Ah, Reel Dream.

At the beginning of this year I wasn’t too hopeful. But now that I sat down and reevaluated the game’s concept and ideas, I have really started to flesh out what Reel Dream is. There are still things mechanics wise I’m not sure will work (the turn based RPG fishing which is the whole point lol) but even if the game looses that aspect, I will still be able to tell Reel Dream’s story!

I have the outline for the entire story! I’ve even started scripting the actual scenes for the game and what the player will be able to do etc.

Before that I even sat down and decided the full cast of characters that will be in the game, as before I only had ideas for a few characters. Now I know everyone who is in this game.

I’ll keep things flexible in case I need to add/change/remove anyone from the game, but that shouldn’t be. I even have walking sprites for everyone, though quite a few still need some custom edits.

Characters are all written into Scrivener with their own profile that I’ll be filling out as I go. I brought back the friendship system, and in line with Harvest Moon I’ve included a Love/Like/Hate gift system. I actually still have to build that mechanic, haha…

Another thing I worked on finalizing was the map. I don’t really have an official map to stick in the game, but I have a fairly fleshed out reference map for myself.

Being part of a game dev community on Discord has allowed me to have friends and acquaintances who can show me tools and other things that I wouldn’t have found myself. Wonderdraft is one of those items. I wouldn’t have considered it if it wasn’t for friends on Discord.

I want to be able to make a map more stylized for the game, but for now it is a clear map that I made before fleshing out the story outline that way I knew the world my story was based in.

Now that I know the world, I’ve had the itch to map it in game. However, I dedicated February to working on fleshing out the story as for as I can before starting any game mapping.

March I’ll start mapping the game. Being I was able to sit down and reevaluate the game, that meant I could toss the maps I had done in editor, and decide how I’m going to do my mapping.

Despite how much more work it will be, and how I’ll have to sit down and learn how to efficiently use it for mapping, I’ve decided to stick with TileD Plugin. No more flip flopping on my decision. This is it. I’ll learn TileD and work with it, even if it takes longer with having to set up tiles to work with TileD, set tile animations, etc. It will be worth it in the end.

So that’s where Reel Dream is. Most the mechanics still sit in the editor ready for me to get back to them, however with starting to set up TileD I did find some things that broke with casting in the game, and so I worked on fixing that appropriately.

I’m going to be starting with a test map with TileD while I get all (or most) the tiles set up, such as water animations. Then with the test map I’ll make sure all the mechanics (such as casting and boat docking) still work before I move on to mapping official maps.

I’m thinking I have two options: Map the entire game and then start work on the story, or map the first few locations and then event the start of the game to build a demo. Considering all maps and events should be official, or at least the building blocks of the official content, I don’t see much harm in making a demo as I don’t think it would be a waste, but rather good for promoting the game.

So I’m thinking once I get mapping, and I have the first few locations set, I’ll make a demo. Hopefully that can be done near the end of the year. I don’t want to set a date ’cause really you never know how life is going it go.

So that’s it for where Reel Dream is at. The foundation is just about set to where I can build the game and not have it crumble.

Thank you all for keeping up with me! I really appreciate the support that I get! I’d just like ya’ll to know that if you want to stay even more informed with Reel Dream then you can support me on Patron where I post weekly about what I’ve gotten done and how things are going!

Thanks for all your support and God bless,
Meike Kima

Leave a Reply