Worlaix's rambling #1 - a minor update

Hey everyone,

Welcome to the first of "Worlaix's rambling", where I intend to share my thought processes, issues I struggle with, and other notes about Elvensang's development. It may be vague, incoherent and altogether uninformative, so proceed with caution!

First of all, I apologize for the silence in the last two weeks, I had a little writer's block while trying to figure out the direction I wanted the game to go, mostly concerning things that I should have figured out even before releasing the Prologue. I think the anxiety of releasing my game into the world for the first time had made me a little short-sighted, and now I had to make up for the lack of previous planning.

I had many, many ideas of what I wanted to happen with the story, the characters, individual events etc., and I think most of them can work great if they are executed correctly. This is why I made the Prologue as an introduction to the basic concept of the world without committing to a specific destination in the story or means to reach it even though I had ideas for both. However, this sort of freedom turned out to be a double-edged sword, and by allowing myself the option to go wherever I want, I found myself a little stuck - there were so many directions I could take that I was unable to decide which way to go. Ultimately, I had to make peace with the fact that committing to a certain direction means either excluding ideas that make no sense for it or at least structuring the story in a way that they do make sense.

Generally speaking, I don't want the entire game to play out the same way as the prologue; I want there to be moments when the characters can relax and reflect, build relationships in relative peace and quiet, and then test the strength of those relationships while facing obstacles both external and internal. I also want to avoid tunnel vision and focus on a small handful of plots that, while potentially interesting to explore, end up becoming stale because they sit on the table for too long. I want Elvensang to be able to sidetrack and explore stories that are not directly connected to what may seem to be the "main plot" at the time, but still do it in a way that makes sense and is fun to experience. 

TL;DR After a period of brainstorming, I now have a more concrete plan for Elvensang as a whole, one that gives me a basic structure for what I want to do and how I want to do it while still giving me enough freedom to explore different ideas like side stories and romances that are not directly connected to the main plot. It amounted to a ten day time commitment that will hopefully save a lot more time in the future while making the game's story more cohesive as a whole, since now I know Elvensang's destination - the end of its story, whenever it may come.

On another note, I spent the last few days drawing like a mad man to catch up on lost time, all the while studying some intermediate online face drawing courses. Faces, environments and color theory are among my greatest weaknesses, and I desperately need to remedy that over the next few months. I want to make a habit of making sketches that I can post on Patreon, but my sketches are so shit that I don't know if that's a good idea right now. Either way, I am going to release some sketches before releasing the first chapter, maybe as part of a proper, comprehensive "Devblog #1".

And that's it from me for now. I hope you are all safe and I'll see you again soon.

Love you all,

Worlaix