Red Ink Cube 🟥

Indie game studio We focus on creating story-rich experiences and celebrate the intersection between creativity and code. Current working on: [???], a queer visual novel with strategy RPG elements.

[redinkcube]

Game Dev Log #4

6/12/2026

Hey y'all! Welcome back to our weekly progress report. Hope you're excited for the check-in, because we've got a lot to share!

Art Development

We got a LOT of sprites sketched this week. Like, so many. We currently have 36 talksprites sketched out, and counting! Some of these sprites reuse the same base pose, but each character has at least 2 (sometimes 3+) unique poses.

Overall, lots of sprites! This has been great for testing the dialogue/story, as it makes it much easier to see who's talking and to get a feel for how the player will experience the story. Visuals really do add a lot to the feel of a game!

I won't share all (or even most) of the sprites I've been working on, but here's a glimpse at one of my favorite variations:

Forgive the poor quality--I took this in the midst of sketching them out, so all you get is a cropped CSP screenshot. Sorry!

But it's ok. Flustered bat boy makes up for it, right? Right.

In addition to our new sprites, we've also got a visual change to the UI! I was having issues with having too many sprites swapping around on the screen. It wasn't a big problem when only two characters were talking at a time, but as soon as we get to three (or more), it got really messy. To fix this, I've moved the main character's sprite to the bottom left corner.

Since the main character (Xeno) talks a lot during throughout the game, it made sense that he would have his own set spot on the screen. This makes it much easier to deal with other characters talking, as we don't have to account for Xeno who will pretty much always be involved in the conversation. That ends up looking something like this:

I'm still toying with this idea. I'm not sure that I'm 100% sold on this placement, and I may end up removing Xeno's sprites entirely at some point. Either way, this is how it looks currently.

You may also notice that we have a very, very hastily drawn background. Yeah, it's bad. I know.

But, thankfully, it's just a placeholder. I'm still at a point where I'm nailing down the visual progression and deciding where I want sprites versus CGs. Right now, I'm feeling pretty good about the current state of the prologue. I've got a few more placeholder/draft sprites to make, but otherwise, the art for the prologue is about 85% sketched.

Technical Development

We've accomplished some goals this week! Last week (and technically the week before, too), I had aimed to get the trading system done. This week, we actually managed to do it! There are a few visual defects I need to handle, but units can now trade items to one another during battle. Hurray!

Still can't actually use the items yet, though. Bummer.

I also added a pause menu and a fast-forward feature to story scenes. Not exactly an exciting development to share, but a much needed QOL improvement.

Finally, I fixed a few defects throughout the week. Nothing major, mostly small bugs like save data being carried over upon starting new save file.

Narrative Development

This week, I finished drafting the prologue.....twice!

I had initially aimed for the prologue to be about 4.5k words. I initially met this quota and finished the story at the planned stopping point, but when I went back to read it, things just felt a little too flat.

Too much lore dumping, forced characterization, and uninteresting conversations. It got the information across, but it felt more akin to reading a textbook about the world and less like hearing the lore from a character who has lived it.

So, with that in mind, I went back and did a large overhaul of the first draft, moving some scenes around, deleting/adding others... and I think it helped drastically.

I'm still on the fence about some parts of it, but I think I'm approaching a point where I need feedback from others before I get stuck in some loop of "is this good enough?" So, I've forced myself to stop re-drafting and have my friends playtest before I'll let myself change the prologue script again.

So, with that said... We have a complete first (second?) draft! Our current word count for the prologue sits at 4,968 words. Nearly 5k! Definitely surpassed my initial goal.

Other Updates

Last week I mentioned that I'd be meeting an attorney for a consultation about setting up my studio. I had that meeting on Monday, and we are now in the process of registering the LLC! I just got word this morning that the documents are ready for processing. Within the next month, Red Ink Cube will soon be a real, legal business and an indie development studio. Isn't that crazy?

I'm extremely excited about this development, and I hope you all look forward to the games we end up creating!

Conclusion

That about sums everything up. As a quick TLDR, this week I...

Completed the second draft of the prologue

Added over 30 talk sprites to the project folder

Changed the sprite layout during dialogue scenes

Implemented the trading mechanic during combat encounters

Added a pause menu and fast-forward feature to dialogue scenes

We are well on the way to having a playable demo by the end of the summer. Let's hope we can keep up the progress!

As for this week's goals:

Sketch the remaining character sprites for the prologue

Sketch the remaining CGs and BGs for the prologue

Create a playable build and gather feedback

My planned work for this week is definitely lighter in terms of development. I'd like to use this time to take a bit of a break so I can return to the project with fresh eyes after testing. I'm hoping to have a build done by Monday or Tuesday and gather some feedback earlier in the week. Hopefully my next update will be relaying how the testing went to you all! I'm aiming to get the prologue completely finished by early July so that I can focus the rest of the summer on Chapter 1, but we'll see how that goes.

