Tales From Windy Meadow [Fantasy/Slice of life/Pixel Art] (finished - on Steam!)

[Ranzo]

It looks all really interesting, and I especially like how varied the three protagonists are. The environments seem really detailed as well. I'll have to give it a try when it's released.

About how long is it supposed to be?

[Aureus]

Thank you, Ranzo! Our time estimations keep differ, but during this week I'm going to measure it and give some solid answer. I'm glad you find the project interesting! : )

We have a great week behind us and a very promising one coming up next. Not only we participated in an interview for TwoHappyCats blog, but we actually made a gigantic progress making the game's prototype. We had a huge delay, but it finally starts looking pretty good... Though we still have a lot of graphics to complete.

Such as these ones! We almost finished portraying our villagers and they are turning out great. For this #screenshotsaturday, we're sharing one happy family - Mita, Castus and their only son, Pudens. These farmers are the owners of the best fields in Windy Meadow, but their most important source of income is definitely the apiary and their mead-producing business.

[arosia]

The art is really, really cute. I can't wait to take a peek at your game when you get it further along. When do you think you might have a trailer/demo to take a peek at?

[Aureus]

On 18.02.2018 at 9:18 PM, arosia said:

The art is really, really cute. I can't wait to take a peek at your game when you get it further along. When do you think you might have a trailer/demo to take a peek at?

I'm so sorry for my late response! I haven't received my e-mail following message. : )

We actually had such slow progress that we decided to change our programmer and we moved toward Ren'Py engine from GameMaker Studio 2... And during the last 10 days we made significantly more process than we've made during the previous 5 months combined. It's both embarrassing and exciting, because it now looks like we are very close to develop completely working game and we start digging into various minor utility fixes. We still struggle with graphics, so I can't be sure when the trailer and / or the demo will be available, but we do expect to share a lot of major updates very soon, including some highlights of cool systems that we are introducing in our game. : )

[arosia]

9 minutes ago, Aureus said:

I'm so sorry for my late response! I haven't received my e-mail following message. : )

We actually had such slow progress that we decided to change our programmer and we moved toward Ren'Py engine from GameMaker Studio 2... And during the last 10 days we made significantly more process than we've made during the previous 5 months combined. It's both embarrassing and exciting, because it now looks like we are very close to develop completely working game and we start digging into various minor utility fixes. We still struggle with graphics, so I can't be sure when the trailer and / or the demo will be available, but we do expect to share a lot of major updates very soon, including some highlights of cool systems that we are introducing in our game. : )

Hey, that's awesome! Getting over inertia is usually the biggest thing when it comes to getting things done! Thanks for the update!

[Aureus]

Changes, changes... The new art is born and then evolves, while Tales From Windy Meadow in its entirety comes closer to its final state.

But the most important changes are unable to show in a small #ScreenshotSaturday post. On Wednesday we're going to share these details. The sad thing is we failed to finish the game to this day... So the March release is now out of our reach.However, we finally have the most basic, raw version of the game working.

Our previous decisions led us to a wrong spot, but now, after switching to a new game engine and changing the programmer, we managed to achieve in 10 days what we were unable to make during 6 previous months.

We are still behind... But there is a lot to show. We'll start showing the game's screenshots and its features next week.

[arosia]

Great job! That looks fantastic and hitting screenshot saturday every week is great for giving you a regular deadline to show your progress. Again, so awesome!

[Aureus]

Some graphics are still not ready and some things still need to be improved, but we really like this "point the name with your mouse to read it's description". It changes a lot of the writing as well, since this format allows us to easily avoid bad dialogue such as "as you know, I was always your friend and your father never liked me..."

Everything is still work in progress. : )

 

[Aureus]

Our newest devlog is now available on IndieDB. We plan to turn such updates into a weekly thing. : )

[Aureus]

Should we... Should we stop them?

[Aureus]

We have never participated in IndieDevHour before, but we'll try to start with the weekly updates from now on. : ) Tomorrow we should be able to post a new devlog as well. : )

This is Temnus, Iudicia's father. Longer description would enter the spoiler territory, but I hope you'll like the visuals. : )

 

[Aureus]

And here goes the devlog! : )

[Aureus]

One place, two visions... Which one do you prefer?

[Plk_Lesiak]

I think I like the first one more, but mostly due to how the sky is drawn there.

[Aureus]

Thank you! I saw other voices saying that, we may need to find a common ground for the "detailed village and busy sky" . : )

[Aureus]

Third devlog! It's mostly the basics, but I could talk about fantasy worldbuilding for hours. And maybe I will. ; )

[Aureus]

Old versus new. : )

[Aureus]

New devlog for Tales From Windy Meadow! We introduce the basic concepts related to our character sprites - which are separate from the character portraits.

[Aureus]

I must admit, as a person I find no comfort in animal trophies... But the colors of this building - home to the family of hunters who live in Windy Meadow - directly move me, like a place I would love to see in real life.

[Aureus]

In our fifth devlog we focused on some of the mistakes that we made during the development. ; ( ;

[Aureus]

Windy Meadow, a quiet evening in the Tasty Claw tavern. 

We haven’t finished making all of the required graphics yet, but the game itself finally gets close to its final form.

In other words - we started filling many of the in-game areas with their inhabitants. : )

 

[Aureus]

So... Have you ever wondered how Fabel lost his legs?

[Aureus]

A small “behind the scenes” update:
In “Tales From Windy Meadow” Iudicia, one of our protagonists, has a younger sister - Firma. You can see some similarities in their portraits, though they are not identical.
Iuidicia looks more like their mother, while Firma took after their father. Isn’t this clever?
Now here goes the funny thing: our graphic artist didn’t even notice this feature while she was designing the characters. Apparently, it just turned out this way.
#AccidentalGenius

[Aureus]

I may not know that much about medieval weaponry, but I did my homework about medieval books for my fantasy realms. : P Here are a codex, a wax tablet and pieces of old parchment. : )

[Aureus]

Watch with sound for the full experience! The first almost-finished scene from our game, with complete sounds and almost-finished graphics. We plan to have many more like it.