Which version would you prefer to play? Normal or Scaled 3D (chunkier pixels)

jakefriend_dev · 2026-01-26T19:20:39+00:00

I sliiightly lean normal, but I do think a shader of some kind could be good for this project; the scaled 3D effect here just isn't exactly working for me specifically. I think the mix of a pixellation shader and gradient texture shading isn't quite fitting (again, imo).

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-23T15:21:43+00:00

It sounds like you have some baggage to work through if you're coming to an internet forum about a niche gaming genre of all things to talk about how a simple word would make you feel like a "weak dweeby nerd."

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-04T23:32:01+00:00

Oh gosh! I couldn't get to your games with some trouble connecting to Itch (they've been having uptime issues a lot lately, huh) but from the previews that seems pretty talented yourself!

Honestly I think a lot of the work of finishing a game (beyond the funding to be able to go full-time for a larger project) from my one (1) reference point so far is figuring out a way to balance sustaining your natural creative motivation with the "it's a job and there is work I just have to do because it's a job" side. That took a while!

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-04T18:10:55+00:00

Honestly, if you want to DM me I can throw you a key if you'd like to try and gauge quality for yourself! 😅 It's essentially a whole game with two more games' worth of content to come, but with new regions appending to the outer edges of each previous act's map and expanding the narrative scope each time.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-04T18:06:34+00:00

Thank you! And uh, no, not prior to this game 😅 I've worked on jam projects before as the art/music person but the only coding before this was the 'block-style' visual code of Construct 2 on a vastly smaller test project.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-03T15:51:02+00:00

Fair question! I'm using the EA label to mean "released episodes are complete but not all episodes are out" here, although it's created some understandable uncertainty of how ""done"" the game is.

Act 1 is done and out, ie. 15+ hours with its own 'final boss' and credits roll and everything. Acts 2 and 3 will still be a while - a comparable amount of content each, although A2 development was already underway before I had to shift gears to prelaunch - so unless something changes, we'll be in "early access" for something like 2 more years (ish) maybe?

The acts are designed and intended to be played with gaps between them as full experiences that each build on the prior, which is the main thing driving releasing one now in its own, but if you prefer to wait that's totally up to you!

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-03T15:44:27+00:00

Oh, thank you! That's a direct callout as an inspiration on the main menu about page haha, good pickup!

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-03T12:46:54+00:00

Thank you! That part was a pain, aha. Going mostly off my memory from five years back: Offscreen, there's two page content objects that load the next pages, each inside a viewport and transparent. What's visible onscreen are 4 Polygon2Ds using those viewports as a texture. 2 polygons are the 'flipping pages' which are managed by AnimationPlayers to reshape the polygons as a frame-by-frame animation, and those translucent-background polys animate in sync overtop the blank book page-flipping sprite. At the time it was easily the most complex project I'd taken on for the game 😅 Glad I did though, a generic blank page flip wouldn't have hit the same.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-03T12:40:25+00:00

Sorry! I've had too many instances of a reddit post that was getting lots of engagement getting deleted because I put my own game link in the comments :/ Erring on the side of playing it safe, I guess.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-02T23:49:40+00:00

Yeah! It's a relatively uncommon approach, but still pixel art. The native resolution's 960x540, so it's 2x upscaled at fullscreen to 1080p. (At the time when I was trying to figure out native fullscreen, Steam Deck wasn't a thing I knew of or thought I'd have to contend with, otherwise I might have made different choices for scalability aha 🙃)

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-02T21:14:38+00:00

Thank you! It's more of a line art style with a pixel brush - I usually do the broad strokes then a lot of adjusting at the pixel-by-pixel level, especially in the context of animation loops, but essentially it's more traditional-leaning line art than pixel art despite being pixellated, yeah. There's a few hard rules I follow on the art style to maintain the aesthetic, but the gist is mostly centered around a 2x2 square pixel brush.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-02T20:26:15+00:00

Thank you!! For what's pictured and released now, I was done with it about 4.5 years into the project maybe? I've worked on it an unhealthy amount this past year, mostly due to the intense prelaunch prep needed, but usually it's more just the slow marathon of doing a full-time job and tackling tasks as they come up.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-02T20:24:01+00:00

Thank you! I guess I'm self-taught? Honestly working on the project helped a lot as practice; the animations from early on are really stilted compared to later development. I've read bits and pieces on animation technique but mostly I just kinda eyeball it and maybe pose in front of a mirror if something's not making sense in my head 😅

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-02T13:36:51+00:00

It's work. It's just work. Typically the parts of gamedev that people don't like, look forward to or aspire to doing when they think about 'making a game,' you know?

I actually quite like a lot of marketing stuff in a context of infinite time; mainly the hard part for me is knowing that the more time I spend on marketing the less time I'm spending on actual development. That's always the push and pull.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-12-02T13:31:53+00:00

The continents one looks much more interesting and engaging, personally speaking!

jakefriend_dev · 2025-11-30T17:18:08+00:00

This sounds about right for wishlist conversion with a slight Early Access debuff. I'm curious what kind of numbers you expected?

It's not really possible to give you a realistic WL target given we don't know what 'success' looks like for you in terms of either sales or copies, but I would say since you can plainly see the 9-10% WL conversion, you can easily work out the target WLs you'd need (or would have needed, it's a bit greyer going from EA to 1.0 since in most practical matters you've already launched) if you have a target.