I hope you've enjoyed the update, and I hope you'll continue following along as I continue working on this each week. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next Friday!

- Red Ink Cube

[redinkcube]

Game Dev Log #3

6/5/26

Happy Friday, y'all! We've made it through another week of development o7

Things have been a little slower than I'd hoped for this week, but I'll share what updates we have for the time anyway.

Art Development

I wasn't able to finish any sprites this week like I'd planned, but I did get one more expression for our main character sketched. Here's a quick glimpse at it:

Even unfinished, I'm a little obsessed with the new sprite. He looks so coy, I can't help but grin every time I look at it lol. I will likely wait and clean up/render the sprites I've sketched once I have some more characters in place.

In addition to sprites, I've also started on some 3D modeling! Modeling is not my forte, but I've done a little bit of it in the past. These are absolutely getting retextured (and possibly remade entirely), but here's what we're starting with:

I've also begun modeling the second character:

For my demo, I'll need at least 2 of the main characters modeled. I'll also need a few enemies. Those have yet to even enter to design stage, though, so it'll be a while before we start working on them.

I had initially planned on trying to texture my models in blender, but I've decided to switch to substance painter. I'll be purchasing a license later in development, so we're going to have to put up with my hastily drawn CSP textures for now.

Technical Development

Unfortunately, this was the slowest area of development this week. I'd hoped to finish my trading system, but I didn't even touch it...

∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

Anyway.

I didn't get anything done on that, but I did get the main menu done. We can now start a new save file, load an existing save, and view/play through the opening. Hurray!

I also added a scene transition manager, so we have a nice, smooth fade when swapping between scenes now.

Another impromptu addition from this week: we can now have dialogue events at the beginning and end of a battle. This means that when we first enter combat, our characters can speak with one another to provide a bit of context/exposition. The player then goes through the battle, and upon completion, we can watch another dialogue event unfold before transitioning back to our regular story screen.

This was a pretty small addition and was really only a combination of two existing systems, but I feel like it helps smooth the transition between the story and the gameplay. Here's a quick clip of what that looks like in action:

You also get a small glimpse at the combat. It's a bit hard to follow because of my placeholder assets (currently, Xeno is the only unit with a combat theater sprite, and I only have the one sprite for his default attack), but it's a good way to show the type of gameplay I'm going for.

For our final technical(?) update, we have a working title now! I'll be sharing that in the near future, as I'm currently in the midst of some more administrative things on the backside... but I'll get into that in a little bit.

Narrative Development

One of my goals for this week was to write another 1.4k words in our prologue script. I'm happy to say I actually managed to do that--I ended up rewriting a large portion of the prologue to more naturally introduce some setting and backstory.

I've got one more major scene in the prologue I need to write before the first draft is complete. Exciting, right? I sure think so.

So, as of right now, our prologue sits at 3,510 words. I expect that by the time our first draft is done, we'll be sitting around 4,500 or so. With that in mind, I'd like to finish up the first draft by next week. Let's set next week's writing goal for an additional 1k words.

Other Updates

Alright, time for our last (and what I consider most exciting) update. It's not exactly development related, but I've reached out to a lawyer to begin the process of registering an LLC.

While I'm sure this is hardly as interesting as the actual development work, this means that this project may be getting a Steam page soon... and it means that I'll be announcing my title soon as well! I'm currently holding off on the announcement so that I can take proper steps to establish/register IP. I'll share more updates as I have them, but this is an exciting first step for sure!

Conclusion

And that's it! Again, lighter development this week than I'd aimed for, but I'm hoping to get back on track next week. Even if we didn't meet all of this week's goals, it's good to have something to work towards, so...

Sketch neutral sprites for 2 more main characters

Create a completely functional pause screen

Finish drafting the prologue script (Targeting 4.5k words)

Complete the trading system for combat encounters

So, with that said, here's to another week of progress! I may pop in throughout the week and post some small updates as I go. Thank you for reading, and I look forward to updating again! \o/

- Red Ink Cube

[redinkcube]

I know I was gonna wait until they are further along to show off new sprites but... arghhh he's so cute...

It's ok to at least tease him, right? ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

[redinkcube]

Game Dev Log #2

5/29/26

Hey y'all! Week 2 of updates, here we go...

Art Development

First and foremost, I've finally created my first couple of art assets. Up until now, I've been using roughly sketched placeholders. These are great for quick fixes mid development, but it's always so much nicer seeing actual assets in place.

