well

i guess that “Infidemia” is going to continue development, because i have been working on a new version of the plot, battle system, and even adding map designs…

I prefer not to share screenshots or any evidence that Infidemia exists because of reasons though I was considering showing an example of the battle flow in the game.

I won’t get too in-depth about mechanics here, though I made the combo system a little bit easier to tell what’s going on (you can now track combo levels during the battle, which means you know how many turns each character has), and I was considering adding multiple stages of ultimate abilities in the game.

Because the story had to be restarted, the plot’s going to go in a different direction and I might limit myself to only telling the story within one area the game takes place in. While that’s more boring than what I wanted to do originally, it helps me maintain scope and keep the map design manageable, as well as making it easier for the player to navigate a smaller in-game world.

I will probably add more areas from later in the game eventually, though after a breakthrough in figuring out how to fix the story and motivation to fix the combo system, things might go better.

I’m still revising the main battle theme, though my priority right now is getting the story ready to a point where things are looking playable.

This game has been in development since late 2019, so, I guess it’s been through at least a year of development by now, though, my usual timeline is one hour of work on the game per month. (Game development is not considered my job.)

If I were a full-time independent developer, you’d probably see a demo here by now and tons of screenshots, though, you would still see posts here where I randomly give up on the project only to talk about it again.

I’ll try to think twice before I post updates about the game from now on.

…

Well, I suppose that’s all there is to mention.

It’s kind of a personal game for me to talk about because there are some elements in which I wanted to talk about… personal stuff… though that’s another excuse for me to talk vaguely about it. After all, the base plot for the story was based on a series of 14 dreams I had that were all telling a story together, and that kind of thing is not something I’d randomly post to the Internet. (Though I did, and it is the kind of thing I’d randomly post to the Internet, because this is my blog, and I can be really random sometimes.) At least… not something I’d mention without giving context to the game.

Surprisingly, a lot has stayed the same in development.

The seven main characters (who you play as a group and individually at various points in the story) have stayed the same, although their dialogues and personalities have changed along the way, as they’re supposed to be dynamic characters while you’re playing the game. There is one character who you begin the game as and they don’t have any dialogue, but, I wouldn’t really consider them the “main” character. Part of the story involves them, but, in their own story, they meet six other characters and each one of them has additional stories, so maybe this character is the “protagonist” because you make choices for them, but, there are seven main characters. Maybe there is one character who you decide choices for, but, I’m not willing to give away the entire plot right now.

Part of the plot’s themes have stayed the same, but how I’m dealing with them has changed. I’m not sure who the audience of the game would be, though I’m making it a game that I find interesting, and if anyone plays it then they’re the audience and hopefully they’ll find it interesting. If someone plays it and they don’t like the game, that’s fine too, although I just hope that anyone who plays the game enjoys it. I’m not sure if “enjoy” would be the right word for this game, though based on how things go in the game I think it was the right word to use.

Oh, yeah, the final boss for the game has been constantly changing… There are at least four times as many “final bosses” as there were when I started planning, and now that means that most of the final bosses are just regular bosses. Every boss fight is supposed to have a different main mechanic that you use, maybe it’s one of the combat system techniques, something that you’re told about early on in the game or towards the end.

The music for the game has been… tricky to work on.

I’ll end up making everything consistent later, though it’s just… tricky… because there’s not a consistent feel to this game.

I tried to make “Infidemia” feel like playing another game that I played, though going for that atmosphere felt like the game just wasn’t suited to that.

The feel of the game now is supposed to be, at least, how I put it, “intense, like every decision you make in the game world might do something, with some uncertainty, though you know that you have a potential to change the game world.”

For the game’s difficulty level, I’m trying to focus on making the puzzles and the battles the hardest parts of the game. Doing multiple battles in a row when you’re stuck at low health isn’t something I’m going for, because each battle is supposed to have its own difficulty, and instead of getting a game over for a boss fight and starting over at your last save file, you’ll have to listen to the introduction dialogue again, reset some things, and the only punishment there is just having to start over, though you still get a chance to save your game if you decide to stop playing or need to exit the dungeon.

Oh, yeah, and I’ve purposely added punishing battle rewards… that’s right, battles aren’t exactly rewarding all the time. I’ve found ways to figure this out, and it’s not exactly with cursed items that you get or anything, it’s more that… …hmm, might spoil something.

There are rewards and stuff in the game, though balancing rewards with difficulty has been tricky because I have to balance the multiple ways to play the game which makes it harder to decide the balance…

…To effectively do this, I decide the balance in the game is how long something takes in a battle, if we’re talking about the combat system. Trying to make multiple things take up the same amount of turns or the same amount of time is all I’m doing – maybe there’s an ultimate attack, though you’d have to go through a certain amount of turns first – though it’s a design mechanic I personally find useful for turn-based role playing games.

And about the music, I considered adding character themes, and then a battle theme for each character, though… …I was mostly concerned with “who would have the better theme” and decided that because favoritism might get in the way (as a developer, though, each character has been interesting to work on and I can’t decide a favorite character. That’s probably why each character has stayed throughout the whole game and there are only seven characters who have been the same characters when they were added… …of course, their personalities change and I self-insert dialogue at various points for each character, though they’re all easy for me to remember, still relevant to the story, and still challenging to write dialogue for.) If there were character themes and battle themes, oh, wait, there’s one midboss who actually has a character theme… …whoops… …I’d probably say that each theme would have been combined to create a final boss fight theme where the music for that fight is literally just the final battle theme as it’s all the protagonists working together…).

Oh, also…

…there are some references to things like Capsule Dragons, Super Speedy Laser Cats, and more, though I’ll leave those for the player to discover.

I hope this was interesting.

I’m not sure why I still want to work on this game, after repeatedly claiming to delay it (don’t worry – my game development is based entirely on my mood! well, not entirely, but, there are implications for whatever I’m writing here based on my mood). I think it’s been good to continue working on. I’m glad to work on the game and I find it interesting, so, maybe I shouldn’t have asked that question 🤔.

In my opinion, this has been the most interesting game for me to work on, and I would like to continue it.

To be honest, there have been delays, but, mostly just for things like the art and animation, because I still have to learn about that.

Anyway, thanks for reading this.

It was a longer article than usual and I hope it provided entertainment value. Maybe some value for learning about my development plan, as well.

Remember when I posted “Infidemia’s not delayed” and then immediately posted “Infidemia’s delayed forever”?

This is another one of those cases where I’ll be posting updates based on fluctuations in mood.

For now, I’ll try to become more aware of my mood while I’m writing or doing anything, and I’ll try to post updates that are somewhat useful and indicative of development progress.

also, since you have read this far…

…there is a secret, hidden character, who you can only unlock by following these rumors that I made up:

(Secret rumors not found. Please try again later.)

Oh, looks like that wasn’t working. Hmm… I wonder how much save file editing would be required for secret characters to be added in?

oh, also, I’ll stop using the keywords/tags feature on this website. I don’t want to wrongly inform anyone that this website is more than just being a blog.