Here we go! I’ve (finally) officially announced the start of development on Straycloud, a game I’ll be building. This post serves as a jumping-off point for a devlog of this process. To begin, here are some key points on the project.
Trailer Released
Last week, I released the concept trailer for the game. I made the trailer first in order to develop a proof of concept for the game world. It’s meant to set the tone of the game, and to set up the events that initiate the protagonist’s journey. And although it was animated as a standalone project, it is a sample of how I want the game to feel (or at least how I want its in-game cutscenes to feel) in-engine once it’s built.
A Journey to Heal a Broken Land (Plot Abstract)
Straycloud is the story of the youngest member of a community of magical beings who inhabit a floating island which recently feel to earth. They are charged with finding a way to rebuild their home and return it to its place in the sky. On their journey, they will encounter giant beings whose powers they must harness, and meet other tribes with unknown motivations.
Inspirations
Straycloud is a 2D, almost-top-down action adventure game inspired by The Legend of Zelda and Shadow of the Colossus, with a focus on exploration and environmental puzzles.
Process
I’ve started making the game in GameMaker Studio 2, but it’ll be slow going. I work as a front-end web developer (and, luckily, GML so far resembles JavaScript in some ways), but GameMaker is new to me.
Everything on getting started in game dev says to make a pile of small games first, not to work on your one big idea. I am thinking that I will try to approach this from the standpoint of making different features in a discrete way whenever possible. For instance, for each puzzle room, I will try to build it as a sort of mini game and then integrate it into the main game. I have no idea if this will work, but as my ideas involve different mechanics, it makes sense to me in an abstract way to do it this way.
That’s All For Now
And that’s about it! Stay tuned, I’m just getting started. Thanks for reading!
- Noel