"Midnight Dreary" - dev log #2

Hey, everyone! I'm back to tell you a bit more about the progress I'm making in the game.

The first thing I did in the prototype was to make Edgar's apartment with placeholder RPG Maker tiles and sprites (that's why the scale might seem wrong when compared to Edgar's sprite). It's supposed to be a small, attic-like apartment, very much inspired by Eric Draven's apartment, from the movie The Crow, which also inspired a bunch of other things in the game, like the character of Edgar himself, and the name of Edgar's cat: Draven.

Draven is not only a good friend to Edgar, but also the first feature I implemented. The player will be able to fully restore Edgar's health by petting or playing with Draven! And there's actually an explanation for it in the lore, though I don't think I want to spoil that aspect for you right now, so I'll keep quiet about that.

Edgar has no walk animation yet. I intend to animate him and the other characters later on during development. At that point, Edgar was the only original sprite I had for the game. Until I added another one I had made previously just for fun, which would become Edgar's guitar.

I made it based on the Les Paul design. It has a metal support for when Edgar is not using it, and there's a small amp sitting beside it. At first, the guitar was going to be just a cool object in the apartment, but I had an idea for a mechanic, and I had to try it out. Once I managed to make it work, the guitar became the "weapon" I mentioned in the previous dev log. If you decide to take it with you, you'll be able to use it to push enemies away and stun them for a while so you can run away. However, once you use it, it'll take a good while to recharge again, so you should try to sneak past the ghosts before thinking about using the guitar.

Using some RPG Maker animations, I was able to create a base for how it's going to look like when the player uses the guitar:

And, as you can see, there's a guitar-shaped meter on the bottom-left corner of the screen; another original asset I made. This is the first part of the guitar mechanic I implemented: when you use it, the meter goes empty and it recharges slowly with time. The second part will be when I implement the enemies and make the guitar's power work on them.

Regarding the text, I already wrote two Tomes in the game (the "All Hallows' Eve" and the "Cats" Tomes) and one Bio, which would be Edgar's. You'll be able to find the Tomes and Bios in the Book of Rites item, where there's also a Manual and the Exorcism section, which basically will tell you information about the spirit to be exorcised and the objectives you have to complete to do it.

I also made the first art that's going to appear when I new chapter begins, though I think these will be replaced in the final game.

The introductory dialogue when Lenore visits Edgar to give him his task is also already implemented in the prototype. However, it's still not complete, since Edgar will have a different sprite in the final version of this scene, and Lenore doesn't have her original sprites yet. That's why I won't show the dialogue right now.

As you noticed, the game's aesthetic is in black and white, and I definitely intend this to be the look of the final game. I just think it fits better with the theme.

For now, these are the main implementations I made. Of course, they can change in the future, but so far this is how it is. See you guys later!