Rough beginning to a better end

When it came to making a game, At first my intention  was to touch on anxiety, to make a game where a character had to find ways to relax or they would become overwhelmed. The game would've had players dodging several skulls that took many forms, each skull signifying  a particular emotion that would raise my main character's anxiety. I intended for the game to be pixelated, so I used a site known as 'Piskel'. With this site I could make pixel characters then export them as images for use in a game developing software. I tasked myself with developing the characters, Evelyn the main protagonist and Jaime her Bestfriend turned enemy. My teammate would design the skulls, giving each a design that would match their designated emotion while turning them into gifs, so that they would have a hover animation.  

Here we have Jaime, Evelyn and one of the Skulls(Memento)

The story would cover Evelyn, a girl who would have to live life in constant stress and would have trouble being social.

Her best friend Jaime would comfort her whenever she needed it, and thats when Evelyn could feel like herself. At some point, she promised Jaime she would be herself whenever Jaime wasn't around, she lived up to it until the accident that lead to Jaime's death. Evelyn, devastated would continue to be anxious until eventually Jaime comes back to life with dark intentions. She would tell Evelyn that because she broke her promise, She'll be under constant panic attacks from the skulls she will unleash.

After searching for a software capable of making my game, I stumbled upon 'RPG Maker MV', thats when me and my teammate reevaluated our game. I suggested to my teammate to start over with a different scenario, one involving magic which would cover the constraints of having to use an unconventional weapon, the weapon being a book(Grimoire). We could've used software like 'ready maker' but after looking into the assets available, 'RPG Maker MV' was more captivating. 

Evelyn, Valerie, Dark Valerie, and Dark Evelyn

With 'RPG Maker MV' I made some pretty interesting versions of our characters. So one small change was that instead of Jaime, I named her Valerie. The concept is somewhat the same, Evelyn and Valerie are best friends, they are both mages, but its not anxiety thats being fought for but for memories. Like in any other RPG, magic is implemented with different elements and this game will feature most of it. Now going back to the story, Valerie doesn't die, rather she becomes corrupted by some dark magic that twists her appearance into a more sinister form. The difference is that there are no skulls but ordinary monsters like orcs and slimes, but when Dark Valerie makes her appearance, she conjures up an evil clone of Evelyn to take over Evelyn's body. The game will involve players having to collect memory fragments as they uncover what is happening to the people and mages of Cortoria. Once they gather enough fragments, they will be able to stop Dark Evelyn from taking complete control over Evelyn's body.

So far me and my teammate made a very short level which is supposed to be the Prologue, it features a main area and Boss area. Now some problems we've encountered were things like certain events such as dialogue or interacting with items weren't working properly, some cutscenes repeated themselves, and after play testing with a few colleagues, we've noticed there were issues with the combat. The feedback given was that regular attacks would drain mana, which prevented the casting of spells, some monster would not fight back when attacked, and when defeated they would still remain outside of the battle.

After assessing all the problems we've encountered, I made a few edits to see what would make certain things work. We were able to fix the problems with the game, especially with the monsters.

While making the level I added sign posts so that players can learn more about how to navigate through our game. Upon making the level, I learned how to make proper cutscenes for an RPG game, messing around with animations and such. Making the game in general was a great experience, and I hope that people will  find this game interesting.