Here's a screenshot from a quick dialogue test I did earlier this week:

I intend to eventually create a couple of different poses for each main character. For now, we've at least got a neutral pose for two of them.

Both of these characters have been through several design revisions over the past few years. Their current designs, though still subject to change, are likely their final. In addition to these two, I also have one more sprite that's been sketched but not rendered. I'll probably hold back on posting more of the sprites until we're further along in our demo, but now we at least have some artistic direction.

UI Development

In addition to sprites, I also began some small amount of work on the game UI. The current assets are far from finalized, but serve as a good foundation for the visual direction I want to lean into. Here's a glimpse at the visual progression of the battle UI, from concept to prototype to alpha(?)

And a small peek at our analysis screen, where we can see the prediction for our combat encounter:

We also have some development on our free time screen...

I'm still constantly tweaking the UI, so these are by no means finalized. I'm definitely not sold on my unit action/analysis screens. Still, it's satisfying to get rid of placeholder assets!

Technical Development

With talk sprites added to the project folder, my next goal for the week was to spawn and manipulate these sprites from the dialogue script. In the past, I've attempted to mimic Ren'Py's sprite spawning system by using sprite name and position parameters. While this has worked for me in the past, it requires handling a lot of edge conditions. Giving the sprite access to any screen point position means risking bugs with layering, sliding sprites, and adjusting to screen size. In my previous projects, that was a huge headache that I was not looking forward to dealing with again.

This time, rather than spawning my sprites at specific positions via script, I instead have a dedication "spawn area" within my scene. When sprites are spawned, they are given a priority parameter provided in the JSON file. Lower priority shifts the sprites to left, and high priority shifts them write. Under the hood, it's really just a list using the priority value as its insertion index.

Combining this list with a bit of calculation to determine spacing between sprites/calculate sprite positions, we can make a system that repositions our sprites dynamically depending on how many sprites are on screen and what order they should be presented in. Add a couple of coroutines for sliding and fading animations, and we end up with something like this:

This system is not without limits, of course. As we increase the number of sprites on screen at one time, we run into overcrowding issues. For the scope of my project, I never anticipate having more than 4 sprites on a screen at time, so I've opted to set a hard cap. If we already have 4 on screen, we can't add anymore until space is made. I could implement a method to clear out the oldest sprite on screen to make this behavior a bit more dynamic, but for the sake of both simplicity and reliability, I'm going to stick to clearing my sprites manually through scripted calls.

I've also begun work on the trade system during combat. Right now, the system only populates the UI with items within each character's inventory. I still need to add the ability to move items between the two inventories, but that will go on the to do list for next week.

Narrative Development

The next and final area of development I've been working on this week has been the story itself. I've had an overarching story planned for quite a while, but I am now approaching a point in which I need an actual script for testing purposes. Between drawing and coding I have been writing small snippets of story.

My writing thus far has been a bit all over the place. I've written excerpts and scenes for different parts of the story--some of which are far past the point that my demo will cover.

For the sake of tracking progress, let's establish some benchmarks: I intend for my demo to cover both the prologue and the first chapter of my game. While I don't have a clear word count goal for these chapters, we can at least keep track of what our current numbers are:

Prologue: 2,193 words

Chapter 1: 3,936 words

Both of these chapters are far from complete and need drastic revision, but it's a start! I'm hoping to finish at least drafting the prologue by about mid-June.

Conclusion

And so another week of development draws to a close! A less intensive update than our first log, but productive nonetheless. I still have several additions I'd like to make to the dialogue system as development continues, but at least core behavior is complete.

My goals for the next week are to:

Finish neutral sprites for at least 2 more characters

Create a completely functional main menu screen

Create a completely functional pause screen

Write add another 1.4k words to the prologue script

Complete the trading system for combat encounters

I'll be back next Friday with my progress. Thank you for reading, and I hope you look forward to the next update!

- Red Ink Cube

[redinkcube]

Game Dev Log #1

5/22/2026

Hey y'all! I've decided to start posting logs of my game development journey in hopes it helps to keep me on track and motivated in finishing my project.

Background

To give a bit of background before I start with this: I'm 24 years old and an independent game developer. I have an associates in game programming, a bachelors and masters in software engineering, and over a decade of experience as a hobbyist artist. I also work full-time as a game programming professor at a college.

Up until recently, I've had no experience working on shipping a game. Back in February of this year, I completed development on my first shipped title--a small, indie visual novel where my main (and arguably sole) contribution was as a programmer.

That project taught me a lot about scope, the importance of creating modular, scalable systems, and overall game design/player feedback. After development finished on it, I was inspired to take what I learned and try again. This time, I'm going to attempt to make my own story and characters into a game that combines the visual novel system I've built (and since improved on) and a strategy RPG system similar to that of Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics.

