Posts from February + March 2025

30/3/2025 - Fishing and Shopping

Hey! I just made it in time for another monthly post. I don't really mean for them to be monthly, but I just haven't felt like writing until now. (^^;)

I've been well otherwise, though, and I've managed to stay busy with dev-work. This post will mostly be talking about more progress making the game's map, and the newly created fishing content!

But first...

Dividing

In terms of major development decisions, I've actually decided that I'll be breaking Scarred By Heaven into two standalone games. I'd been planning to release it two parts for a while, but the second part was always intended to be an update to the first game--however I've realized that it's probably much smarter and easier just to make these two parts standalone games.

The second game will still be a direct continuation of the first part's story, and will still carry over a lot of the same core gameplay and world layout, but it being an entirely separate game with it's own unique content will give me a lot more room to add new things and change aspects from the first game, without the risk of having to constantly mess around with making the Part 1 content fully adaptable to Part 2 and vice versa. It'll also hopefully make things feel much more manageable from a balancing and planning standpoint. :)

Ever since the game's inception, I've been very attached to the admittedly naïve idea of SBH being one very large game, as the potential for all of the interconnecting gameplay systems and side content was very appealing to me. It was to the point where I honestly never seriously considered separate standalone games as an option, despite that now seeming like an obviously much easier way to cut down my workload as a solo developer. I guess it's a lesson in not fixating so hard on goals set early in a project's lifespan, because they can blind you to simpler ways of doing things.

Regardless, I'm sure Gamemaker is relieved that I won't be suffocating it with the full load of all the game's assets in one project file--I might already be pushing the version I use to it's limits with Part 1 alone. Sometimes I swear I can hear it creaking when I boot it up...

Shopping and Housing

The bulk of the work I've been doing over the past month has been plucking away at making overworld interior locations, and have managed to finish most of the stores around the map. The graphics are still a little unfinished, but they're all fully functional gameplay wise.

I've also made the interior of Lana's house--where Saki stays during the game. Her bedroom is where you can save the game, upgrade abilities and enter training mode.

It's kind of barren compared to Gale's apartment. Lana doesn't have very many hobbies...

I'd like to have a little mechanic where you can decorate Saki's bedroom a little by placing things on the shelf and walls.

Fishing

Maybe the most exciting news for me is that I've finally had the chance to make SBH's fishing minigame--something I've had in mind since the beginning of development. (Which is now almost six years ago!?)

Given that it's probably going to be most substantial side-games in terms of content, I've wanted to do something more unique and action-y than the typical QTEs seen in most fishing minigames, and place some focus on the individual species themselves. I ended up settling on an abstract "shoot"-em-up concept, in which every fish has a unique bullet attack pattern, and catching them requires you to navigate your lure through their assault and wear down their HP!

...It's kind of ridiculous, but I do really enjoy how it's turned out. You damage the target fish with the circular aura you get while in the slow "focus" mode, and its damage increases based on how close you are to the enemy. I think it creates an interesting 'push' and 'pull' to the way you have to navigate the waves of bullets--that could probably be interpreted as analogous to struggling against a fish hooked on a line, somehow.

There's planned to be a few different fishing spots with their own fish to catch. Progression is tracked by the amount of unique species you've caught, and there'll be a small sidestory that provides rewards for hitting certain milestones (EG. 5 species caught, 10 caught without taking damage, etc.), with the ultimate goal being to catch them all--probably about 30 species in total. I'd also like to include a small aquarium area where you can view all the species you've caught in-person and relax.

Fishing minigames have become kind of a jokey trope for indie games in the past few years, and while I can't deny the silliness was a motivating factor in wanting to add one in the first place, I do actually have a lot of serious passion for it here! I've been very fond of marine life for a long time, so it's a fun opportunity for me to be able to engage with that artistically, as well as a good excuse to learn more about it. It's a little strange to say out of context, but I also think the fishing plays an important role in SBH's general theming.

Hopefully you'll enjoy learning about sea life alongside Saki...

Personal Notes

Thank you for reading!

You know, despite loving both the ocean and sea creatures, I actually have pretty bad thalassophobia. I don't mind seeing pictures and footage of deep water spaces, but it makes playing swimming-based levels in video games extremely difficult sometimes. Games like Subnautica leave me in a funny dilemma of simultaneously marveling at the beauty of the aquatic ecosystem, while also being too terrified to ever imagine myself actually playing the game. I don't actually know where it started, since I've never had any negative experiences related to water. Honestly, my best guess is that it's from when I was a child, and had a brief period in which I became scared that the alien fish from Feeding Frenzy 2 was real and might try to get me.

But anyway, I think I've been doing well over the last month. I've been putting a lot of my attention towards preparing to move to a new apartment, which is still few months off, but still very exciting for me anyway. Unfortunately between that, working on SBH, working at my real job, and playing computer games, I kind of neglected this site and the blog. Sorry. (^^;)

Over the past few months, I've also been on a kick of playing through some of the old Touhou Project games, which is actually what planted the current concept of SBH's fishing gameplay in my head.

