In my last post, I said how I was taking a break from this game to work on a side project that would be done in a month or two. It has now been two months, and that shit is NOT done. It's made a lot of progress, but definitely not done. Probably more like 60%-ish. The project's scope has become much bigger than expected, and so it has taken me more time to finish it.
The game is called "PERSONA HARV3ST"! It's a Vibingleaf-ish Persona 3 "horror" game that I've been working on since May! Here's the game page and some screenshots:
https://gamejolt.com/games/PERSONA_HARV3ST/931230
I'm trying my best to post something to the page every Saturday, so look forward to that!
But even though that game has most of my attention right now, I'm DEFINITELY gonna come back to this one. Probably not going to until that game's done though. The main reason why I wanted to take a step back from this game in the first place is because I REALLY did not like the nighttime section. If you ever played the Legacy version of it, the post-gamejam version basically played like that but with some tweaked and added mechanics. So it sucked. Not just the gameplay, but the visuals too. I finished the first version of the post-gamejam bedroom in early 2023, and it was hot garbage
(this is the best quality image I have
)
At the time I thought it was good, but it clearly wasn't lol. Around October of 2023, I realized just how bad that room was, and how little soul it had. I just took a bunch of stock assets(that didn't really work together) and shittly slapped it into a scene. I felt like I put no real love into it. So I tried remaking it from the ground up making everything myself,
and it looked like this:
Dosen't really look that good, but I was a lot happier with it. modeling and texturing everything myself made it feel so much more personal, and just more enjoyable to work on overall. Even though it's scuffed as hell and the lighting sucks, I was content with it...until I wasn't.
Early 2024 for this game was rough, while I got a lot done with the daytime section, I was struggling a lot with the nighttime section for multiple reasons. I actually played
a few Fnaf fangames during the period between when I remade the bedroom, and Early 2024. And it woke me up to how generic and boring the gameplay was. I always had this thought in the back of my mind the entire duration of development, but I thought it would somehow work out in the end. It didn't, and the weight of this game just being a shitty Fnaf 4 clone really started to take a toll on me. It got to a point where I couldn't even tell if the game was fun anymore, and I became extremely frustrated with myself. I wanted to make it better. I wanted to make it more than just shitty Fnaf 4, but I had no ideas. And the longer I procrastinated, the longer I went without making any update posts to GameJolt. Which also took a toll on me because I wanted to make them a regular thing, but by this point it's been over a year since the last one I posted. I began seeing this game as a chore, something I NEED to finish. Otherwise, what would've been the point of all the time I spent on it?(obviously I got experience out of it, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time.) I just kept making little to no progress every month. Every second I wasn't working on the game I felt terrible, but once I got the chance to work on it, I just sat there looking at the project not doing anything.
That was until May of this year when I saw bootleg_pokemon by Vibingleaf. At first I didn't think much of it, thought it was pretty neat, but nothing crazy. But then one night when I was playing it with my siblings, something clicked. What if I tried making a game like this? A "bootleg" game that was fever dreamy esc in nature, and just kind of weird? I dismissed the thought pretty quickly though. I'm already working on a game and if I start making another one, there was no way the first would be finished. But maybe that could be what I needed. Maybe I needed a break from it to work on something COMPLETELY different. And that's what I started doing.
Then on September 19, since I had a break to work on something disconnected from Fnaf, I wanted to try to start thinking of some ways to revamp the gameplay of T.I.P. And now I think I've finally come up with some ideas that I'm content with. But with these new gameplay adjustments, also come new bedroom adjustments. Cuz I didn't really like how last variant looked anymore. I didn't do much, and it's VERY MUCH a W.I.P, but below is what I have so far. I've been having a lot of fun remodeling everything, and I think it was very needed. I really like drawing the textures and stupid props like posters. I also want to bring back some of the purple that was in the previous version at some point.
(poster is next to window. you can't see it in the render tho)
This isn't me saying that the gameplay is going to be revolutionary, or that it's not going to have any Fnaf 4 elements in it. But I think I've finally came up with something I'm happy with. Which is a very nice feeling to have after thinking this game was about to be canceled.
Not sure if I want to say anything on it now, since I'm still trying to work out some things, but just know that I'm workin on it. Well, I'm not workin on it right now but you know what I mean. I don't know when my next post here will be. Could be next month, could be next year. Probably next year. But I'm just glad to feel excited to work on the game again.
Once again if you're interested, I'm going to be posting here in 2 days! Not gonna be anything crazy. Probably just some silly dev shit or somethin.
https://gamejolt.com/games/PERSONA_HARV3ST/931230
I'll see you guys in a bit. Take care.
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