Poppin & Jupa: Pocket Adventure - 3rd year and Demo Date!
Hello Everyone! This post marks the end of the Third Year of development on Poppin & Jupa: Pocket Adventure. I'll be using it to talk about a bit about myself, where the game is at, and where it's going.
But first: The Demo Date!
I'll be uploading a demo for Chapter 1 of Poppin & Jupa: Pocket Adventure on January 3rd! I'm thinking of putting it on my GameJolt and Itch.io pages. It'll be free! (not that I can take money for it, since it has placeholder music). Currently, the demo has been sent out to my previous Patreon backers.
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Personal Stuff
Life wise, I started this year at a new job, in my own apartment. My fiancee moved in as well, and we're planning to be formally married sometime in 2020. You're not invited! I'm used to the pacing I'll be doing development now.
A big issue you've noticed in the past year is how moody I can get about the game progress. It's hard to overstate how important Poppin and Jupa are to me, and wanting to make sure I'm working on the project in a way I won't regret. This has involved coming to terms a lot with my own inexperience and habits, and recognizing my place as an independent, solo game developer. I'm not making anything that's going to be a huge breakout success, but trying to make these two characters and their world come to life very slowly, in a format that I personally find enjoyable. It'd be nice to think of pumping out fully realized games every 1-2 years, but that's just not something I'm capable of.
I understand some people will see that as a failure to live up some full potential, but as long as I'm putting in a little time every day, or even every few days, onto something that's important to me, then that's time I felt was spent meaningfully.
Rather than pushing myself to work constantly each month and ending up disappointed that I'm not doing enough, about halfway into the year I start slowing down and taking more time to do art for myself or just playing games.
Maybe that means that Pocket Adventure might not complete until 2022, 2025, who knows. It's my journey and mine alone, and I prefer it over anything else. Of course, taking breaks to draw helps.
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What was accomplished this year?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVRy0G_3nL8
Chapter 1 Development was the major focus. The first two years were about making the base mechanics and systems, while this was about refining everything, applying it to an actual sequence of gameplay, including all art assets and objects. This meant figuring out things that didn't work, and making things that didn't exist, and figuring out some kind of method for doing tiling on my own. It's led to about only 15-30 minutes of gameplay, but it's important for establishing a lot of the groundwork of what the rest of the game is going to be like.
This isn't exhaustive, but here’s an idea of major changes over each month.
January: Thurston Cutscene, and began tileset/background design for Forest area.
February: Finished Forest area tileset, added experience point messages, bridge falling cutscene, making it so Poppin and Jupa can separate and go into areas on their own.
March: Wanted Poster/Plant Collection/Nugget cutscenes, pathing: updating paths when blocks are destroyed, objects traveling on top of moving objects, enemy parades.
April: Barrel wires, more rolling barrel work, Tornup boss battle.
May: Assets for outro cutscene, Tornup boss end cutscene, Toy Kingdom area test.
June: NPC Changes. (spent a good while drawing personal art)
July: Caverns/Backwoods/Riverbank set dressing and backgrounds.
August: Traps in the Backwoods, additional Backwoods set dressed, Farm/Cliffside backgrounds and art, mobile grab points, water spouts in Riverbank, mini map update
September: Coding in sound and music placeholders for everything.
October: Turnip Field background art, added chargeable Glove attack, changed Ibbix Bandit to throw axes, Bandits and Outro cutscene.
December: Splash screen, ibbells hud, more partner pathing work. Final touches on chapter 1 and various bug fixes/polish
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What’s next?
Not exactly shocking, but next year will be dedicated to creating Chapter 2! In this part of the adventure, Poppin and Jupa start exploring the caverns of Mt. Glitteroam, as they make their way to the city at the peak, Snow Machinia. But along the way, they'll need to get past the drilling quaries of Bronze Belle Mining Company, with all of its wonky robots, the violent wildlife it stirred up, and all the faulty machinery blocking the way. They'll obtain the first new Gadget for assisting exploration, movement, and combat, and be able to open up previously blocked routes.
I'm really hoping to get those additional routes finished this year too, since a core part of the game is being able to divert from the main story path to explore other parts of Mt. Glitteroam, finding new places, baddies, and treasures.
That concludes this year’s final update. You might notice I don’t update here as often: currently, I’m most active on my Twitter page, at https://twitter.com/InkDragonWorks If you aren’t following me there yet, you should now. I won’t abandon tumblr fully, but it is more of a second thought, aside from larger posts like this.
If you read this far... thank you! I really hope I can make a game that is worth your time. Please keep an eye out for the public demo sometime next week. Happy New Year!
Made this to get accustomed to GameMaker: Studio a while back. It’s unfinished and will likely never be finished because It’s time to move on to other things, I do kinda want to add a boss at the end though.
I’m working on another game, so follow my blog to keep updated on that :)
(it’s supposed to be a gif, but if anyone wants to play it send me a note I’ll post the files somewhere or send it to you directly)
