hey! i’ve decided that an interesting way to keep people updated and to chronicle my own progress would be to make a sort of devlog, if you will. I’m not sure if ill keep these up, but i figured it could be fun!
So…. where are we with Marigold? well, i’ve been on and off working on it, i’m not incredibly impressed with it so far, but i am having fun adding little tidbits here and there. so in other words, progress has been… quite slow. the plus side is that slow progress, is still progress. i’ve learned so much about pixel art through this project, and its helped me to become a better and more observant artist. i’ve been studying what makes a game feel good, and it often comes down to little things you hardly notice, like satisfying sounds and timings. you want the player to feel feedback for every button they press, or else your game feels like dookie. anyways onto the actual game development part.
I’ve been really struggling with finding a suitable effect concept to take the Yume Nikki bikes place, but tonight I kinda “settled” (for now) on a horse mask! Somewhat inspired by the latest Elden Ring divine beast boss, and also i just hate horses a lot!
“wow, this is the best effect in a yume nikki fangame i’ve ever seen!” -kikiyama maybe
i’ve recently been taking a more quality centric approach, when i initially started work on Marigold, i decided quanity of worlds would be far better than quality. I was deluded. This resulted in me shitting out a million worlds that were extremely uninspired and rather boring. I don’t want to overdo it on a world either, Yume Nikkis brilliance comes from its simplicity. The black void worlds with random color barf and squares and lamps. Those worlds serve to accentuate the more interestingly designed worlds, such as the docks or the sewers; and even those feature heavy use of black for the background. The point i’m making is quality is my new focus.
Concept art is another thing i’ve recently started doing. I make pixel art, and I realize i dont like it and scrap it. This cycle has gone on for too long and it must stop. Concept art will hopefully alleviate that. I recently redesigned the Nexus and the concept art I created for it has been a large help in blocking out the vision before fully committing.
I’ll leave off by saying, this game will be made!!! It might take a bit longer, but it will happen.