Innes

You may notice this is being posted on the same day as the last one. Day 1 was August 9, after which I had a long shift and was kinda useless, and Day 2 is August 10. Future updates will probably not be as long as Day 1's now that I have the concept and background out of the way.

Today I:

• wrote up yesterday's devlog (tbh I used it to iron out things as I was writing them so there was technically novel work involved)
• wrote out a bunch of discrete, measurable goals to hit for the various phases
• set up a kanban
• set up an Itch page

Said page currently has nothing on it except metadata, but I'll link it once I have an early build.

It's weird because I don't feel like I did much today? But it took more than two hours and I'm exhausted. This is another reason future devlogs will need to be shorter unless there's something big I need to share. Planning is energy intensive.

Sticker for Day 2: two alien stickers bc I put down the first one and realized it was smaller than I thought (big when combined)

In this post: more about the game concept, how I spent the first day of this development cycle, and my next steps.

USE will be a point-and-click information game. (What's that?) "Translation-based information game" is an idea I've had floating around for some time, so this isn't technically the first day I've ever worked on it, but I'm going to be honest, there wasn't much to report. Most of my ideation was nebulous.

I was inspired to push ahead and really make something of it by two things I saw in the last week:

1. Watching GMTK's video about limiting scope
2. Finding out about the Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant, for which submissions are due by early October

(To be clear, I don't assume that I will receive the grant merely by dint of making a demo. I'm going to put feasible effort into making a good demo with the resources available to me, and if they choose it then Hell Yes. If not, then I still have two months of consistent dev progress under my belt that I wouldn't have had otherwise.)

These served as motivation to sit down and think, what format will allow me to present what I want to present, without introducing additional challenges? I'm one person with limited time and a low-end computer. 3D requires skills I could relearn or obtain, but not immediately. So let's simplify. 2D. A 2D sidescroller still means having to program hitboxes, cameras, and traversal animations. Even simpler. Point-and-click, original Myst style. Just put all the things in front of the player and have them click a button to move to another area. I can prototype that in PowerPoint, love it.

I spent most of my work time figuring out how I intend to work and the order of operations. Kinda dull, sure, but it makes a lot more sense to take the time now to plan ahead than to get way down the line and realize I needed to have details ironed out weeks ago. With that in mind, the rough phases I have planned are:

1. Planning (we are here)
2. Language design
3. Graphical mockup
4. Text-based technical demo (in Twine)
5. Technical demo with placeholder graphics (in Godot)
6. Updating graphics
7. Improvements and polish

These are not equal in size. I plan for the two tech demos to take up the majority of the time. (I'm demoing first in Twine then in Godot to make sure my logic works before I start messing around with visuals; the resulting Twine file will also serve as a guideline.)

I also took time to set up some mechanisms to keep myself accountable. This includes the devlogs themselves (plan: Cohost and Tumblr daily, Itch weekly), but I also made this chart:

I've broken up the time I have before the grant submission deadline into 7 weeks, as well as a collection of 10 "flex days" that I can either use as days off or to continue counting work days if I've filled up the 7 weeks. If I work for at least an hour, I put a small sticker in the next available work day's box. If I work more than an hour 30, I get a big sticker. This is because I have ADHD and require immediate positive feedback.

For Day 1, I got a dinosaur (big).

Next steps: blocking out the Itch page, writing out explicit goals for me to hit, and setting up a kanban to finish up the planning phase.

Hey everyone! I'm excited to announce a game demo, which I hope to release in early October 2024!

The working title is Unknown Station Echo. In this game, you'll use your investigative skills to decipher an alien language and uncover the fate of this abandoned outpost.

I've had this idea floating around for some time, and I've decided now is the time to buckle down and create a playable build. If you enjoyed Return of the Obra Dinn and Heaven's Vault, this may be up your alley!

My goal is to provide regular updates on my development process, the first of which is going up tonight or tomorrow (August 9-10). Please follow this page for more updates, and I'd appreciate it if you shared this with folks who might be interested. I'll be tagging posts with #UnknownStationEcho.

You're also welcome to ask me questions about the game and my dev process. (sincerely, please do, it gives me a better idea of what people want to see)

I hope you'll join me on this journey!

Itch: aliengeometries.itch.io
Tumblr: aliengeo.tumblr.com
Cohost: cohost.org/aliengeo

hello gamer. you claim to want "shorter games with worse graphics that are made by people who are paid more to do less". in front of you is itch dot io, which has a "pay what you want" feature,

No but seriously, I have works on itch where I've made more from tips than from sales. I am immensely grateful for the people who decide "hm, you've SAID this is $5 but I'm actually going to pay $15 because this is worth $15 to me." I'm also grateful for the people that pay list price, I wouldn't set it at $5 if I objected to people paying $5, but those tips do a lot, man.