Future Plans #15

Hey! 

This is Part 1/2 of the Future Plans rewards posts for this month. Since I'm impatient for the chance to be able to ramble about my dream passion project after so long, this first post will be on the xianxia project I revealed last month: Fate of the Celestial Mirror. The preview post for Ascendants will come later this month. 

Let's have our first preview of FCM — the pretty UI! 

This is the title screen — still WIP — of the game. Currently, I intend to add small characters of the main cast on the platform, but they just haven't been worked on yet.

The UI is done by the lovely artist, Sandra Mistal, who's also the background artist for this project and Ascendants, if you remember her lovely work from previous previews! Logo, on the other hand, is done by Ingthing, a fellow Hong Kong indie VN developer and graphic designer!

Honestly, finding suitable artists for this UI/logo was... an endeavor 🤣 For one, since the logo needs Chinese version of the game title in it, I obviously needed to find someone who was familiar with both English and Chinese for designing. I really lucked out with Ing! 

For the UI, if you've noticed by now with my games, I have a Thing for pretty, unique UIs. I think UI is one of the most important things to a VN, because you'll be staring at it (especially the textbox!) for the entire game — more than literally any other piece of art asset! And a good UI, imo, really helps elevate the game experience by drawing you into the game universe and atmosphere of the story. 

Sure, nobody's going to buy a game just because the UI looks nice, but when a UI is good, it can really accentuate the game's polish, and people do notice and remember it. E.g. I've never played Persona, but even I've heard enough about that game to know it's known for having really stylish, cool, memorable UIs 😂

Anyway, rant aside, I tend to put a lot of thought into my game UIs, which also makes it difficult for me to find an artist who has the style I envision and can bring my vision to life. I was desperate when I went to Sandra, the background artist, to see if she'd be interested in trying out UI design for the project, and I was so relieved she said yes. I don't know about you, but I am absolutely in love with this UI!

Here's a couple more sneak peeks of screens in game:

Oh by the way, have I mentioned it's partially animated? The water/lotus parts have a small looping animation, which you can turn off in settings if you experience performance issues, but I think it's a super cute touch!

Okay, that's all I'm going to reveal for this month. Everything is still in early stages and there might be more changes later on, but I hope you like what you see so far! 

If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to leave it in the comments below!

As always, thank you so much for the generous support!