Tag: Buried

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

It’s been 10 years since, inspired by Japanese visual novels and Winter Wolves’ games, I came up with the idea for the original Memoirs of an Angel – a visual novel (with mini-games) about a dethroned princess courting various handsome men in a fantasy setting while figuring out what to do next.

That quick, fun little game changed my life. I thought, “This is what I want to do. This is what I was meant to do.”

Ten years later, I still feel the same way. Even though my personal projects have taken a backseat to my full-time job as a software engineer and side gigs as a freelance web developer, I feel like now is the time to continue pursuing my passion for making games. I have the skills, I’m working on getting the knowledge, and all I need is more experience and confidence in my work.

Without further ado, let’s take stock of the current state of Anigrams Productions’ various projects…

Memoirs of an Angel: Legends

Status: Working on it

I have the basic storyboard for the Memoirs remake written out, which has gone through several revisions and will probably go through a few more before I’m satisfied. I’m deep enough into it, though, to know that I’m going to have to split it up into two games: the first focusing on Zuleika taking her throne back, and the second focusing on the conflict with Menorrhi (evil lady who created Chael to kill Zuleika).

I’m still trying to nail down a good gameplay system that not only makes sense for the story I’m trying to tell, but is simple enough that it won’t turn off VN players who enjoyed the original game, and also features strategic elements that make it challenging and give real weight to winning and losing. I’ve built several prototypes, but they’ve all been failures so far.

I’m also still trying to decide whether I want to allow the player to choose the protagonist’s gender or not. The only thing it would really add is the possibility for additional romances (like Duren, whose sexuality was only hinted at in the original game, with most players not even realizing he was meant to be gay). My current stance is that it would be better to add those things as a DLC – get the main game out first, then worry about extra additions that don’t really add anything to the plot.

W.I.S.H

Status: On hold (indefinitely)

W.I.S.H started as Starlit Dreams, a sci-fi themed business simulation about a bored librarian with a passion for inventing robotic prosthetics and her budding friendship with a paranormal investigator on the run from a secret evil organization. Yeah. What the hell was I thinking?

After getting some feedback on the prototype/tech demo I made, I realized that the concept just wasn’t that great. Not only was the story all over the place, but the gameplay (basically killing time by going around to different locations and hoping you ran into the person you needed to talk to) sucked.

Unfortunately, I’d already spent hundreds of dollars on art assets. W.I.S.H was my attempt to take all the same characters (so I could reuse the art) and throw them into a completely different situation, this time a Faustian tale about how the main character makes a deal with a demon and inadvertently breaks the fabric of reality (or something), causing all sorts of paranormal mayhem.

I thought I had a pretty decent plan of how all the characters would be involved in this new storyline and how each of their romantic routes would weave a larger story, but after sharing my outline with a friend, I realized there were a lot of plot holes and things that didn’t really make sense (like why would the main character even make a deal with a demon in the first place?), and I still didn’t know whether I wanted to do a straight visual novel or include some sort of battle system.

Since then, I’ve entertained a few different ideas of how to change up the story, including cutting out most of the cast and maybe even having a completely different protagonist, but nothing has really stood out as a good direction to go in.

For now, this game idea is stuck in limbo.

The Memoirs of Genesis

Status: Planning to do someday

A prequel to Memoirs of an Angel, The Memoirs of Genesis was originally going to be a kinetic novel (like a visual novel with no choices), but I ultimately decided that if there weren’t choices, it might as well just be a straight novel.

I had a full storyboard written out, but realized that the fragmented, un-chronological structure of the story was difficult to follow. It also didn’t tell much of a story – it was a biography that had no flow, no vision, no cohesion. The events of Genesis’ life are what they are. They had to happen in order for Memoirs of an Angel to happen. But Genesis’ story is one of tragedy and revenge, blurring the lines between good and evil, and that story needs to be told.

That said, I feel like Memoirs of Genesis will be so much more meaningful if you’ve already played the Memoirs of an Angel remake… which isn’t complete yet. So this one is on the back-burner until I complete the main game that it’s supposed to be a prequel to.

Buried

Status: Working on it

I’m not sure if I ever officially announced Buried except for a mention here and there, but it was originally conceived as an old-school text adventure dungeon-crawler. The goal was to practice programming while exploring one of the mysteries of the Memoirs universe: the disappearance of the djinn.

It turns out that building a fun, exciting dungeon-crawler with only text is really hard. I built out the whole dungeon in Minecraft just to be able to get my bearings, but I still couldn’t quite visualize it. So I made some adjustments and started building it in GameMaker using RPGMaker sprites as stand-ins, but it just felt way too generic. I figured there was no point in working on it anymore.

But now, as I work towards my goal of becoming a professional game designer, I find myself in need of a good portfolio piece. Memoirs is so big and dear to my heart that it may be another 10 years before I finish it, so it’s not a good candidate for fluffing up my portfolio. Buried, on the other hand, can be a short, fun little game that I can use to practice things like writing an official Game Design Document, iterating on a concept, building prototypes, etc.

So my plan is to pick it back up and use it as a portfolio piece that I can (hopefully) show off with pride.

The Memoirs Character Creator

Status: Done

Looking back through this blog, it looks like I never officially “released” the Memoirs Character Creator and had planned to add some additional features, like more color options and armor options. Honestly, the UI needs an update, too.

These improvements aren’t a priority, though. From my perspective, this project is done and I’ve been focusing my efforts on other projects instead. That said, I may push out some updates once I start updating my portfolio, but nothing is guaranteed.

Anigrams Language Generator

Status: Needs improvement

The Anigrams Language Generator is just something I did for fun and accidentally added to the website before it was ready.

My idea was to store phonetic symbols associated with specific languages, and create words by randomly alternating vowel and consonant symbols and adding a suffix common to that language (to make the word “masculine” or “feminine”).

In short, it doesn’t work very well. The system needs to be smarter about which vowel/consonant combinations work best together, maybe employing a machine learning algorithm to analyze a sample of text and spit out something instead of storing everything in a database.

It probably won’t get fixed any time soon, though, not with other projects being more of a priority.

Which of these projects are you most excited about? Let me know in the comments below!

Originally posted January 20, 2019 on Tumblr.