What half a year of full time game development can do

Vomdrache

12593

TL;DR story
- Worked as a software developer for over 10 years in startups.
- Realized I was unhappy despite what people would see as a 'successful' and 'accomplished' life.
- Started developing my dream JRPG as a side project in 2019.
- Mid 2021 I packed up my stuff, sold my house, moved almost 3k miles away, hired two amazing people to help out (art and community management) and started working on Rising Spire full time.
- Feb 2022, launched a successful Kickstarter campaign, got funded in a week and got more community support than I imagined!
- Last night I wanted to clean up some old files and got overwhelmed with how much progress we've done in basically half a year of working full time. Had to share.

Main character, Atlas, Jan 2021 vs May 2021
A young, orphaned Nephilim, classically still unaware of his full powers. The game is pretty much his coming of age story, which may or may not see the world get destroyed by the end.

Lilith - Jan 2021 vs June 2021
First character we put together after Atlas. One of the most powerful Daemons, she raised Atlas since he was a wee baby. The textbook example of a step-mother soul and sandpaper personality. We love her to death.

Screenshot taken from one of the alpha builds for the game from early 2021. Lilith and her hut.

Lilith and her now-mansion in late 2021. You can clearly see she flourished in this economy.

The inside of Lilith's hut in the same early alpha build. Getting Atlas to walk through doors without getting stuck was a real challenge at that time. How do pixels even work?

First floor (!) of Lilith's cabin now. Decided to put some actual flooring in Atlas' room (left) after realizing we were a bit too cruel with the poor lad, making him walk on bare stone.

Aaah the glorious environment and combat in early 2021, with that beautiful beautiful UI and the foxy wolf. And Atlas' eyes staring into your soul!

Screencap taking while playing the game's demo in February 2022 for the Kickstarter campaign. We've definitely come a long way.

It's been a tough year, leaving my whole life behind, being stuck inside due to the pandemic and having to carefully think twice about every single decision I take, no matter how small. Yet I've never felt more motivated to wake up and get to work. I'm making the game I always wanted to play and I found the best people to join me on the project.

Look, ma! I made it!

video_games

jrpg

gamedev

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Orb99

Cool man, love to see your passion progress

3 years ago |

Thanks haha. Got a ton of older stuff on posts from the past on my Imgur page too

slinkhi

If you don't mind saying, what are you using for this (e.g. Unity, Unreal Engine, etc.) ?

Not at all, any questions are welcomed. It's built using Unity

DewiMorgan

Wow, props to your artist for really taking the look up to the next level! Though watch out for losing soul as the quality increases.

Like, the wolf art massively improved, but the fierce, crouched, starving wolf became a calm, standing, well-fed and -groomed dog.

The standing poses, WOW what an improvement! They make the old version look almost comical... but are now static, passive, and lack tension.

Sadly always the way, as an artist refines sketches into finished works: some of the sketch's dynamic character must be lost :(

This inspires me to make some more aggressive idles, ngl xD

Most people just look at the level of detail and chalk it up to being better. Love your perspective, thank you!

Thank you for getting that I wasn't attacking, just cautioning to keep an eye out - what you've done here looks wonderful! :D

It's really helpful feedback. We are always chasing higher quality, it's important to see the value in the original designs

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