A Puzzling Thriller inspired by the Zero Escape and Danganronpa series.
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Latest Updates from Our Project:
Alise Art Updated & More
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 09:57:11 PM
Another quick Update.
Firstly, improved art for Alise:
I was expecting to just have Morgan art done today, but I ended up doing Alise instead because Morgan was a lot more finished than I had thought. All that needed to be done was improving some of the lines and colors. For the sake of making this Update larger, I'll include her art, but there wasn't all that much done to it:
When it comes to the remaining art updates, I need to do major visual updates for Li and Lillian. The Main Character,Roger and Roland just need some minor finishing touches. After all of that's done, the cast will finally be done. Scheduling out when to do the art and making progress on the game is tough. It's not ideal to still be working on the character art at this stage of development, but fortunately that's gonna be over soon. So by the end of this month, Characters will be finalized. That along with all the progress that's been made on the Challenge Rooms, the game is in a very good place.
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Next, I finished the Letter Converter Device for Challenge Room 2:
I got this "working" a while ago, but it wasn't smooth at all. It was pretty simple to get that done so I should have had it updated sooner. Either way there it is. It'll be the primary tool that you'll use to make it through Challenge Room 2.
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That's about all I have for this Update. The next one will include either Li or Lillian (ideally both). And maybe the new location that I've been working on. Also I'm still putting together the Thief Device, so that should be on the way as well. That's all for now.
Another short one - Inamori Art Updated
over 4 years ago
– Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 02:33:32 AM
The updated art for Inamori:
For comparison's sake, the original looked like this:
Not a huge change, just some proportion adjustments and making sure the art's quality is at the same level as the newer characters I made. Inamori was one of the very first characters shown at the launch of the Kickstarter, so she needed this update.
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Besides that I did some much needed bug fixes for the Demo. I also added in a Look Sensitivity control. However, as I'm typing this I realized I never uploaded the current version of the Demo, so it should be uploaded shortly after this goes up.
The most important improvements for the Demo that I'll be working on now will be:
Controller Support
Challenge Room Hints
The Thief Device
More Character Sprites & Expressions
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Like I said, this one was going to be a short update. Fortunately, things are still going pretty smoothly over here. Development has been good. For the next update I will show another updated art, probably Morgan. Regarding the big promotional artwork I'm doing, it's very far along. I've decided not to show it off right away when it's done. The plan is to finish every character's updated art, then start posting it all onto social media. When every character has been posted one by one, I'll end it all by showing off the promo art. I need to be more active on social medias anyway, so that will be good for the game.
Short Update
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 03:12:17 PM
This Update is going to be very short. I assumed things would slow down right about now in terms of how much new content I'll have to show. That's why I thought it was important to include my Development Timeline in the previous Update so that you know what I'll be doing in these slower times.
So here's what's been done since the previous Update:
I've created all of the necessary assets for the Steam Page. So that will be finished and live soon.
I began working on upscaling and improving the art for Morgan, Inamori, and Lillian. I intended to have at least one of those finished for this Update, but that didn't happen because of the next point ->
Began working on a very big piece of artwork for Thief's Roulette. It would serve as some much needed promotional material. Totally original art, so I'm not just arranging character sprites, and it includes all 15 Thieves. I probably should focus on just one task... but I like jumping between different things when it comes to drawing.
Made a little bit of progress on the NanoReno game. And I have more to talk about regarding that:
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NanoReno Game
In the previous Update I had said that I may work on a game for the annual visual novel game jam, "NanoReno." I haven't put too much time into it, but the ideas are all there. Here's the current state of it and what I now intend to do with it:
This probably looks weird. The idea was that the game was mostly visual novel, but also part adventure. You'd have your little picture at the top right, and under that would be a phone with some App that the character used. The game is actually pretty simple despite all that would be going on on the screen. No fighting or puzzles or anything like that.
If I were to stick with my plan, I could finish this little game and have it done by the end of the month. However, now I'm beginning to rethink many of the plans I've made. Not just because of the current world news, but in general, I need to get more focused. That means I need to make sure I'm doing just what I need to do. So starting now, you can consider this NanoReno game to be the mythical "Side Game" that I talked about a bunch before. I'll be bringing both of those ideas together to make something short and sweet. That game won't be done this month, but I'm aiming to have it done by May. I don't want to have anymore distractions to the completion of Thief's Roulette. So let's get that finished and out of the way.
I'll focus primarily on Thief's Roulette, and put just a little bit of my time into the Side Game. I want that done, and behind me. Best case scenario is that it's good enough to bring in some more attention to Thief's Roulette.
For the next Update, I will have one (or two?) of those Characters done. I'll probably have the big promotional art piece done, but I don't know if I'd want to show it just yet. Maybe there's a more exciting way for me to reveal it. Other than that, the next Update will likely be small again. Good things are on the way, but for now things will be slow. Till then.
It's something I mentioned way back when I was first working on Challenge Room 2 but never put the time in to get it running. It was always a pretty simple thing to do so I had set it aside while I focused on other parts of the game. Right now I'm just calling it the Letter Converter as that's what it does. You cycle through the alphabet and each letter correlates to a number. The one thing I need to improve here is the way that letters cycle through. Right now it's instant and does not look very good. I want the Letters to shift smoothly. Shouldn't be too hard to do.
