 Hey, this is Brett and this video is a little bit of a simulated pitch to the general public and friends and myself for this project that I'm working on. This turn-based retro-inspired fantasy RPG. I built up the prototype and shared a devlog video of that where I have maps loading, there's some simple work in combat, and I want to transition to the next phase of the project which is actually building out the game, and I feel really ready and prepared to do that. I thought it'd be fun to kickstart this next phase of the project by putting together this slideshow. So the overarching project in the world is called Elegion, which comes from the word Elegy and this new order song called Oesia, and then just tagging on in. So that is what I want to call this project in this game. I'll start off with some basic info about the project. It's a fantasy RPG set in a world at war, which might be a little generic, but I need to not worry about being generic right now. I instead want to focus on building and making a game, which I think is hard enough in its own, and I hope that within this trope of a fantasy world that's pretty common, I can tell some interesting stories. So the world is called Elegion, and it'll be a story told in chapters. This pitch document is focused on the first chapter, and I'm not worried too much about the chapters beyond it, because I think that will become more clear in time. It's really important to me to be able to tell these small personal stories in this world, while also telling this larger, more epic tale and stories beyond it. So that's something on the forefront of my mind. And I'd like to start with a small piece of the bigger picture, which means telling one small limited story about one character who will eventually be entangled in the rest of the game. So the first chapter is going to be called Kino's Revenge, which is about the main character, Kino, who we'll learn more about soon, seeking revenge for something that happens, that I will also explain here. So Kino is a sword for hire. She returns home from a battle, only to find her home, a flame, smoldering fire, and her husband and daughter are missing. So this sort of, that's the sort of catalyst for the story of Chapter Line and Kino's life changing. So I want it to be about three hours long. I think that would be a really solid amount of gameplay. I want to really limit the scope for this first chapter, because I think if I have a solid foundation where I can tell a story and build RPG, and I can finish and release that, I can build upon that for the future chapters and keep layering it on until it gets to be this larger game. So here are ways that I want to limit the scope to prevent it from growing larger. Combat is going to be one versus one. So there won't be enemy select or there won't be party select. So I'll keep it pretty simple. There will just be attacks and magic income, attacks and items in combat, no magic yet. The story will be pretty linear, no formal side quests, so there's not like a quest tracking system or anything like that. Maybe there will be some things in the world you can do and interact with, but it won't give you a quest log, right? The quest is one, which is the story, which is getting revenge. I want to start the production, which I guess I'm technically starting it with this, but I want to write the script and have the script fully written so that it's, that's ready to go and then it's just about producing the game, coding it, making the art and the audio. Equipment will only have two slots for weapon and your armor and there'll be a limited number of those, like maybe five of those, maybe three even. I don't think there needs to be a tons and there's a short game, but I want to get that system of equipment and items built out. So I'm going to embrace constraints in a few different ways. The resolution of the game is going to be 480 by 270 pixels, that's like the native resolution that the assets will be displayed at. And then for different screen sizes, right, it'll scale up and be really pixelated, which I like that style. I think this resolution after doing some experimenting is nice enough where text can be displayed and rendered in a legible way without having to use really short abbreviations with it, but I also can use a pixel font and then it'll store, still have that like retro feel. It also is a resolution where I can use smaller sprites, which will help me be able to produce the art in a way that allows me to work pretty quickly and not have to worry about something like medium sized sprites. I think with a higher fidelity is a lot of work and it kind of starts to step until like almost like oh what if it was an illustrated style and I don't want to work with that for this project, but that could be something in the future. That resolution, it's 16 by 9, which I think is a really common aspect ratio for a lot of different platforms and will scale nicely. The resolution will be, that's about two times the Game Boy Advance resolution. Game Boy Advance resolution is three by two, so it's a bit taller than 16 by nine, but that's okay. Tiles will be 16 by 16 on maps and a lot of the like character sprites and those kinds of things will also be 16 by 16 pixels. I'm going to use the JMP 16 color palette, color palette, which it's a little blurry here, but it's got 16 colors. They're quite limited. It's missing like a bright yellow and a few other colors that would be nice, but I think by limiting the colors, I can create a visual style