A few months of silence, a few months nose deep in code

When I'm quiet here, the magic happens

I know, I know, it’s been awhile. My god, you must think, what is that madman doing? Well, I’m hard at work coding, that’s what! Whenever I’m quite on social media or on my devlog, it means I’m working on the game. Most specific, I’m working on non-visual stuff.

Once the map is done (and it’s done) and most of the art is done (same, except for two more sprites and one more house image), I no longer feel the need to share quite as much. I guess it’s because my updates are less visual, less appealing, less “whoa!”, and more things you can’t see, but feel when you play. The story, the puzzles, etc.

But hey, here I am, working on Candlebook Island. Yes, that’s the new title for what I’d once called Monster Heart. I have a bit of a splash page up that will have more detail soonish. Right now we’re planning on a June release on the Nintendo Switch, and then porting it to PC a few months after. Now, the June release might change, depending on a whole slew of factors.

Anyway! I love making games for the Switch first and porting them later. It’s so much easier to focus on a system where you know the gamepad they’ll be using, you know what the file system is, and you know what the button mappings are, and that they’re not using a mouse, keyboard, or the touch screen (even though touch screen is possible, most games don’t utilize it on the Switch).

Anyway! Exciting. Big cool things are coming. What until you see! The gameplay is interesting, I’m digging into storylets, created a cool engine for leveraging them for conversations and in game animations/cutscenes. I have it so you can wander around each day, finding each monster, checking their health. If they’re sick and you know how to cure it, you can buy and make the cures. If you don’t know, you can go to the library and research the cures.

All of the NPC’s have complex interactions with each other and you, as well as your mental state affecting the way your character acts/reacts. Too little sleep and you won’t be able to diagnose monsters, and might even be cranky towards your coworkers, which could have repurcusions, etc.

Anyway! Here’s the splash page-

https://candlebookisland.com

Enjoy! I’l have more info here when I can.