This simple device will be what Challenge Room 2 revolves around. One thing I'm wondering is whether this would become a problem for the game's localization. In one of the puzzles you're supposed to gather a series of letters, unscramble them to create an English word, then convert that into a number. The puzzle is pretty cool I think, but I wouldn't want to create a rift between languages. This will be something I need to test with more diverse groups.
When it comes to Challenge Room 2, the physical structure (blockout) of it has been done for months. The same goes for Challenge Rooms 3, 4 and 5. The puzzles in CRoom 2 are not all functional in game, but they've been figured out months ago as well. I'm at the stage of development where I have a ton of work planned and ready to be put together, and that feels pretty good.
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I've been doing bug fixes for the Demo and some other smaller things. I was thinking about Updating it again tonight, but the changes were pretty small. I'll probably spend a couple more days trying to get some more noticeable improvements in place then get the Demo updated again.
The Demo is in a good spot, but I want to keep making improvements. Watching the game progress has been pretty cool. It has come a long way since the Kickstarter campaign. Like I said earlier, I'm very far along with the Challenge Rooms. There's still much work to be done, but I feel good about the pace that I've been working. It gets tough going at it for hours, but watching things evolve makes it a lot more doable.
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Onto the (immediate) Development Timeline:
March: This might come as a shock since I said I've been working at a good pace, but I'll maybe take a shot at the Nanoreno 2020 event that starts tomorrow. I have a little (very little) game that I would like to do. Nanoreno is a month long visual novel game jam. So you have just March to make a game. Before Thief's Roulette I really enjoyed taking part in game jams and I haven't done one in a long time (almost 2 years now). So I might make a short game during March. That being said, I won't make anything that's so big that it would take away from making any progress on Thief's Roulette. This gives me a chance to spend time on the smaller aspects of the game. For instance, I want to make more Character Expressions, continue demo bug fixes and small features, and do some writing. I also want to put together a Steam page for Thief's Roulette. These are all things that aren't major time investments so I can do them and put some time into the Nanoreno game. That's March.
April: Nanoreno game would be done. Besides serving as a much needed creative vacation from Thief's Roulette, I also have the chance of getting more attention as a developer. I think I could reach a different audience with this small game, and hopefully convert them to be interested in Thief's Roulette as well. As far as Roulette development goes, I'll finish Challenge Room 2 this month. That means finalizing visuals and puzzles. That won't take the entire month, so I'll also be rolling out the most official art for each of the 15 Thieves. I know that's a weak point of the game's draw at the moment. So in April I will have full res art for every character.
May: I really wanted Demo 2 to land in May, but it might take another couple weeks from this point. I have a lot of story stuff that I need to get done that will take a while. So, May will be finalizing Demo 2. I've got ideas for marketing the game more at this time as well. I can explain when we get closer.
June:Demo 2 is finished and released. This will be another turning point for the game, as this will be the first look at the game's actually introduction and setup. It'll be like playing from the start of the game rather than being dropped into a specific moment. The game will also be at its most polished, and I think I could get it in front of some content creators to spread the word. For development, I go straight into Challenge Room 3 and 4.
July: I'll be continuing development of Thief's Roulette, simply working on whatever I want at this point. The game will likely totally documented, so all that needs to happen is me just grinding out the work and getting it done. I'm planning to get a 3rd Trailer done by July, but it might come earlier.
I've planned beyond this point but I'd rather get further along before saying more.
Overall, things have been very good. Interest in the game has been increasing slowly but surely. Progress is going great and I'm feeling a lot more motivated to work on the game.
The next Update I will probably have Character Art, Demo progress, and a look at the Nanoreno game (if I make one). Besides that I'll probably be working on boring stuff.
Some Progress and Thief Device Improvements
almost 5 years ago
– Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 03:07:28 PM
This Update won't be too big, as I've been spending most of my time getting the Demo right. I don't have too much new content to show off just yet. Regarding the Demo, I made another update to it on Monday. That's playable here:
The biggest changes were the new location attached to the Dream/Tutorial, and a new final puzzle for Challenge Room 1:
It builds off of the rolling Wheel Puzzle, and serves as a much better finale for the Challenge Room.
As you can see here, I've finally made a Thief's Roulette video (not including Trailers). I managed to upgrade some of my computer parts, so I can start making more videos. I was going to have a separate Youtube channel specifically for the game, but I'll just use this one instead. I still want to do some Twitch Development Streams, but I'll need to get that all setup first.
I've made some visual improvements, and got the different menus displaying. I believe I went over what each menu did, but I'll go do it again just in case:
Home: The big panel in the center will serve as a recap for what's going on at the current moment in the game. So if you stop playing and return to the game after a while, you can read up on what's happened. There will be some other flavor text and visuals once it's all put together.
Thieves: Just a list of all of the Thieves along with some basic details about them.
Notes: You can take notes whenever you want, but they're most useful during Challenge Rooms. It doesn't "work" yet, but I can crudely draw lines on it. I don't expect its drawing capabilities to be perfect or anything, I just think it could be helpful for remembering things during the puzzles.
Calc: It will be a simple calculator.
Getting all of this functioning won't be too hard. What will be tough is making this thing look good. Lots of dead space at the moment, and I'm not too sure what to fill it with. Maybe I'll have some visuals in the background? Not too sure exactly what to do but I'll figure it out.
So this Update was a little light on content, but progress has been made. In the next Update I'll show how far the Thief Device has come, along with whatever else I get done. Probably the Hints system for Challenge Rooms? I've been talking about that for a while and still didn't put it in, so that's something I could work on. That's all for now.
