I decided I want to try doing some type of devlog! Because videos take too much time and effort, I'm just going to steal from Toby Fox and do a "dev "blog"" on my own Web Site. I'm aiming to post one of these monthly for a year or so to see how it goes, but if I hate it I'm allowed to stop and you can't get mad at me.

Since I'm starting this in the middle of a project I feel like I should probably do some catching up. I made some games a long time ago that a funny internet man played. Since then I've never stopped making games, but there have been a lot of missteps and false starts along the way, and as a result I haven't released anything substantial in a very long time. Before my current project, I was working on a Zelda-type game called Verdant - On the Etherbloom Isle. I'll get into my time working on Verdant someday, but to make a long story short I restarted the project from scratch three times and was never quite able to figure out what I wanted it to be. I still think about it often and fully intend to make it someday, but for now I've put it on hold until I'm confident in the direction I want to take it. After deciding to put Verdant on hold, I began working on an action platformer metroidvania type of game.

Last October, I went to a video game convention with some friends. I decided that I would make it a goal of mine to exhibit my game at the next one. This June, I threw my hat over the fence and paid for a table, despite the game absolutely not being ready to be demoed. I spent the summer working on sytems and mechanics, without putting a lot of thought towards the overall structure of the game. Essentially I was making the Mario Maker that I would then Make My Mario with. This was definitely the right way to approach development, but it wasn't great for having a representative build of the game ready when I needed it. By the middle of September, it became clear that I had to pause the work I was doing and focus on building a demo, since at that point most of my time had gone into mechanics and systems work, with very little time spent building actual content for the game.

Mid-September through mid-October was a nightmare that I spent in a semi-dissociative haze, either working on the game or sleeping (poorly). At this point I had a general idea of the game's narrative and structure in my head, but the time had come to actually put it to paper and finalize it. I had originally planned to make a standalone prequel that would serve as the demo, but I scrapped that plan pretty quickly in favor of having the demo just be the game's opening sequence. After a few pretty miserable weeks, I finally compiled the demo build at 8pm the day before the convention. It was buggy and unpolished, but I had to just call it good enough because I still needed to drive two hours to my friends' place and I'd like to avoid falling asleep behind the wheel and driving off of a bridge for as long as possible.

The convention went: OK! It was fine! I've never done anything like it before and I was incredibly nervous, but it was fine! It probably would've been a disaster if I didn't have my friend Jess helping me out, but luckily that wasn't the case! Pretty much everyone who stopped by and played the demo gave very positive feedback, along with helping me find lots of things that needed tweaking or fixing. Despite that, I think if I do ever decide to table at a convention again, it'd have to be with finished game. As positive as people were, I could almost feel the game leaving their brains as I sent them away with only a vague promise of "early next year." I don't know that I'd say I regret doing it, but it's hard to say exactly if the multiple weeks of manic crunch were worth hearing people say nice things about my work.

As I returned home and settled back into development, free of the specter of a looming deadline, it was time to confront a different but equally harrowing specter.

Something that a game should probably have before being publicly demoed is a name! A name is a type of words that people can use to identify something, which is generally useful if you want them to, say, remember it. I had just sort of been hoping that when the time came, a name would just come to me naturally. The time came and the name I ended up with was "Schism Luminous."

A great way to find out that you really, really hate the name of your game is to have one of your closest friends give up her weekend to sit at a table and repeatedly say it out loud to strangers. How unbelievably cruel it is to force someone who has shown such belief in you to look a stranger in the eyes and say "Yes, this game, being made by this person next to me, my supposed friend whom I trust, is called Schism Luminous." It just felt wrong every time I heard her say it or had to say it myself. Try it. Say it out loud. "Schism Luminous." I'm sorry for making you do that.

To be clear, this wasn't a name I decided on quickly! I've got pages in my sketchbook just full of attempts to come up with a name! I think there are three main reasons Schism Luminous made it so far. The first is that I was extremely, extremely tired. The second is that after you've repeatedly gotten excited about potential names only to find them attached to things like a clothing brand in an anime or a DLC for a game you've never heard of, anything that's relatively available is going to start looking attractive. The third and maybe most important is that I just wasn't saying it out loud. It's two words that look kind of cool written together, but it's just really unpleasant to say, which I think is maybe a dealbreaker.

Anyway it isn't called that anymore. It's called Transfigurata - The Radiant Chain. We never have to say that other name out loud ever again. It feels a little weird to change a project's name like this, but thankfully I'm not important or relevant so no one's going to be confused. Some thoughts on the new name:

1: It seems like the only thing named 'Transfigurata' is a type of moth. I'll maybe feel a little bad about stealing some SEO from moths, but ultimately I think it's ok.

2: I like the way Transfigurata both sounds and looks! It's not exactly Undertale or Cave Story, but those ones are taken.

3: It has a subtitle with smaller words, so you can just call it that if you want.

4: It fits better thematically. Schism Luminous made a little more sense with an earlier version of the story.

Let's talk about logos!

The Schism Luminous logo was pretty simple, just some serifed text with lines through it that were intended to suggest stained glass, with a break in the center which I guess represented this supposed "schism." Also the word "schism" is there, sort of tucked up there in the top left. I think the break in 'Luminous' looks a little sloppy and 'Schism' just feels awkward and tacked on up there.

After landing on the new name, I started trying to recreate the existing logo with 'Transfigurata' instead of 'Luminous'. I was very conscious of how large of a word 'Transfigurata' is, so I was really trying to squish the letters together as tightly as possible, which wasn't working. I got this far before pivoting.

In the end, I kept the serif text but made it smaller and more compact, changed the thick outline to a solid background, switched to brighter pink, abandoned the stained glass lines through the text, and added the jagged crystal element emerging from the center of the logo. (Crystals will be present in Transfigurata, please look forward to my crystals.) Aside from maybe some minor tweaks, I don't imagine it'll change too drastically from here.

I think that'll do it for this month. I'd wanted to do more but I've been a little out of it the last few weeks so this is coming together last minute. I'm hoping to put these out on or around the 15th of every month, so hopefully there'll be more in a few weeks! The next one will probably be about addressing the feedback I got from demoing the game and implementing a new mechanic? That's the plan anyway, who knows. Ok, take care!