DEVLOG #2- Coming in Hot!

where were we?

Hey there again!

If you’re here, you’ve returned to hear the latest news about my upcoming indie JRPG Athendom Will Fall.

Either that or you’ve managed to click wrong and somehow found yourself here on accident. In any case, Welcome The last time I spoke about AwF, I just reviewed the basic information the game had to it. But now it’s about time I talk about the substantial work that has been done on the project.

How does it look?

As of now, all of the sprite work is done by me, and as I am rather seasoned in pixel art, there are of course some shortcomings that I will have to overcome such as the monster known as “Tile-art”.

Currently, that is one of the major issues I’m having with the design and overall ambiance of the game.

There’s a certain aesthetic I’m trying to maintain for the overworld sprites.

Though I want AwF to be vibrant with its colors and no set color palette, acknowledging that it has to be cohesive and not blinding, as I’ve been told my works have been before.

Naturally, for a game like Athendom that relies on environmental storytelling and visuals, there are a bunch of things I’ve worked on that I might not be able to show here to avoid spoiling major plot points.

Regardless, I might as well have at least a few things I may be permitted to show without telling too much and risk spoiling the experience, so here are some of them!!

From these few sprites, I’ve oh-so proudly shown off, it's quite evident that I know what I’m doing in my pixel art software (to a fair extent) …

What are you even playing?

As mentioned earlier Athendom is a JRPG that’s designed to be the opposite of a normal RPG, almost antithesis of the usual linear RPG experience. “How would you achieve that?” I hear you ask skeptically; in which case I’m shocked you made it this far. And to that, I say the answer to that question is unironically the developer hell known as …

Now I know exactly what you might be thinking at this point… which is either “This is a mistake” or more commonly for casual game fans “What the hell is feature-creep?”

To answer shortly, it’s the unnecessary addition of content into a project before it eventually collapses from how weighty and out-of-control the project has become.

So then how could I possibly make use of this heavy task to the benefit of the game?

Athendom Will Fall is a game about the internet and how wide and diverse media is spread through it. Naturally, it would only make sense for me to incorporate very heavy references to work with that theme.

Simply adding content such as reference to popular memes, humor, and other tropes related to the internet in any way possible that feels cohesive with the story is helpful enough in that right, be it in the form of a minigame, music, an NPC, dialog, or simply just a visual will be incorporated into the playthrough from start to end, a recurring theme amongst chapters.

Speaking of chapters… let’s talk about the story structure that the game will follow.

What type of story are you following?

AwF follows a realm-hopping narrative structure, where the hero HOPS between reams or areas to find what they’re looking for to complete their quest.

 You’ve probably heard stories like this in franchises like Dragon Ball, Penn Zero, The Legend of Zelda, and Doctor Who. It follows an episodic structure where each chapter will continue the story from where the prior chapter ended. In the writing aspect, AwF was heavily influenced by media of this sort. As well as other RPGs both indie and AAA such as The Mother franchise, Undertale, and Oddity (Mother4). As its humor and writing will have a few callbacks from these, it will still have my touch of writing via the dialog and the visual storytelling. Now what else is a staple of this kind of JRPG besides the story? That’s right! Turn-based combat.

How do you handle in-game combat?

AwF has an impressive way of handling its battle mechanics. Allow me to show you a visual example from a test battle.

The player immediately after being rocketed into battle is enabled to navigate through the battle monitor where they can select their first move to start the battle off properly 

After the players turn, the enemies are then given a turn to deal damage via their own designated codekill attacks which are visualized by an animation played in a command prompt window.

When the player takes damage, their glitch power increases. “Glitch power” is your ability to utilize the power of the corruption from the buggy computer. When a party member’s glitch power reaches a certain point it allows them to cast their own codekill attack that does more damage than their normal melee attacks. The higher you level up your party member, the more your max glitch power increases. This allows them to learn new codekill attacks that do even more damage for stronger enemies.

With this in mind, I believe this gives you a good look at the main essential mechanics that are currently being worked on in the game as of the time of this devlog release.

Closing Info!!

As of now, I’ve been working on AwF on my own, with the art, engine work, writing, and concept design. For a project as big as I intend the game to be, I quite evidently might require assistance. By the time this post is up, I’ll be posting a volunteer request on the RPG Maker community forum and their Reddit discord.

Currently, I’m looking for a... well the basic minimum for a game dev team that can help increase productivity in all fields so going through my list that’ll be:

• A programmer. (JavaScript or has worked with RPGMaker)
• A sprite artist for NPCs, dialog sprite art, UI art, and items. (Capable of matching the main theme of the game’s mother-like art)
• A tile artist. (Capable of matching the main theme of the game’s mother-like art)
• A music composer. (Capable of going with both energetic and somber music; bonus if they can also work on 8-bit tracks that are reminiscent of the old SNES era
• A sound designer that can work with cartoony sound effects to fit the theme of the game.

If you’re considering volunteering, there are many ways of contacting me, one of which is via the NEW community Discord I’m launching about an hour after I'm posting this Devlog  for Athendom development followers and geeks alike! It's still in its test phase so a lot of changes will be made during the first arrivals, so bear with me while I work on the finishing touches.

In this server you’ll be able to link with other fans, and followers and share feedback directly with me, get instantly notified about every new Devlog and announcement show off your artwork and projects of your own, and contact me to volunteer for a position on the Crowmurder Team and of course ask questions, I’ll leave a link to it right HERE and I’ll await your arrival, be sure to say hi!!!

Thanks for reading through this and I hope to see you in the server soon.

Till next time,

Licco, Crowmurder Dev.