Thus, this development log will serve as a record of my progress on this project. My development so far has resulted in a playable prototype, but my goal is to have a completed demo by the end of August, 2026.

So, with that background out of the way, let's talk about progress!

What I've done so far

I've already been working on this project for about 2 months. My consistency has been off and on (as I've been finishing up my masters at the same time), but these are the core systems in development:

Modular Visual Novel System

First, the visual novel system. After the completion of my last title, I realized just how much goes into crafting a modular visual novel system. My main goals were to create a system that:

a) reads dialogue, asset names, and game event calls from a JSON file

b) adapts to new game events easily

These two features were non-negotiable. In a dialogue heavy game such as this, having an external file where the dialogue can be easily edited or changed (both for current development and for potential future localization) was mandatory. Additionally, as most of the game events in a visual novel are tied to specific lines of dialogue (such as camera shakes, social point additions/deductions, etc.), being able to call functions through triggers in my dialogue file was also important.

I'm happy to say this has been accomplished! My current system reads JSON to parse class names and instantiate objects of their type. These objects track subsequently invoke events when the dialogue they're attached to is read by the system.

If you'd like to learn more about the actual code written to do this, I may share details in a future post.

SRPG Battle System

The next part that I've been working on is the battle system. The visual novel system and the battle system together make up pretty much the entire game, so getting these done early was integral to actually completing this project.

This battle system has been something I've worked on for several years now. Inspired by a combination of Fire Emblem Fates, Heroes, and Three Houses, I crafted my third-person SRPG battle system by starting with the movement algorithm.

I'm going to be honest. A* pathfinding drives me absolutely nuts.

I started trying to implement A* back during my second semester of my associates degree. Mind you, this was in 2021... Approximately 5 years ago.

After 5 years, however, I've finally got it working the way I need. Building on top of that movement, I've implemented a unit super-class, player and enemy unit sub-classes, a battle manager, a battle HUD manager, and a finite state machine.

The overall behavior of my system works about as you'd expect:

During the player turn, all units become active

When a unit is selected, their available actions change depending on their destination

They can move to a location, use items, attack enemy units, or support ally units

A short animation (which I have dubbed "combat theater") plays to provide visual attack feedback

The unit classes are not particularly impressive. Actually, they turned out really messy at first. It's been quite a while since I've implemented any kind of turn-based system or any sort of unit stat tracking, so I ended up creating a huge, monolithic mess. A single unit class handled stats, movement, states, etc. Seriously, it was bad.

Since then, I've refactored. Now, I have separate classes for unit movement, data, actions, and states. The most important change, however, is that unit state is now handled on the battle manager instead of on individual units. This way, we're only tracking a single state instead of several individual. This fixed a lot of the problems I was having with HUD elements appearing at the wrong time and unit states overwriting one another.

Overall, the battle system works pretty cleanly! Units can swap between states, once all player units have acted, we swap to the enemy turn, enemy units can move towards players and attack, and basic battle completion conditions are in. I've still got some work to do on the item usage/trading system, and I need to add more/different types of win and lose conditions, but a functioning battle system is in place.

Free-time Menu and Shop system

Next we move into more of the incomplete territory. In order to transition between story scenes and battle, I need "free-time" scenes. Essentially, throughout the story, the player needs time to rest, visit markets, craft restoratives, and save the game. Rather than attempt to implement a save system in the middle of story events or battle, I instead wanted to give the player designated time to save.

So, I decided to implement free-time menus where you can do all of those things. This also helps with story pacing, as returning to your inn room can serve as a natural end to a scene. It also allows me to implement area quests/battles and markets without having the additional strain of modeling entire cities. Overall, nice one-stop-shop for basic interactions outside of story.

As of right now, my free time menu exists and functions, but does not have keyboard input set up. The dialogue and the battle scenes operate solely via keyboard, but the free-time scene requires a mouse. An easy fix, truth be told, but I haven't bothered fighting with the event system to do it yet. Perhaps that's next on the to-do list.

What does work, however, is populating the free-time screen with data relevant to your current city. The shop populates with items unique to the city you're in and the city name changes accordingly. Additionally, the player can save their progress and load the game back to the same city/story event they were on.

Conclusion

So, that about sums up my progress as of yet. I've also begun writing some of the game story, but I'll share the details of that in a future dev log. As of right now, though, I have a playable prototype where the player can:

Play through dialogue/story events

Enter and complete a battle

Return to a story event after battle

Enter a free-time event (with city data unique to where they are in story)

Continue to the following story or battle event from the free-time screen

Save and load their progress

So, good progress so far! I look forward to continuing this project and updating my work here. Thank you for reading, and I hope to report back with more soon.

- Red Ink Cube