UPDATES & WIPS - 28/4/26
Busy, busy, busy! I've been chipping away at lots of projects and some other stuff I've been meaning to get around to between my classwork.
Quantainium: Rays of Crystallum
I've decided to focus on developing one of the games my fictional Video Game Studio, Quantainium, would have published. This first one being: Rays of Crystallum. In story, it's an RPG Co-Op monster collecting & battling game, with a story focused on teaching kids about endangered animals and the environment.
As a project (so, what you & me could hypothetically play in the future) the intent here is: It's going to be like a nostalgic pokemon game, except, the story is a lot darker than you remember, and maybe that video game company you loved so much wasn't actually that great of a place in reality, which really raises the questions of what else were they up to... (cause you know, Poppy/FNaF inspiration, wink, wink).
Gameplay: Side-scroller RPG, with a turn-based combat system like GBA era Pokemon, or Nexomon, except, instead of the attacks' auto happening once you choose them, you enter a full-action combat phase where you have a limited amount of time to execute the moves you've chosen and hit your enemy.
Here's a little mock-up I made to explain it to a friend who knows coding to figure out if this idea is viable or not (which, he said it would be. Just a MASSIVE work load to do all the sprite and animation work for a whole 'Pokédex' worth of enemies ).
Thoughts? I know I have a mostly THSC or Poppy Playtime following here, but I'm genuinely interested in some feedback, if this is the sort of things folks would be interested in seeing as a finalised project.
Rays of Crystallum (Old-school Pokemon-esk gameplay (with turn-based full-action combat) meets Poppy Playtime/FNaF-esk horror story)
Interesting concept, show me more >:)
The gameplay idea sucks, give me the story as a comic!
The story idea sucks, give me the turn-based full-action combat instead!
This sounds like a terrible idea full stop (Gameplay & Story)
Toppat Clan Rising
We are making fabulous progress folks! I've been chipping away at Ch.10 the last week, jumping between that one and a couple new chapters to support the aftermath. I am SO excited for this story. I just love it the more I work on it :)
Ch.9 has a new stuff at the start! Ch.10 has too many jumps in time, so one of those scenes I've moved one to the previous chapter to help cut it down as it was feeling jarring. So check that out!
Ch.10 is just shy of 3,000 words, and I'm down to one last big scene to write (the most important one, ironically). It's been a hard chapter to figure out, which is why it's taken me this long. I've been struggling to balance the side characters personalities and actions, especially Manaaki (& Macbeth's interaction). We know by Lost Children Manaaki hates Macbeth and I know the reason why, so the challenge for me has been balancing the before that why happens with the fact he thinks Macbeth's a jerk, without falling into that stereotypical "We'll he's an asshole at our first interaction, so I'm going to treat him like one back forever now!"
Here's a snippet of Ch.10 (this is still a first draft btw):
“Hey,” Manaaki called, pulling Macbeth from his thoughts. The kid had dropped back to join Macbeth at the groups rear. His smile was slightly crooked, a clear attempt at trying to be friendly despite how obvious it was to all 4 of them that Macbeth was the problem here, and if they could snap their fingers to make him disappear, they would. “How you holding up?” Macbeth didn’t answer, figuring like his mentor, Manaaki didn’t actually care for his response. However, that didn’t seem to be the case. “You keep staring at the fog like it’s going to jump out at you or something,” There was a slightly chuckle to his words, slight amusement. However, the kid followed it up with, “It is pretty bad this morning, huh? It’ll clear up soon, tho! I give it about half-an-hour, once the sun gets a bit higher on the horizon. So, you don’t need to worry about it for too much longer.” Macbeth caught a glance of Simon and Blackout staring at him with two matching looks of disgust. Why can’t he be anywhere but here. “Alright.” Manaaki said, “Keep your silence. But an away party leader’s job is to make sure everyone in their team is okay, even IF I disagree with Hōkū shoving you onto it. So, if you need anything… just call out, okay?” “…”
As you can see, still more work to be done to get it to read nice, but the meat and bones are about all there now.
Righty'o, I return to my productivity cave now :)
