Hey all!

Well looks like we are now fully into August, the year is going fast hey? Scary!

Well, this week I wanted to focus on adding more content to one of my design pillars for this game. That is Every character should feel like an individual, and the gameplay, graphics, and sound should reflect that.

For some time now, Thales has been the focus with his mechanics designed to represent his autism. When playing as Thales all other characters are nothing but black outlines (so you can’t tell body language). Sound and audio are amplified and even the smallest sounds can affect him mentally. And finally, you have a much harder time in conversation battles. But you can find and collect special items in the game world, that most people wouldn’t notice.

So, what would I do for our other two heroes?

Well for Aislin she is a super energetic character and a great communicator. Very active and a fun person to be around, that said she has mild peripheral vision loss, leading to her being a bit clumsy at times, and has a hard time getting around at night when it is pitch black aka “night blindness”.

Finally, Hotaru, Given the island's native language is English, being a recent immigrant from Japan. She has some difficulty connecting with the people of the islands. She feels cut off from them, unable to communicate ‘effectively’. That said she knows enough English to get around and through the adventure, she becomes more fluent. Her greatest skills are maturity, being the oldest of our group, and being the most rational. While it’s still fine, she has the weakest hearing out of the rest of the cast, leading to some distance sounds becoming lost on her.

So why do this, well we all have stories, we are all different. Our bodies are our vessels to see the world. So, with this, we learn how these characters see the world.

Outside of that, the video shows a few bug fixes and new sprites I have also done this week

Well until next week!