meadow

Play on Game Boy or browser (desktop/phone):
~ https://meadowdrone.itch.io/the-heart-of-arel ~

Eionn (she/they), Aoba (she), Eryr (they) and Harthe (she)

It's a radically soft, short game about four partners travelling to stop a deadly natural threat. Cook, cuddle, flirt and encourage each other to overcome the miasma, and explore both the lands, and each other's feelings on the way.

As an beginner at game development I wanted to challenge myself to make something competely my own, an uncompromising look into where I've been at in my life recently, and something of my own visual and sonic style, and embrace the imperfections that come from it. I wanted to make a really small, 5-minute long thing as a newbie game dev, but as I fleshed out these characters I enjoyed them too much to have their adventure end prematurely and I really enjoyed how creatively fulfilling it ended up being.

It's probably about 60-70 minutes long, is mechanically light with no reliance on reaction speeds or precise/multi-button inputs, with a focus on area exporation and the characters' relationships.

All money earned from this game will go to fundraising Dandelion, a Bristol (UK) based harm reduction information centre and needle exchange for trans+ people self-medicating their HRT. Thank you so much!

I had a lightbulb moment last night where I came home from a night out and suddenly figured out a simple way to fix a bug I had when transitioning from one map to another, and excitedly went to put in this genius! elegant! fix, only to figure out that not only had I already figured this out before, it was already done for half the levels and there was nothing genius about it but was in fact just a normal, regular implementation step I'd missed

Core game mechanics, general engine and scripting system: 100%
Writing: 75%
Cutscene/writing implementation: 50%
Sprite art + animations: 95%
Map tile art: 66%
Level design + implementation: 66%
UI + portraits: 95%
Music: 10%
SFX: 20%
System features + options: 50%

While I have experienced a bit of a post-midway dip in motivation lately, I'm starting to feel like the end is in sight and I'm still excited to finish it! Especially now that so much of the writing is done, I don't need to do much more technical work and I feel much less resistance in actually creating the cutscenes compared to getting something out of my brain onto paper.

So, I'm off to Japan for a bit in a week or so, so I've been wondering about what I might enjoy doing during my downtime that I can't while I am at a computer or laptop, and I guess that's mainly just writing at this point? So I've been doing a bit more tile art and trying to get the fundamental, unpolished versions of the final three maps off the ground as well as thinking about music.

Sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed about the parts of the game I very broadly understand what they're gonna be but have nothing concrete, but when I actually start writing an outline, or better yet a script, I feel so much freer knowing exactly what work I have cut out for me and so much less resistance in actually creating because there's something tangible to use as a reference point. It goes from "what in the infinite permutations of infinity in the realm of creative expression should I do?" and more "I need to create a secret path that is done by interacting with X" or "this cutscene needs to be about these two girls smooching" and I can have at it

I'm making a game! and I'm still making it!! (seriously are you kidding me)

it's a joyful, queer, poly and non-violent adventure game for the Game Boy. it's about discovery, singing, food, girlfriends & partners, and cuddles. and alchemy. the working title is Riverbank Snaps. I've been working on it basically whenever I have spare time which is why I've been quiet lately!

I'm completely new to drawing sprites + tiles, animation, composing music + using trackers, game design, fiction/character writing, basically all of it but after a lifetime of Game Playing I'm just kinda going off of my intuition. honestly the whole process has been an absolute joy and I can't wait to finish this goofy lil story I'm making.

I might post small updates here and there but if I don't I can assure you it's because I'm just in supermegahyperfixation mode, scripting more headpats or whatever.