I hadn't heard back from my groupmates in a few days, so I didn't bother. 

I'm still sad I couldn't find a spot for the unicorn. I felt so proud of how the sprite reminded me of old pixel work that had to get scrunched due to limited disk space. At least the gnome got some spotlight, so you go, little guy!

Circus

Ah, the circus. I'm still not sure how "happy" landed here, but I'm not going to question it. I do  genuinely like these designs (aside from maybe the colors on the strongman bull), so maybe I'll go back and use these in more depth later. Also: do not ask me why they are furries. I genuinely don't know. 

That being said, though, I did initially plan to make the strongman a boss in the project attached, but I sadly ran out of time and scrapped it. 

Backgrounds

With the three zones associated above, I also had some backgrounds made and split up so they could be programmatically parallaxed to add to the realism. After all, I wasn't sure if this project was actually 2d or just billboarded to look 2D but is actually programmed in a 3D space. (Technically, the project attached is 3D only because 2D rigidbodies have proven to be weirdly finicky at times)

Overall, this project was plagued with a lot of development issues and makes me wish I hadn't spent so much time dawdling and waiting for people to get back to me and started on this instead. Or maybe have done a different game idea... But you live and you learn, and there are things that I've definitely learned with this project (Thank you Summer!). I'm not sure if I'll visit this project again and use these materials. I feel like everything could have definitely used more polish and more time debugging, but sadly, I'm personally out of time. So I'll more than likely sit on this and wait it out as I work on a project I was working on before this before visiting this once more and actually make it a game instead of whatever the heck this turned out to be. 

If you've read this far, I commend you. Now please go play a real game that people had made and not what this inevitable abandonware I slapped together in ~48 hours.