Spring 2026 Devlog
With the days getting longer and the temperature getting much hotter, it’s a clear sign that the seasons are once again changing. With that, I’ve had a nice idea. I want to write a “spring devlog” and just spend some time to cover everything I had worked on over the last 3 months!
I’ve been working really hard on my project, especially in this year. I’ve turned my silly little OC concept from just an idea in my head into a full development project and I’m so proud of all of my work. This is my first time writing such a devlog, but I’d love to keep doing this as a consistent thing every time a new season changes. Today I’ll be sharing what I’ve been working on during March, April and May!
Programming
On the programming side, I’ve mostly been working on building a functional prototype for my game. Nothing finalised yet obviously, but with all the basic features and mechanics working so I can playtest it.
While I have experience working with other engines, Gamemaker is completely new to me and I’ve needed to spend time getting to learn how everything works.
Some months ago, one of my friends wanted to make a Pocket Mirror fangame and I offered to help her by doing the programming for her. I saw it as a good opportunity as to help train my understanding of Gamemaker, but also that I could reuse the project foundation for my own game too.
After all, my game is also a narrative RPG so the fundamental systems and mechanics aren’t that different anyways. It would be more resourceful to just copy and paste the systems I had already created than it would to develop everything again from scratch. Roughly 30 hours of work later, and this tech demo is what I have as of right now:
All assets here are temporary placeholders or leftovers from the Pocket Mirror fangame. These assets will be replaced with original assets eventually.
The prototype currently features:
- Title screen with selectable options
- Essential player movement mechanics (walking, sprinting, prototype of the main pause menu)
- “Door” system which allows seemlessly moving between rooms
- Interactive NPCs and props
- CG display for cutscenes
- Text renderer system for all kinds of text displays used throughout the whole game
- Prototype combat menu UI (not shown in video)
It may seem really barebones from a viewer perspective, especially when these things are just included by default in something like RPG Maker. However, these are the basic fundamental pieces that make up the entire game. Additionally, a lot of time was spent in the background trying to learn how Gamemaker actually operates.
I chose to use Gamemaker instead of RPG Maker as Gamemaker is a more powerful tool that provides a lot more freedom. RPG Maker may be faster and easier to use, but the engine is a lot less flexible and hard to truly make “your own” without heavy reliance on plugins. In my eyes at least, it is more of a tool for beginners.
Now that I have a stronger feel for how Gamemaker “works”, I can finish off the prototype and then use the systems I created to block out the rest of the game. Poyoraz also helped me tremendously with getting the text engine to work. I did originally try to use the built in Gamemaker text engine but it’s honestly not very good haha. ^ ^;
Art
My general focus with drawing recently had been to improve the way that I draw the hair, and also the colouring too.
I’ve always done basic flat cel shading for my drawings, as its easy to understand for a beginner. However, flat cel shading is not quite what I want to aim for with my art, I’m much more inspiried by pictures with more textured colouring like Arknights, or Pocket Mirror (classic). I’ve begun to spend some time looking into how to use the blur and blend tools in order to create a more textured feel for my drawings.
I don’t understand these tools quite yet, but I’ll keep working on it in future.
I also spent some time branching out and drawing different characters too. For the longest time I had only really been drawing Goldia and Enjel which was causing a lot of difficulty when trying to draw other girls. I had spent so long with Goldia/Enjel that trying to draw literally anything else was very far out of my comfort zone.
I’ve also been trying to add more cases of perspective and more dynamic poses where possible too which can be seen in some of my more recent drawings.
I’m not at the stage yet where I’m satisfied with my drawing ability, there’s still a lot I need to learn in order to draw what I want. As important as it is to keep working hard to improve my drawing, its also important to keep in mind that I am only a newcomer and that I’m progressing quite well.
On another note, I’ve begun working on the character designs for the characters in the game.
Here’s a picture of Ines that was given to me for my birthday! Isn’t so super cute?
This picture was drawn by neo_lyte who’s been helping me a lot with concept illustrations and learning how to draw. They’ve been an invaluable help to me, especially with everything related to learning to draw.
In fact, their OC will be making a guest apperance in the game too! During one of our art study sessions, Maple was created spontaneously and I liked her enough to include her in the game too.