that is unique to the game and prevents me from being overwhelmed from like which colors to pick. So I'm going to use a limited color palette and then combat will be first person with no view of the party, a lot like Dragon Quest. So key features. I'm going to be able to save anywhere because that's really important to me. I don't like save points like crystals in Final Fantasy and the kind of priest or the kings in Dragon Quest because I just, I don't know, sometimes I want to stop playing and I think the save points are kind of arbitrary. So I want to use save anywhere a lot like the ease games. I think they handle that really well. No random encounters because I think that it's a little annoying and I'd like to at least be able to see them and maybe there's a chance of being able to run away from certain enemies. So I want to make it so you're not just like three steps fight, three steps fight. I think that flow can, is it kind of not super fun? So the enemies will initiate the combat. I want the combat to move really quickly. So especially since this is so simple with the 1v1 combat, I want it to move quickly and go from starting the battle to being out of the battle and back into the world quickly quickly. And then for cut scenes and storytelling, there are two main ways I want to do this. One is just by text boxes when you're interacting with NPCs in the world. And those are pretty simple. And then some more complex scenes that display character portraits like visual novels with some fading, maybe some screen shaking and that kind of stuff. But not really focused on animation here or yeah, any sort of animation, just maybe some limited rudimentary animation but trying to instead focus on like most value in terms of storytelling with a limited amount of development effort because of how, because one is the first product of significance for me and two because I think the timeline is pretty small. So or it's like pretty short timeline and I want to embrace that constraint too and make the most of it. So inspirations, this is the fun part and this is what I've been steeping myself in lately, which is things that I want to draw from and leverage to build this world in this game. So it'll be primarily Game Boy Advance and Super Nintendo inspired. I really like those systems and a lot of the art and the fidelity of it all I think is quite nice. Primarily Dragon Quest 4, I played that on the DS and loved that game. I think the way it tells the chapter stories of the characters and then they eventually come together mirrors what I want to do with Elysian. Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger of course they're all kind of contemporaries but I really want to pull on those. Here's some screenshots of some games. We've got Fire Emblem and the upper left. I really like the interface and the art of Fire Emblem, especially the character portraits. I think they're done really well. Really great pixel art on the Game Boy Advance. To the right of that, so I'll go in clockwise order, is a screenshot from Bravely Default, which is a game from 3DS. So it's kind of 3D, the textures look 2D almost like concept art and I just like the colors and the style of that world and the combat of Bravely Default is quite nice. To the right of that then is this game for the, it's like a newer game, a homebrew game for the Genesis called Pier Solar and that was one of the indie game resurgence of classic RPGs. I really like the sprite work and the UI and there are different aspects of it that I like so I thought that would be fun to pull on it from a modern context. Then we've got Zelda in the Minish Camp. Zelda, the main draws from Zelda will be the world sprites, the title sprites. I think it's got really great visual style and then below that is Pokemon. I think Pokemon has this great visual style too so I think on the Game Boy Advance those two games in particular look fantastic and I want to leverage those. Then to the left of that, this has a weird filter on it, the screenshot I found. It's from the Mana game on the Game Boy Advance. I think the pixel art is really nice in it without this effect but I like, I want to draw from that world and that style. Then in the lower left it's a screenshot from Mother 3. I think Mother 3 style in the way that works is it's like as a game and as a visual style is. It's funny, it's humorous, it's telling a bigger story. I like the black outlines that that game is like pretty committed to in its style especially for the characters and the simplistic art with the strong color. I think that's a big draw for me where then if you look one above that's Final Fantasy 6 which was remade for the Game Boy Advance and all the pixel art is quite a bit busier so I want to think that visual style I'd like it to be more like Mother 3 but there's a lot about Final Fantasy that I like and from the character portraits to the text to the fonts so anyway this is kind of like a mood board of games. Other inspirations would be Berserk, Lord of the Rings, Nausicaa, Earthsea, A Summer Race and Fire, Dark Souls, Dungeons and Dragons and the Ease series so those are all more like maybe like mood inspirations, setting inspirations it's kind of just like generic fantasy in a lot of ways. I like darker fantasy particularly like Dark Souls and Berserk and the Summer Race and Fire so I'd like to take those and infuse those certain elements of it maybe with the storytelling and a little bit of the world. I'd also have a little bit of fun and cute and