#i make no promises but i'm aiming for like... friday/saturday drop

[strawberriemarswrites]

I'll Fucking Digest You -- the playlist!

featuring doodled playlist art by me

I've been messing with this in the background. I might mess with it some more but otherwise it's done. It took an enormous amount of restraint not to make this all witch house music. Just the general vibes I have in mind when writing this fic >u<

[gravitas-game-and-book-dev-blog]

[WIP] (just in case the placeholder for a missing texture didn't give that away)

Note: I am not an artist, but I am looking for one! The above video only serves to convey the general aesthetics I'm aiming for. Any pixel artists capable of creating tilesets or character sprites like the ones on the map can feel free to hit me up, I will be looking to commission($) assets in the near future. Share this post with any friends who might be interested too!

Gravitas Dev Diary #1: A First Look at the Overworld Map and Project Overview

Greetings! In today's first developer diary I wanted to give a nice visual to look at and help convey just what this whole thing is trying to be with my limited artistic talents, so here's the pitch:

"A Grand Strategy RPG taking tactical battles, fully flushed out characters in a rich world and a series of complex systems to master, set out to achieve one of two protagonists’ ambitions within their lifespan as you watch them grow, age, get married, have children and eventually die. Make sure they don’t have any regrets when they do in this dynamic narrative."

or simply:

"What if Fire Emblem was a Grand Strategy Game?"

I've been tinkering away for the past few years in my spare time developing different prototypes for this brain worm and in the past few months I've settled on a final design that achieves the experience I've been shooting for. That being the fantasy of administering a nation. There are other games that do this, but the thing that sets this one apart will be the combination of Overworld Kingdom Management and Turn-based Tactical Battles as well as how the game handles information and the logistics of intelligence gathering, but I'll talk more on that this Saturday in this blog's first Game Design Essay.

While playing you will bounce between 3 separate elements of gameplay. Those being:

Visual Novel Style story segments

Overworld Kingdom Management (Diplomacy, Economics, Politics and a unique one, Judiciary Duties)

Grid-based Tactical Battles (This will utilize distinct phases that discourages turtling strategies, but more on this in the coming weeks)

To wrap this week's dev diary I just wanted to add in a piece about who I am, as a sort of means to establish some degree of confidence that this isn't some indie project that'll be dropped and give reason for disappointment. I am a professional Data Scientist with a moderately unhealthy work ethic and a strong desire to express the creative side of my brain through this project. I have been steadily working on this and the book (tune in Friday for more on that) for multiple years and my motivation has only grown as I have more to show for it. I am financially secure and incredibly fortunate to be able to have a healthy enough work-life balance to not only work on my passion projects, but to also be able to put money into them. I can't promise rapid updates given I work full time, so don't bother asking for release dates or anything, but I will be aiming for a playable demo sometime next year.

Coming up: Visual Novel Scene and some light scripting this Wednesday!