TIMELINE

YEAR ONE

Year Two

YEAR THREE: 2024

At this point, I picked up work on the combat demo. Liana and I set a date for the demo to be ready by May 20th. The last date she had worked on the demo script was October 24th, 2023. I need to remind you that the scripts were, essentially, the backbone of the entire game and the demo- without scripts, there were no scenarios.

The demo script wasn’t finished by the time I started working on the combat demo again in April of 2024. There wasn’t a boss fight included, as Liana hadn’t started the encounter with Vermin Tusk yet.

There was also another issue with how the combat demo was being structured for our testers. Princess Sparklemuffin and Sparklepony happen upon Solomon in the clearing, and they rescue Solomon, where there is a combat scene against bandits.

Then, there is a long stretch of dialogue at Ruchel’s hut between all characters before they enter the Troll Forest. At that point, the player is presented with the option to bypass the trolls by stealth or through combat tactics.

There was a problem here, because the early launch of the combat demo was to allow our players to

Get familiar with the core elements of the combat system and
Playtest it a few times through to provide feedback on the mechanics, which we would then take to create a smooth combat experience.

The biggest problem was that the encounter in the forest featured the two main characters whose combat abilities were the most different from the core combat system. Princess Sparklemuffin didn’t fight at all and had her complex spell system, and Princess Sparklepony’s melee combat was secondary to her magical abilities- the magic poop and the dance fighting. So, for a pretty long time, we would not be providing the player with the core elements of the combat system, since both characters were capable of performing actions regardless of where they stood on the grid.

Our combat system incorporated a grid system that provided buffs to some actions and debuffs to others depending on where you stood, and melee fighters could only attack from the first two rows- depending on weapon length, whereas most magic users couldn’t cast magic effectively from the front row. I had also incorporated a system that caused the battlefield spaces to scroll if the front row was empty, to avoid the player and enemies from hiding behind empty rows- which was a flaw that came with the plugin, and which I had to patch.

It was at this point that I told Liana that for the first instance of the combat demo, I’d just create a scenario that allowed the players to just dig in feet first with the core combat experience. Princess Sparklemuffin and Princess Sparklepony’s more complex systems could be introduced in their own space after the player had familiarized themselves with the details. The option of hitting the player with all systems at once would have been, quite frankly, overwhelming. On top of that, if you added the stealth section to the demo, that was a lot of things to hit the player with for feedback. We also didn’t have a boss fight

By May 11th, Liana had only written 171 words of the Vermin Tusk cutscene. In the interest of delivering something that felt like it had a beginning and an end, I went ahead with the alternate scenario- the idea was that the training montage at Snowpaw mountain could be inserted after the Princess escapes, and would focus on the three main fighters you would handle in the early game. Through what is basically a training montage in a monastery where you are introduced to the different aspects of combat and had a light optional boss fight, we could then segue into integrating the Princesses and their systems when the party ran across them. And then, that section would culminate with a fight with the bandits.

Afterwards, the demo would proceed from Ruchel’s hut, as you’d find that Ruchel’s hut has become upset and is blocking the path back to the city. This would give Liana time to finish the combat demo script and we could introduce the other mechanics like stealth and the more elaborate boss fights with Tusk and the Growling witch.

This did mean that the first combat demo that launched was, essentially, 90% written by me, but that was only a temporary measure since my contribution was only going to be a small part of a much larger whole— once Liana finished the script.

Now, by the time May 20th rolled around, Liana and other testers were testing the demo. I enrolled a few testers to stress test everything as much as possible so we could squash what bugs we could find before the demo reached the backers.

Liana found one that crashed the game on her computer that was very hard to replicate for everyone else. Eventually, though, we got to the bottom of it.

The demo was pretty much close to ready by the original deadline, but I had bug squashing to do- the demo was late by three weeks because of the bugs, and then we had a delay of about seven days because of an issue with itch.io and their email delivery system, but we launched and got it into the players’ hands on June 30th

For the next couple of weeks in July, we waited for the backer surveys to come back with feedback on the demo. A few backers with lower-end systems had issues in the main map of the monastery and were experiencing lag, for example. I began to collect feedback in order to implement fixes.

We had a very helpful backer who sent in a zip file with screenshots and specific locations in the map where they experienced one issue or another- my favorite kind of playtester. I started to fix the issue at once by doing what I had done originally with the Shimmering city and the fix for the parallax drift: I needed to section that large area into different screens. Since so many events were connected across that original large map, though, I needed to make sure that nothing broke in the interim.

A good chunk of players loved the writing, the pixel art, the music and the combat. There were also players with a lot of criticism, and a lot of it was very valid and which I took down in order to make improvements.Some of it, like the suggestions for a better CRT shader, wouldn’t be possible under our current plugin suite, sadly, but there were lots of good observations.

One player in particular felt bullied by the training montage because of how unforgiving the battles felt to them.The very earnest way in which they described it made me see opportunities for improving that sequence, so I made a point to go over each one of the details they brought up to create a smoother and gentler training experience. Some players had issues walking through the temple because of the number of NPCs.

I made the call to put the majority of the finished backer NPCs into the temple so people could finally meet their little dudes. Unfortunately we were in another lurch for them because Mara, according to Liana, 'ghosted' her for an unspecified reason after giving her the last batch of backer NPCs that they had finished.

I don’t know what happened there and Mara had deleted their Telegram account so they could not be reached. This was the third volunteer who’d drop from the project. Song, the second volunteer, would become the subject of a video by Liana in just a few months at this point in the timeline.