whimsy so I don't know if I'll be able to pull that off or if I'll just lean one way or the other but I think those are the things I love and then I think I'll draw upon for the project. In terms of style I want it to be colorful but we'll have the limited color palette. It will definitely be cute because I think a lot of the things I do end up being cute and a little whimsical but I still want to be able to tell a serious story and maybe have some darker elements of it so that's this sort of line I'll have to tell that will be a fun challenge. The primary visual inspiration is Akihiko Ishida. Absolutely love his work. He did work designs for Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ochre and like the New York game. It's a bunch of different things. Final Fantasy mainline games. I think his art is just amazing. His older art especially the Final Fantasy Tactics art is simple. It's cute but it's not like cute to the point where I don't know I feel like it's still able to be taken seriously and able to convey emotion. I like that the characters don't have noses. I think it's really funny and just like his style that's like signature Yoshida so maybe there won't be noses I don't know but also he was the primary character designer for Bravely Default and I just I love his his style. I think that's the main influence I want to happen for this. Other visual inspirations. In the upper left that's from Nausicaa. In the middle that's Breath of Fire. To the upper right is Berserk. Then we have some concept art or like some illustrative art for ease. Terranigma and then some Studio Ghibli like world art and I really like like vertical castles and places cut into stone and things like Mobius so yeah those are just some other mood board images. Sound I'm not sure of. In my head I've been thinking it would be cool to have really like piano driven music that is maybe like classical maybe a little jazzy but I think this is totally up in the air because I'm not capable of making music at this exact moment that I would feel good about so I'll either have to go hard and like learn or have someone make the music which is like TBD so I'm not sure about sound. Really quick about combat. It'll be menu based. Really driven by Dragon Quest and some simple aspects of Dungeons and Dragons but it'll be pretty simple. There'll be stats and leveling. Stats will be limited for chapter one. Enemies. These are the ones that I have in mind for the first chapter. Magic mushrooms just because I drew a mushroom and I like it. It'll be Slimes because I feel like it's fun to pay homage to Dragon Quest and I really like Slimes. Bats, Goblins and Bandits and there'll be a mid boss and a final boss. Maybe there'll be more monsters and I really think that will be a fun draw in this project and future projects is making the enemies and kind of yeah building out the the BC area so excited to do that but I think this is where I'll start. There'll be a few regions in the first chapter. There'll be a field, there'll be a first town dungeon. That should be dungeon one with a typo with a mid boss. Then we'll go to field three, town two and then there'll be a cave with the final boss and then maybe I'll throw in some like bonus dungeon. That will have some like cool stuff to do after you finish the game for chapter one. The approach for releasing the game is well first the primary goal is to finish it and release it. That's what success is for this project. There's no other success metrics other than finishing it and releasing it. I want to release it for free for as many platforms in stores as possible because I want as many people as possible to play it and I think for first project for something that's like short limited in scope I think it makes sense and sounds good to me. So I'm going to start with itch because it's free and easy to publish on. I'll release it for web and for windows because I think web is nice in that you can just go to the page and play it and the prototype works fine there. I understand what's going on with the web. Limitations of the web are the colors look a little off and there might be a little like weirdness at times with the sound but in general it works pretty well and then I'll release it for windows because windows is probably like the highest most popular platform for games. And people playing games then I'll release it on macOS and Linux following up with that and then I would like to try to put it on Steam, good old games, Epic, etc. I just don't know much about that process so I'll have to learn and do all that kind of stuff. So then after that I think it would be really interesting to put the game on iOS and Android. Is this possible with the technology I'm using? So that would be cool. They could spur controllers or could have a little touch screen interface but that's like a significant amount of work so I'd want to make sure it's worth it, worth that effort and if it goes well and maybe there's a bit of it on consoles I don't know but that has the whole thing where games have to be certified and rated by the ESRB and all the stuff that probably isn't worth it at this point for like free project but maybe once the game like that Elegion as a whole is finished and all the chapters are built like down the line and maybe it could be cool to put it on consoles but it could be something worth learning about at least. So with this project chapter one and specific I want to establish the world, I want to establish ourselves like myself and whoever else is