March has finally come, and at this point I was hoping to have more to show everyone, but the universe decided otherwise! I fell sick at work recently and have been completely out of commission for a while now (and I also totally didn't get distracted by a certain recent game release that rhymes with "utopia"), so unfortunately I have not had much game-development wise to share. Instead, I wanted to take the chance to try and discuss some things related to the game a bit further, and show a little bit of work I've accomplished!

Despite being sick, I've still been working on the storyline and character development. I think I'm satisfied with how I want the characters to develop, but I'm just a little nervous about how people will feel about some of the characters. I hope people will understand what I'm going for!

Which reminds me, early on in the story development, I found myself thinking a lot, "shit, I'm just rewriting Toy Story." lmao. I imagine Toby Fox probably ran into that thought a lot too. As a result, I tried really hard to try and avoid having all of the Darkners represent toys, despite it being an easy cop-out when designing characters based off of objects you would find in someone's attic. (Speaking of attic, I tried asking my friend to let me in their attic for the sake of developing a game that takes place in an attic...I probably sounded crazy lol. we forgot about it so I didn't get to peek sadly)

Darkner design has been pretty difficult for me in general. I've tried to crack how Toby designs the characters. I came to the conclusion that the idea is something like, combining a creature/animal of some sort, with a role or job that they serve. Still, I'm self-conscious of not designing too many object heads or characters that could be mistaken for Lightners...

Probably my earliest Darkner design. She might go through some changes.

Speaking of designs, I'm still trying to feel out Chester's Dark World design. I wanted to give him kneepads, but they ended up looking way too weird. I'm trying to go for a sport-y look, but also a protagonist/hero feel to it. I'm not sure how I feel about the colors or clothes yet (hint hint, feel free to give feedback!), but maybe I'll figure it out...

Emotional support Noelle. (she's actually just there for potential reference, they're siblings after all!)

I reeeeeally wish I could talk about one character in particular, and how I'm trying to develop their character/storyline, but they're a spoiler, so I can't talk about them for now. Again, I really hope people get the idea I'm going for with these characters, without me having to literally spell it out, because I think that kind of thing is no fun at all.

I think I'll wrap up this post with a silly sprite I was working on. Unfortunately I am going to be very busy coming this April, but I think once when we reach May I'll be able to dedicate much more time to the game. (I'm not really afraid of the next chapter contradicting any of my story in this game, but it'd be nice if it doesn't lol.) Thank you for bearing with me!!

Chester, I'm watching your stream, why are you trying not to laugh bruh!? (perspective is very hard and I don't know why I keep subjecting myself to this)