I haven't seriously played many shoot-em-ups/bullet hell games in the past, and kind of assumed the genre wasn't for me because I didn't think I was a fan of super finite dodging and the 'defensive' focus of the gameplay in general--but it turns out I'm actually a little addicted to it, though. Touhou's incredibly stressful to play and I'm not very good at it, but I get a lot of adrenaline out of that. It's like a very lame extreme sport for me. :)

I've also really liked seeing all the personality that goes into the spell cards--I always enjoy games that place most of their focus on unique boss fights, and I've really started to appreciate how much variety and potential there can be in gameplay that's as mechanically simple as just dodging bullets.

Making my own in SBH has been a lot of fun, even if they're still pretty simple so far. I do actually find it weirdly fun to conceptualize attack patterns for marine animals based on their appearance and behavior. Something like a blue-ringed octopus already looks perfectly suited to elaborate projectile attacks, right? Right...?

- Swallowed by the Tetris Effect, HSTopaz

15/2/2025

Hello! I wish I could say I've been busy since the last post, but I've actually been slacking off a little by my own standards. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing...

New Phantom Enemy Types

I've managed to finish the game's first 'long battle'--basically a combat segment consisting of multiple small fights across different screens, akin to a traditional beat-em-up. The fight takes place in the 'Otherworld', so I finished up the attacks and animations of the two new Phantom enemy types I designed a while ago so they could join in.

I've got a short video showing them off here!

^ And some early concept art from about a year ago.

The monster designs are a lot of fun to come up with. The theme of 'warped mannequins' gives me a lot of freedom to do more unique attacks, so it's a nice change of pace from animating punches all the time. They've surprisingly turned out much easier to sprite than normal humans--I guess because I don't have to pay as much attention to keeping proportions or other details very realistic.

Though to be honest, I did intentionally design the gown one to be as simple to animate as possible... but I swear there's still narrative significance to it as well! And all of the Phantom designs! Really! (^^;)

Overworld Work & Other Things...

Other than that, I've mostly been up to my usual work of making maps and cutscene code. I've managed to get the beach and mall areas into a playable state, which means that every major area of the overworld is complete! I've also finished the game's first small minigame, though for story reasons, I'll be keeping the details of it to myself for now...

Now that I'm in the weeds of creating the core content of the game, I think I've settled on the made-up term 'carnival sandbox' to describe the style of the game's optional content; a small but dense overworld full of a variety of different minigames and sidestories to explore at the player's leisure--like being at a carnival! This vision will probably be limited by my lack of manpower, but I'll do my best.

I do find creating small, gimmicky games to be a lot of fun, though I usually have trouble making anything like that as a standalone product since a lot of my interest in game development also comes from the 'artistic' side of things like characters and story, and that's a lot harder for me to come up with on the fly. The format of SBH's sandbox helps with that, though, since the artistic context is always just 'Saki is doing something weird in her free time', and so I can focus on just making the gameplay.

Next up in development, I'm probably going to take another detour to work on the fishing minigame, since I've reached the point in the story where it shows up, and I've recently been struck with inspiration for a (hopefully) unique and interesting way of handling it. After that, I'll probably work on implementing more of the overworld's functionality, and then work on the rest of Chapter 2's cutscenes.

Though, I think as soon as I finish writing this post, I'm actually going to try and refactor some of the menu code. It's kind of disgusting in there. (^^;)

Personal Notes

I've been in kind of an odd mood regarding my creative works lately--I think all the running around between social media accounts when I was releasing the demo brought me down a little. Not that making announcement posts on four websites is especially tiring work, but I think the promotional side of development gets in my head too much.

'Marketing' your work is usually a necessary part of making a creative project online if you want many people to end up seeing it, but there's an implicit need to post frequently, as well as constant performance meters in the amount of views and followers you get--which are very hard to ignore, for me at least. 😔

It has a weird effect of sometimes making me think more about what to post about the game than actually making the game itself, which I'd much rather be doing... but maybe I'm just weak-willed for letting it dominate my thoughts so much. (^^;)

Either way, I really want to take a way more laid back approach to that kind of thing. I'm thinking about maybe reformatting the site a little to be a bit more 'generalized' and less entirely focused on SBH. All the current content will remain, but I'd probably give myself a little more space to post about other things I'm interested in besides the game. I'm hoping it might take some of that weird 'marketing' pressure off, and keep what I post online as pure fun stuff I feel like sharing.

This blog might change a little with that. I would still focus a lot on the game's development, but it might be nice to also use it as a space to talk about other things more often--not that I have anything specific in mind.

Thank you for reading, anyway. Until next time!

- HSTopaz

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Bonus: A wonderful photo I took on a walk the other day.