Entries from April 2008 ↓

Better late than never, they say. It might not be Tuesday, but here’s a little something I wanted to share anyway. (I didn’t mean for that to rhyme, but sometimes… you’ve just got it.)

Behold, the icy shores of Northlook Island!

Ta-ta! Now I must get back to doing secret game design things.

Ok, so I didn’t post anything last week. I’ve flogged myself for six hours and twenty-nine minutes for that. But, really, I didn’t want those wonderful memory stories to stop coming! Go back and post one if you didn’t already.

With the titillating title of this post, I have to deliver something. And I’m absolutely dying to share what we’re doing behind these tightly closed doors, so I’m going to allow myself a smidgen of satisfaction and show off some of the pre-Alpha art Greg has done.

First, though, what the heck is “pre-Alpha?” Am I some kind of space cadet geek or something? Actually, the game production schedule is broken into some big pieces, and we just call those ridiculously ambiguous names: pre-production, prototype, alpha, and beta. Lila Dreams is in prototype now, where we’re building the main parts of the game that will support all that fun stuff we have planned. Next comes Alpha, which means we have all the major features done (but they’re probably not very fun and definitely not refined). So, “pre-Alpha” means somewhere before Alpha.

Lesson aside, here’s what you came for. (Disclaimer: this art represents one tiny slice of the game world. Don’t go thinking it’s all about monsters and combat and stuff–that’s only one focus of several. You probably already know that if you read this blog regularly, but someone just coming here for the art might get a different impression.)

The first of our test creatures is called a Barnockle. It’s a little multi-eyed thing that sits on pretty much any surface (sticky butt, you see) and shoots out little poisonous spores at anyone who comes near. (It’s on the left, there.)

Then we have a Shakroo. This is a boney-insectoid creature that has to hop to stay alive, so it hops a lot. Just don’t let it hop on you or those pointy feet will be stabbing you in the face. In.. the.. face! That’s gotta hurt.

And then is the conflicted Wocky. Except, it’s us that is conflicted, because it seems like a gigantic, cute, furry-tailed thing. In reality, it’s nasty and mean, and tends to stun with its sonic attack. Don’t get any ideas about petting one without special preparations which are classified right now.

There you have it, some Lila Dreams art that may or may not end up in the actual release.

While the above pics are static mock-ups, they were made with the in-game art. So what you see there is how the game actually looks right now (minus the glorious multi-layer scrolling). These are not official “screenshots,” just to be clear, but they’re a really good approximation.

This week, we’re rather buried with development work, so I thought I would let you–our dear readers!–do the blogging for me.

So, here’s what I ask: tell us a brief story from your life when you were Lila’s age, 11 years old. What worlds of wonder did you create and explore as a child? Could be a place, a feeling, an adventure–tell us about it!

You get extra points if your story sounds like something Lila would experience. Hey, if it’s really good, we’ll put it (or some part of it) into the game with your permission. Wouldn’t that be cool?

From my own childhood, I remember a couple of friends and I would play in some huge crop fields in the late autumn (after harvest, I guess). My memory is of when there were no plants, so it looked like a vast, barren kingdom begging to be explored. What dangers lurked out there in these abandoned plains?

We marched around with our walking sticks and wooden swords armed, our handkerchiefs tied up and filled with supplies (the usual peanut butter sandwich and some kind of fruit drink). The cool thing about these fields was the little crystal rocks we’d always find in them: shiny gems and magical pebbles sprinkled around waiting for us.

What strikes me now is that even in my memory of the place, I never noticed the roads and houses surrounding the fields. We literally went to a different world.

How about you?