One of the poll results showed the players who had an opinion on the soundtrack preferred the orchestral approach to the chiptune approach. The soundtrack that shipped had an hour-long soundtrack that was a mixture of chiptune and orchestral to give backers a taste of both worlds. The backers chose my orchestral compositions over the chiptune approach, so I also began the process of re-orchestrating the chiptune pieces into traditional instruments.

At this point, I began to upgrade my soundfonts library at my own expense, purchasing instruments.

As I was working on these things, Liana told me that she needed Ayaan, Isibindi, Tomoe, Armand and Beelzeboob to have updated combat and walking sprites, because she wanted the players to be able to test them out for combat as an optional section after the combat demo finalized- where they’d be able to fight with them against monsters so they could get a feel for their styles.

This was a surprise, because none of those characters were meant to have combat sheets until the very end of the combat demo as a game+ experience. In the vertical slice demo, you meet Ayaan in the Shimmering city but he doesn’t join you until you defeat Zarzkazaan at 4tress, as you can see in the script, and you only rescue Beelzeboob towards the end of 4tress… and Liana hadn’t even gotten to that point in the script!

Isibindi is dead when the game begins and you don’t encounter her ghost, which you can eventually re-incarnate, until much later in the game. And Armand essentially appears at the finale of the vertical slice demo by crashing his spaceship into the waters of the Shimmering City’s downtown area after Solomon knocks it off course with a celebratory firework after returning from 4tress. You wouldn’t be able to recruit Tomoe from the Silk Angels until after 4tress.

Whereas the five major characters in the demo had their roles laid very defined by then. Boy was the berzerker, and his special attacks would launch him at enemies and push them around, moving them around the grid to either collide against each other for damage, or pushing them towards the back to force a magic user to suddenly be in the front, for example. Solomon was the tank, and a lot of his power came from taking damage like a champ- and the more damage he took, the stronger his comeback could be when he snapped out of being triggered. Maus was the pinpoint specialist that could take individual units out of play for a few turns by freezing them. And Princess Sparklepony was the poop alchemist and Princess Sparklemuffin was magic.

To be frank, the other characters had vague combat style descriptions but their combat mechanics hadn’t been set in stone yet because they were not meant to take part in combat in either demo. The request seemed a little arbitrary, but nevertheless I started working on those sprites. I figured we’d solidify their battle mechanics as a result, and Liana would finish the combat demo script in the interim while I also addressed the issues listed in the backer feedback forms.

But Liana never worked on the script again. There will be proof of this later on. I need to touch upon something else that was going on at the time.

Now, at this point, I was having some major health issues. Liana detailed her own post-COVID health struggles, but I didn’t really disclose my own. I have always been a very private person in many ways— when my mother, with whom I was incredibly close, passed away in 2016, I made no mention of it on social media. I did most of my grieving in private. Having to disclose the issues with my employment to the backers was uncomfortable enough. Nevertheless, I am in need of making another necessary disclosure due to the circumstances.

The long story short is that, apparently, my bout with COVID had left me in an extremely hyperglycemic state. Because of the closure of my job and the termination of my insurance, I missed my yearly physical which would have been due in October of 2023- the cost would have been prohibitive out of pocket.

Due to a snafu with HR, I wouldn’t become eligible for my new job’s health insurance until open enrollment in August of 2024, so it went undetected.This was until an unrelated issue with my eyes (a freak bout of iritis) had me going to urgent care, which referred me to the eye center.

There, the doctor paused and suggest I get tested for diabetes in April due to changes in the back of my eyes.Surprise! I’d become one of those cases who developed diabetes from COVID

It was so severe that I was actually at A1C 13 and, basically, it was a miracle I hadn’t lost an eye or a leg. My doctor wanted to put me on insulin stat abut I told her I’d rather try to control it through diet and exercise. She was skeptical, but agreed to do a five month trial. I was successful: by the time Liana canceled Song of Sparklemuffin, I was at A1C 5.5, which is below pre-diabetic levels. Since then, I’ve kept within a 0.2 range of that measurement.

But it was stressful. Not only because I had to manage a condition I didn’t know I had and hadn’t known much about, but also because none of the treatments, exams and wound care (I had an accident that left my right foot injured and required special care due to the condition) were cheap, especially since I was paying through the marketplace due to the snafu with HR, so I was accruing significant medical debt.

On top of that I got saddled with a thousand dollar bill from a dental procedure I had had right before my job ended— the insurance company retroactively claimed I wasn’t covered, but my employer had paid all premiums for two months after the closure of the company to ensure we would still have corage.

Unfortunately, since the company wasn’t around anymore, there was literally no-one in HR I could reach out to to corroborate for documentation, and the insurance at the time rejected my appeal (screw you, Mutual of Omaha).

My husband was also having severe struggles with his treatment-resistant depression. He’d had to be hospitalized for his own well-being. Eventually, he would undergo ECT to treat this depression, which had excellent results, though left him very emotionally vulnerable during the treatments, as you can imagine.

To add to what was going on at the time, my aunt Gilda was now moving into the terminal stages of cancer, and Captain’s Nanna, whom we loved dearly, was also declining rapidly. Kerzner was aware of all of these things. Nevertheless, I was still able to put my work in. No progress was made on the demo scripts.

The walking sprites were finished and I was starting the very time-consuming work of creating the combat animation sheets for five extra characters when the events that led to the cancellation of the game took place, at the end of September. The game cancellation was announced a few days later, at the beginning of October.

THE CANCELLATION

YEAR THREE: 2024

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HEALTH ISSUES