Heyo all! đź‘‹ – Another month has past and that means another chunky update on the dev for my game “Chirp Chirp” – a lighthearted precision platformer where you help a little bird find their way back home!
This past month has been super fun and busy, where I’ve finally been able to start focusing on content dev for the game. I took some time to explore some initial look-dev to try and hammer out some initial vibes for the game. Started to mess around with posterizing the overall look, which led to some happy accidents (banded shadows add a nice punch). I’m also trying to bring some key colours back into the mix which I’ll need to play around with more, but having greyscale mix with a couple of accent colours (with some nice bloom etc.) feels pretty cool. I’ve also been chicken-scratching some Key Art ideas, but more on that later!
There has also been a big push in getting the first 20 levels + hub (rest area) up and running, and that has been a fun experience. The prototype only had 6 levels, and some playtesters clocked in anywhere from 20 – 40+ minutes (with a lot of backtracking). So now with the first 20 levels, the ramp-up in challenge is smoother, while still giving more time for the player to learn each new move they unlock. Currently folks are clocking in their playthroughs at around 30 – 50+ minutes (which is where I was aiming for), so with another 40+ levels added, I’m hoping to get around 2 – 3 hours of gameplay from start to finish (easier said then done of course!).
The other super exciting push for this month is getting to prep onboarding for two amazing contractors joining me in late September through October. Caitlin Rego will be helping out with concept support, with a big focus on designing the small set of characters for the game, along with Key Art for marketing, and some level concept explorations! Then Jessica Hopkins will be joining in October to help bring some of the characters to life – from concept to 3D, then on to rigging and animating! I am so pumped to be able to work with these two again (we were teammates at Sleeping Giant), and I can’t wait to see what they cook up over the next couple months!
Whew… another month down and a lot of progress made, and yet so much more to go! I’ve started to open up the “flood-gates” just a little bit when it comes to getting folks testing the steam builds, so if you’re interested let me know and I can send you a key! I’m keeping the testing pool pretty small for now, but I’ll be sure to add you to the list if I run out of keys!
And that’s a wrap for now! Thanks for taking the time to read and I can’t wait to share more progress next month! Follow me on BlueSky for more updates!
Take care!
– Jay