Hy everyone !

Like the last month, i'm sharing with you the advancement on my new game project, a medieval City builder. I'm trying to show you what a solo gamedev can make during working days and describe you all creative steps before to have a finished and shipped game.

I detail every working week with the total amount of time i spent in work, a quick view of my charge of work, tired level, motivation and respect of schedule delay. I represent it with this scale :

Good 🟢 🟡 🟠 🔴 Bad
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Calendar color meaning
🟩 Art / Sound
🟧Development Work
🟪 Communication / Socials
🟦 Research / Documentation / Formation
🟨 Work management
🟥 Administrative Tasks
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🗓️ Week 1 (30 march-3 april)

🕙 Worktime: 19 h 30
Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟢 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok
• Devlog updates

🔊 Sound

• Research for the main theme
• Design of user interface sounds
• Design of feedback sounds (building creation, mini-game, etc.)

Weekly review

A small week of work entirely dedicated to sound design. I've started the week with some searches to design the main musical theme of the game. I really like to begin my week with this type of task because it allow me to ease back into work after a great, restful weekend. And I didn't want to start with too long tasks, because I knew the week would be interupted by family events and I dislike finishing a work session with unfinished tasks. They still stay in my mind during my rest time!

I've been able to finish the design of all sounds I planned for the game. Even if I'll mayby need more sounds before the end of development, it's so satisfying to have finished the "sound effects" part. It still remains to work on the music to definitively close the sound design of the game.

🗓️ Week 2 (6-11 april)

🕙 Worktime: 34 h 15
Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟢 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟢

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok
• Registering the game for several showcases and events
• Preparing the next teaser video
• Creating a video to showcase the day/night cycle
• Devlog updates

🎨 Art

• Creating graphic elements to enhance the day/night cycle

🚧 Development : Demo

• Improving the day/night cycle system

Weekly review

This second week of April was entirely focused on improving the game's day and night cycle. I started by finding the perfect colors to match the current environment. Once the mood was set, I implemented everything into the game engine.

Before this update, the sky only had two simple gradients: one for day and one for night. Now, it is much more detailed with unique gradients for dawn, midday, dusk, and night, all connected by smooth transitions.

I also added some decorative details to enhance the atmosphere. The sun and moon now appear in the sky of Ellsydia, and beautiful stars twinkle at night. You can even watch the sun move across the sky throughout the day. I am really happy with the final result, especially the sunset colors which I absolutely love!

🗓️ Week 3 (13-17 april)

🕙 Worktime: 38 h 25
Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok
• Creation of special posts (Follow Friday, etc.)
• Editing of the next video teaser
• Develog updates

⚙️ Gamedesign

• Simplification of various mechanics
• Writing new comments and flavor text

🎨 Art

• Retouching of parallax assets

🚧 Development : Demo

• Integration of modified parallax assets
• Integration of new comments and flavor text for the villagers
• Improvement of the dialogue system
• Implementation of the mission management system

💼 Other

• Administrative tasks 🥱

Weekly review

This week was busier and more varied than the previous ones. I started by fixing the graphic assets used for the game's background parallax effect. For performance reasons, I had to rework these images because the screens I was using were simply too large! I split them into smaller 512x512 pixel tiles and organized them into sprite sheets to optimize the display. Once that was done, I integrated everything back into the game engine.

I also took a moment to review my Game Design document to make a few adjustments. I simplified some game mechanics to slightly reduce the project's scope and wrote some new flavor text and comments to improve player immersion and build a stronger bond with the villagers. I then added these texts to Godot and took the opportunity to make the dialogue manager even more modular.

With the writing done, I moved on to building Ellsydia's mission management system. This system will handle loading mission data, tracking player actions, and triggering events. I expect this fundamental piece of work will take my entire week next week to finish.

I wrapped up the week with some communication tasks. I posted a few updates on social media, updated this very development log, and started working on a short video that I hope to finish and post next week.

🗓️ Week 4 (20-24 april)

🕙 Worktime: 44 h 00
Workload: 🟡 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟢

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok
• Develog updates

🎨 Art

• Animated background research for mini-games
• Loading screen research

🚧 Development : Demo

• Script creation for mission 1
• Code refactoring

💼 Other

• Client services 💵

Weekly review

Not much to report this week as all my time was dedicated to writing the script for the game's first mission. I also took the opportunity to refactor some parts of my code that had become too messy and difficult to manage.

I broke up this long coding session with some graphic work. I updated the look of the mini-games, which I wasn't happy with before. My concern was that they didn't feel like real mini-games, but rather just another generic menu. I fixed this with some simple and quick changes. First, I made the mini-game windows appear in full screen to fully immerse players in the sequence. Then, I wrote a small shader to scroll the icon of the related shop in the background. It isn't anything groundbreaking, but it is much more effective and definitely looks better than the previous version. I wonder why I didn't think of this idea sooner? 😅

🗓️ Week 5 (27 april-1 may)

🕙 Worktime: 37 h 00
Workload: 🟡 | Fatigue level: 🟢 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok
• Develog updates

📊 Marketing

• Research to update keywords before Next Fest

🎨 Art

• Design of the animated minigame background
• Design of the loading screen

🚧 Development : Demo

• Integration of the animated minigame background
• Integration of the loading screen
• Finalization of the Mission 1 script
• Various bug fixes

Weekly review

This week was shortened by a public holiday: Labor Day! As usual every year, I used this day to do absolutely no work at all 😁

Despite the break, it was still packed with programming. After integrating the animated backgrounds for the mini-games and the loading panel, I finalized the script for the game's first mission. Now I just need to polish the various help texts. This task took longer than expected; I originally planned to finish it in one week, but my estimate was off, which has put me slightly behind schedule. Unfortunately, this means I won't be able to do a playtest this month. I still have a few tasks left before I have a testable version, but I'm crossing my fingers to finish everything by the end of my next two-week sprint!

The June Next Fest is approaching quickly, but I feel a bit more confident than in February when I had to cancel my participation because I simply wasn't ready. In the meantime, I did some research to update the game's keywords before the Next Fest, hoping to maximize the visibility of Ellsydia.

📈 April review

Workload: 🟡 | Fatigue level: 🟢 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

April flew by incredibly fast, and I really felt like I hadn't made much progress. Fortunately, writing these lines helped me realize that I actually finished many important tasks and didn't slouch at all! 😁

The only downside is having to push the playtest session to next month. Honestly, I don't have much of a choice since the next big step is the June Next Fest! This means the demo must be ready by the end of May, as another cancellation would be unacceptable (to me, at least 😅).

Let's talk numbers for a moment with a quick update on wishlists: I'm finally getting close to 100! Specifically, there were 11 additions and 1 removal, bringing the total to 93. I can never thank you all enough for your support! ❤️

My communication work on social media is finally starting to pay off. My various posts are getting much better visibility than I ever imagined when I started from scratch a few months ago.

I'll stop there for this April report! Now, I'm going to take a little rest. I'll see you next month for a new report, fresh updates, and new numbers!

Before I let you go, a quick reminder in case you haven't already: please add Ellsydia to your wishlist. Thank you in advance for your support 🥰

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4159160/Ellsydia

Wishing you all a great day, afternoon, or evening, whatever time it is for you! 😊

Thank you for reading 🙏