working on the project. I think there's opportunities to collaborate with people so I'm talking to friends and people to see what that's going to be like and I love the public fan base of people who are interested in the world and interested in future chapters of the game and other games that I make. Timeline, right now I'm recording this it's October so maybe like the 11th I think so it's early October I don't know how 11 days of October passed already but I'm like ramping up and starting full production and then I want to have the scope of what I've outlined here to be ready to polish and QA test and make as bug free as possible in January so giving myself three months to build the project which I think seems realistic but I guess I'll find out because this is my first time doing it committing to a project this large and then I would like to aim to release it in February 2022 so I don't know we'll see how realistic that is I have no idea but just based on current progress and just like continuing to cut the scope down I hope that's possible and if not it'll be a grand learning experience. In terms of marketing the project I'm going to keep making these devlog videos and writing up articles like blog posts that are companions to this or maybe are better served visually to share the process of making the game I want to release in progress builds on itch so that people can play it and see it and get a sense of how the development's going and just like engage with the community on building out the project I want to share the art and works in progress as they're made and just be able to create yeah share the momentum and show the things that are being made because I think it's really fun and motivating to share stuff share information about the world and the world building the characters I think that's a really fun aspect of a game I'm going to be transparent about this journey because I'm sure I'll learn a lot and hopefully it could help other people who want to make games too and then here are my thoughts for after chapter one is finished so once chapter one is done I want to work on chapter two which will have expanded systems like maybe 3v3 combat and a party and maybe starting to introduce some magic and expanding the world a little bit and sort of just like follow that up from chapter one I think it will be a really natural progression I think it will still be called a lesion but it'll just be called chapter two and maybe it'll be a way to like skip chapter two or load your state data if you've played chapter one and it would still be a smaller story though it wouldn't be this like big story I have in mind but it would tie in and lay some foundation for that larger story I think it'll also be free because it'll be small and short and it's about establishing myself less about making money and then once that's finished this is like a ways out maybe chapter three chapter four chapter five I don't know the kind of like steps of the chapters but eventually what will happen is like I'll sort of have these early chapters that are limited done and maybe like some systems and styles and things will get backported to past chapters as they evolve but generally there will come a point where it's like the sort of like demo where these free chapters are out finished and then I want to tell this bigger story in the world and I think it'd be cool to either kickstart it or just make it and then release it as a paid game but that's probably like more than a year away at least so I'm not too worried about that but that's kind of just like a thought or an idea that immediate next steps for me are take the prototype which has a working combat loading maps and some other rudimentary systems I'm going to write the script I'm going to do that right after I finish this video and then I'm going to build out the game with like a bunch of placeholder art and like initial past art so it'd be really cool to be able to play the game the chapter one from start to finish with placeholder stuff right I'll just make some really simple quick art tie together the maps write like integrate the dialogue and sort of like add the ability to progress from place to place and that'll drive out a bunch of the stuff I need to code then I'm going to take an iterative past based approach for everything that means taking that placeholder art going through making another pass on it and improving the quality of it the look of it taking sound effects or music or anything I put in doing another pass on it playing the game seeing how it feels iterate on again keep making passes till things get to a really good quality reviewing for typos adding a bit of polish and keep this mindset of finished is better than perfect and I want to release this and finish it that's like the most important thing I don't want to make unnecessarily a perfect game or like not trying to be like I'm not trying to do anything other than start and finish a releases game and don't necessarily need to or want to make a statement with it I just want to make a game I'll have to figure out the music and sound effects that's TBD and then I'll polish it all up and keep making those passes until it gets ready to release it and call it done and say this is like version one of checker one of Alicia so that's the plan yeah thanks thanks a lot for watching this and following along and hope you keep following along with this project and yeah I'll keep sharing what I learn I'm really excited and I hope that you are too all right thank you bye