Writing
Writing has consistently been the most time-consuming and challenging part of the project. I am by no means any sort of writer, I’ve never actually written anything before outside of my school assignments and homework many years ago.
As mentioned in previous blogposts, the project originally began as a Touhou fangame. Writing was very easy back then because the characters, world, and systems had already been predefined by the extensive amount of source material.
After pivoting into an OC project instead, I’ve had to spend a looooooooooot of time writing a bunch of stuff that I’d never written before. I’ve never made original characters before, nor an original world for them to inhabit. I’ve been having a lot of fun bringing everything to life, but it’s also a very slow and challenging process too.
I’ve always had a very clear vision for what the ending is supposed to be, so I actually started with writing the ending and then working backwards from there. I’m not sure how common of a practice that is when it comes to writing, but it’s what I found worked best for myself. It meant that I already had a clear vision of what point I wanted the narrative to reach and how each character would develop and be affected along the way.
Now that I’ve developed the clear idea of the ending, recent writing efforts have been focused on fleshing out how to reach that point. It’s also very that the story will be subdivided into 6 chapters as it will help me with structuring and pacing. I’ve set a goal for what each chapter should “achieve” and it helps guide how the overall narrative works. Chapters 1 and 6 currently have the most to them, whereas the other ones only have some lose concepts right now.
I don’t want to share much of the story yet to avoid spoilers, but I can give a small general synopsis of what the game’s story is. The game is about two twin sisters and the unfortunate fate of the world in which they live in. Originally, these two girls were princesses and soon-to-be rulers of their kingdom until a mysterious disaster had changed their world forever overnight. The story follows as these girls explore their world in search of answers for what happened that night. Along the way, you’ll meet other characters who’s lives have all been affected heavily in different ways from the disaster.
How does that sound? Truth be told, I’m really no good at summarising things… I always feel like I’m missing out important details ^ ^;. I always get embarassed when presenting my concepts to people, I always feel like people will find it cringe or dumb. The reception has been very positive though! People seem very interested and it means so much to me. I will continue to work hard on bringing my story to life with my game.
Goals for Summer
I really, really want to get character designes prototyped for the rest of the girls. I’ve had a very strong mental image of how I want Ida and Bea to look I just need to spend some time exploring those ideas and creating concepts to find something I’m happy with. I don’t have anything visual to share just yet, but Ida will have a sort of witch / wandering traveller vibe to her, and Bea has a fairytale theme similar to Alice in Wonderland type vibe. Again, I haven’t drawn them out just yet but I really wanna get some drafts for them drawn soon.
For a few months now, Aria has been giving me the most trouble. I’ve always known how I wanted her hairstyle to be, but I never really had a strong vision for her outfit. Her design is very important to me and I’m taking special care to make sure its done right. A constant theme when prototyping Aria has been the idea of “similar yet different”. Her design needs to show that shes similar to Ines, as they are identical twins, but I also want her design to bring out her own individuality too. They are twins, yes, but Aria is still her own individual person. She has her own opinions, worldviews and style which is something I want to convey visually through the way that she looks. Many sisters in anime games are just palette swaps of each other.
I also want to get the combat systems and mechanics working in the prototype. While I’ve showed off a small piece of footage of the prototype so far, the combat doesnt actually work at all yet. I’ve already concepted and planned out how the mechanics should work, I’ve just not developed those yet which would be another one of my goals going forwards.
I’d also like to have a name for the game too, so I have something real to call it instead of constantly saying “my project” ^ ^;.
Lastly, I wanna continue learning how to bring better colouring texture to my drawings so I can get closer to my desired artstyle. For the final product, I want the character portraits and the CGs to be drawn by me. It’ll be quite a while until I can draw at the level I’m aiming for, but thats okay because it’ll be quite a while until the project is finished anyways! So I’m in no rush, I have plenty of time to continue working on my art.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading! It’s been a pretty lengthy post today but I’ve had quite a lot of things to share. Next time I’ll have a lot more visual stuff to show too, such as more concept art and gameplay previews!
I will be taking a short break during the summer as I’m going to Los Angeles in June! Once I’m back home I’ll continue working as ever.
Thank you for your continued interest in me and my projects, I look forward to writing the next devlog after the summer is over too!