The Candle is a puddle, the flame flickering near dark
Getting Candlebook Island set to go to the publisher
Oh my, what an intense past few days. I’ve been debugging, fixing bugs, and changing small things here and there, but I think…yes, dare I say it? It’s ready. I found myself losing hours just playing the game for awhile there, and that was a very happy thing. To realize that it was fun, addictive, and immersive still.
When you’re in the middle of testing and coding and testing and coding you lose sight of the end goal, you’re focused primarily on fixing all these little things (no more big things anymore, thankfully) and to get it right. So that you have no idea how it will play, if it will be fun, any of that. You’re just exhausted and worn thin.
And then you let a day go by and you think “I’ll just play it to play it”. And that’s when the fun happens. You can see if all that hard work paid off, and I think, in this case, it really has. It’s a game with no end goal. You just wander around, healing sick monsters. New monsters come to the island every so often, you get letters from home, and there are several small subplots involving the NPC’s you can get involved with (or not, if you don’t want to). These little subplots carry an emotional core to the game, which I think is a wonderful little touch.
Before I knew it, I’d passed 14 days “in game”, playing for a few hours without even realizing it. The maps did exactly what I wanted them to do, as well. I was going for an emotional memory, a feeling from hours past that I’ve had at various moments in my life. Working the Medieval Faire during the summers of High School and College. Working at various other parks and haunted houses through the same years.
Riding my bike at night on the beach in my hometown, going past the tall spire of a resort hotel. Hearing people talk, the way the lights look when I walk at night through the city. The times I’ve spent on vacations, the way convention centers look at night, once the people start drifting away. There is an emotional feeling to all of that, and I think I captured it, somehow.
Also, it’s pretty damned funny and goofy and that’s great. The names of the illnesses, some of the monsters you care for, and the character of the Crowspeaker had me in stitches. Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s lame to laugh at your own jokes. I am lame. I admit it.
It’s ready to go off to the publisher now, and that means sometime next month or so it’s going to be launched on the Nintendo Switch. I’m going to spend the weekend updating the websites connected to Candlebook Island. The main website, the Riddlefox Website (which I plan on redoing), and my personal site at pauljessup.com. After that, maybe a trailer. I’m not sure how I would do the trailer for this one, I dunno.
But I will say this, it’s a fun cozy game. Something you pick up and play for a few hours to relax and smile. I cannot wait to show it to all of you, so you can see exactly what I’m talking about. After it’s out on the Nintendo Switch for a few months it will be ported to PC/Mac/Linux and the Steamdeck.
I like my games being Nintendo first now. It’s easier building a game for a single console, you don’t have to worry about a billion different kinds of hardware and inputs. You have this exact screen, this exact graphics card, this exact controller, this exact gamepad. Blammo! It’s wonderful. Juggling all the different things for PC games…yowza. No fun.
Anyway! Onward and upward. I can’t wait to you guys see this one. It’s so much fun.