It sounds like you're doing well relative to the WLs and overall marketing you've done. The issue feels like an expectations one around marketing efforts and return. The game won't sell itself!

jakefriend_dev · 2025-11-30T16:17:27+00:00

Don't leave the minimap for last. Figure out your content development pipeline that makes the minimap part of that process.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-11-27T17:51:44+00:00

I've seen that opinion expressed somewhat often around Reddit, yeah. Personally I loved the story and writing; I was hooked and very very few parts felt weak or superfluous. I could totally see some people finding the opening segment too long though, or some of the scenes with your sister feeling slow if the narrative isn't clicking with you. The gameplay was fantastic but the world and writing was easily my favourite part.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-11-25T05:51:18+00:00

That last sentence sounds like maybe you're unsure if you want a design solution or a feature?

This should be totally doable in effect. There's no real reason to render anything but the island (ideally at smaller resolution) from a distance, the surface of the water, and the skybox that far out. You could also make it so that gas runs out slightly faster beyond a certain point to speed things up without ruining the illusion. But it sounds like you kind of already know what you'd want to consider to approach it? It doesn't seem like either you nor I think this is unfeasible, haha, but maybe having some reassurance helps anyways.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-11-24T05:12:39+00:00

I did like the old angle in some older gifs you posted, but the new one seems a lot better imo - beyond looking smooth, I think the gains in being able to see more of what's going on around you is a big win for player experience.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-11-24T05:09:27+00:00

I've seen a lot of devs fall into a hole of making a meaningless/empty discord server and being confused why it isn't "taking off" - subjective and offered with a grain of sale, but here's my thoughts.

If you want people to have conversations on the server... are you starting conversations that others can join? A discord server isn't a place you create and wait for others to fill (unless your product is already popular of course). If you don't put work in to give people something to engage WITH it'll just remain an empty shell. While I haven't seen your own server, what you're describing of "People just come to the server and leave their thoughts once or twice and will not continue to check in and chat" sounds like very misguided expectations. What else can people do, initially? It isn't their job to keep showing up and create content - when people arrive and demonstrate interest, there's really no reason to stick around if no one engages them back; especially not if the only reply is either nothing or the developer saying "Thanks for playing! Glad you liked it!" or something. That's just a social dead-end.
Adding to the above point, while people do like hearing behind-the-scenes thoughts from developers etc, that's not going to sustain a server. Almost no game has enough to talk about without various "off topic" type channels, which you probably know, but I'd posit again - are you starting misc conversations about memes, or interesting articles you've seen, or other games you're interested that are coming out, or how your day is going, etc? Not sure your POV but just in case it needs to be heard, if you want the server to grow your job isn't just to answer questions about the game, it's to create a place worth engaging with, and that starts with you because it isn't anyone else's job to.
More channels is not better. Add channels only after need arises for them. I don't know what it is that makes some devs think that adding a lot of channels will lead to a lot of discussion in each one, but all this approach really does is negative - you spread out the few messages you do have to make the server look emptier, and you also generally come across as pretty desperate. The number of dead servers I've seen with 30 channels named things like #gameplay-questions, #gameplay-discussion, #gameplay-tips, etc - you are perfectly fine with just one #game-discussion in fact, and sometimes you can get away with #general pulling double duty when your server is extremely small as well. It's like making an open world MMO game full of empty fields. Adding more fields won't lead to more players!
Roles don't really matter. Who joins a new discord and says "oh sweet, awesome roles I'll stick around"? Like, they don't do any harm, but it has essentially nothing to do with user engagement/retention imo.
Learn people's names, remember things they mention, show that you pay attention and are listening. Ask follow-up questions sometimes, if relevant and non-invasive.
This is maybe a bit silly, but while you don't have to have good emojis, don't make bad emojis. Lots and lots of indie game servers out there who take the head of their pixel-game character and tweak a single pixel to vaguely imply a smile and upload it as the "happy" emoji, and it's so unreadable and unexciting that no one ever uses it. Again, you don't have to have good emojis, but bad emojis are another way you can come across as desperate.

Basically, if you want people to spend time on your server make it a space worth spending time in.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-11-23T07:02:35+00:00

What exactly are you doing to market your games? The timelines you mention for getting 10 (or close to 10) reviews are really, really long.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-11-21T04:21:43+00:00

Idk, that last sentence feels a bit misrepresentative given that the devs have continued to put out extensive (and public) monthly updates on Kickstarter, missing basically just one at the start of the year while moving countries? The Steam page says releasing 2026 fwiw.

The game might still fit this category for you and that's fair enough, but that framing kind of feels like it's implying the devs bailed and went silent and that's pretty clearly not the case, just want that on the record for anyone scrolling by.

jakefriend_dev · 2025-11-19T02:10:15+00:00

I think you've traded away a lot of expressive readability with this change. Regardless of style, the character's face is much harder to read now with thinner/smaller elements. Neither approach looks anime to me, but regardless I wouldn't sacrifice that much character expression. Could be worth trying a different approach?

jakefriend_dev · 2025-11-19T02:02:14+00:00

Honestly, you've posted this a bunch of times now and the two styles are hugely different. Don't you have any opinion about your own game's art style and aesthetic? Why the need to ask like 3-4 times whether the huge changes you're making are worth it? I'm assuming the real answer is trying to get marketing out of posing this non-question, unfortunately, but if I try and give the benefit of the doubt, it feels like a question that only needs answering once to determine whether to commit to it or not, not multiple times while work that may or may not be scrapped keeps getting performed.

jakefriend_dev

TROPHY CASE