Garden Variety: Dandelion Set - Update #3

(see week 2's updates here)

We're entering the final week of our game jam, as teams are wrapping up and polishing their projects. Here's some updates from last week from each of the teams!

Upwards, Rain!

We've hit the final week! It feels like the jam just started yesterday… September really flew by. Anyway, given this'll be the last progress report before Upwards, Rain! is released, I'm going to go over what we accomplished this week as well as what our plan for finishing up the week is.

Starting with our progress, we've got two major updates to share. The first is that (by the time you're reading this) the backgrounds are DONE! This was the primary focus for art this week, as backgrounds are the most time consuming elements to create and they're also a vital part of scene direction. Papaya actually handled all of the intro shots for the game, and I wanna share one of them now! This is one of the very first things you'll see in the game and I think it does an amazing job of selling the scope of Mortem Post. Look at the shadowy effect on the clouds!

Speaking of papaya, our second major progress report is that just about everything is scripted in-game now! At the time of writing (Sunday morning) we've got to get some placeholder sketches in for one more character to wrap up the last couple of scenes, but after that it's largely just a matter of scripting the two remaining minigame sequences and swapping out the art. We're almost there!

While small, we've also got some misc. polish in as well. The textboxes now take on a sepia tone tint if they're not the most recent message on the screen and we've also added some little emotes to the top right corner of the boxes as necessary. These are static images, but the emote animations have two frames each.

So, what's the plan for this week? Being granular, our plan for TONIGHT is to get the final placeholder sprites in so scripting can continue and wrapping up some misc. bg polish as necessary just so we can entirely put those behind us. After that, the real sprint begins. With backgrounds being the most tedious part of the art side, sprites should start becoming finalized pretty quickly and that'll be priority one. Priority two will be full minigame implementation, these two things are mandatory and will be what we put all of our initial burst this week into. Getting those done will open up scripting to do a finalized sfx/music pass while art handles CGs. The extent of polish/quantity for both of these things will be weighed in its priority based on how important we think it is to the story vs how much time we have remaining.

It's a pretty straight forward plan, but we're close enough to being done that sometimes simplicity is best! ALSO! While there won't be a bellflower stream this wednesday, theo will be streaming some of their work for Upwards, Rain! sometime this coming week. If you're interested in checking in on that when it happens, please consider joining the official discord server if you haven't already and opting into the stream ping role!

And that's it! It's been a lot of fun writing these up every week, and I hope it's been just as fun reading them! Good luck to all of the other projects, lets finish strong!

Yuri Paddle: An Anime Convention Murder Mystery!

Hey everyone. Syon here!

We have another Yuri Paddle update for you this week! Not gonna get too in the weeds for this one, but fortunately progress is going pretty good! The scope of the game is a bit bigger than we anticipated, though. We're all definitely sweating a bit. Fortunately, Lopson has been scripting the hell outta this little game. All the gameplay is implemented and we have several scenes up and running. Furthermore, as of today, all the sprites are done (based Faerieko). I've also allegedly been writing and banged out a couple more scenes. Writing a mystery is oddly hard, though. The whole plot really hinges on a logical series of events that make sense and connect together like a puzzle. Unfortunately, my brain is a scrambled mess of eggs and spinach, so it's been hard to wrap my head around my own ideas, but that's always been the case with writing.

For a sneak peek this week, I want to introduce you guys to a character you're going to hate. She's a youtuber and her name is FemcelTheory. I'm not going to go into the specifics of her role (no spoilers!!!), but I think you're going to absolutely despise her! She's my masterpiece and probably the most vile and repulsive character I've ever written (yes, she gives Mariah a run for her money). Please wait warmly for her to ruin your whole day.

Melanie bless.

- Syon

On Wings Bringing Sleep

I think there’s a yuri happening here…

In the home stretch! 

…Oh god we’re in the home stretch, there’s still so much to do, oh dear…

Nah, we should be okay. At the very least, we’re in a very good place to fight our way to the finish line. While we’re behind schedule, RoseCrowned is currently putting the finishing touches on the script for Act 3, Dakuma is finalizing the sprites and the CG (sketch shown above), and Lexiiii’s been blasting Nirvana while programming scene after scene. 

But that means the actual updates we can provide aren’t the most interesting, right? So instead of a detailed progress update, here’s something we (somehow) haven’t actually given y’all yet: a proper introduction to our characters!

Morgaine

A young fae woman who’s struggling to fit in among her people. She hasn’t fully come into her magic just yet, leaving her as an outsider. And as the era of the fae seems to be giving way to an age of humanity, being lost and lonely is not the best thing to be…

Color: Purple

Charm point: She has lil fangs! Also she’s great at making flower crowns.

Ilse

A young human woman who’s grown up largely isolated and alone, with just her older sister to keep her company. And based on the sadness her smile can’t fully hide, Morgaine has suspicions about that sister (even if Ilse insists it’s okay).

Color: Pink

Charm point: She laughs like an angel and her smile lights up the sky.

Dahlia

Dahlia’s a changeling - a fae who was born human, but over the years has gradually become one of them. She was left at the edge of the woods as a baby, so all she knows is the fae, and she’s fully at home among her adopted people. (Much to Morgaine’s dismay.)

Oh, and she broke Morgaine’s heart a while back. Morgaine’s not a fan of that either.

Color: Red

Charm point: You have a crush on her. If you don’t, you will. She’s that confident in her flirting.

Mab

Morgaine’s mother and the de facto leader of the fae. She’s lived longer than memory, with the wrinkles, scars, and knowledge to show for it. She’s doing her best to guide her people as their world changes all too fast around them.

She has high expectations for Morgaine, expectations that she’s not doing a good job of meeting. Morgaine’s not a fan of this either.

Color: Black

Charm point: She only has one horn, and there are countless tales of what happened to her missing one. What’s your theory?

Kriemhild

Ilse’s older sister. Morgaine doesn’t trust her. Of course, she hasn’t properly met her, but this girl’s vibes are rancid. Morgaine would rather stay far away.

Color: The green of an underwatered, slowly dying plant.

Charm point: Redacted.

Witch You Want

We've got a few updates for Witch You Want from this week, mainly visual-related! For starters, here's Mirabelle's finished sprite!

Isn't she gorgeous?

We also have a few screenshots of the game working! Getting it the right style we wanted was a bit hard at first.....

...but with a lot of tweaking we got the style to mesh together well!

We're excited to release the full game to you this weekend~

— Arimia