Hy everyone !

As with 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
🟧 Development Work
🟪 Communication / Socials
🟦 Research / Documentation / Formation
🟨 Work management
🟩 Art
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🗓️ Week 1 (29 september-3 october)

🕙 Worktime: 41 h 45
Workload: 🟡 | Fatigue level: 🟢 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟠

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord

🎨 Art

• UI design
• UI polishing

🚧 Development : Demo

• UI integration

💼 Other

• Service provision 💵

Weekly review

Moderately busy week with essentially UI art design work. I've finished all graphical elements, polished et finalized them all concepts to begin to integrate them into Godot engine. As I feared with art work, I fell behind developement schedule because I spent too much time making decison about certain graphics. Decision paralysis, when it grips us!

🗓️ Week 2 (6-10 october)

🕙 Worktime: 45 h 00
Workload: 🟡 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟠

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord

🎨 Art

• UI modifications

🚧 Development : Demo

• UI integration in Godot engine

Weekly review

This work week has been essentially used to integrate all graphics I made last weeks for UI. I really love Godot UI design tools which seems to me very intuitive. I was able to easily succeed to reproduce graphics elements I'd previously drawn. Even though I've already used Godot engine for some small project, finding your bearings again when you used an another engine while several years is very hard! I hope I don't waste too much time with this UI integration.

🗓️ Week 3 (13-17 october)

🕙 Worktime: 44 h 15
Workload: 🟡 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord

🎨 Art

• Game logo creation

🚧 Development : Demo

• UI integration in Godot engine

Weekly review

Work week relatively loaded with integration of last UI graphics elements I've scheduled for this sprint. I quickly realized I'd underestimated the time I'd be spending on this Godot engine UI integration. Since this is my first time using Godot for a commercial project, I don't have yet all habits I had with the previous game engine I used. Estimating the time needed based on old habits has been a big mistake, but I must had to make an estimation 😅.

The last week day was used to design the game logo. I've made few sketches on paper before lauching Krita and drawing it on computer! For this game, I wanted to create the logo's typography myself because I had a very specific idea for which no existing font would be made the job. And all above, I really wanted drawing this logo from scratch! 😁

Next week, I plan to finalize et vectorize the logo into Inkscape and then I'll start designing the buildings! ✨🏠

🗓️ Week 4 (20-24 october)

🕙 Worktime: 45 h 00
Workload: 🟡 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord

🎨 Art

• Game logo polishing
• Buildings design

🗃️Work management

• Development schedule updates

Weekly review

Another busy week of artistic work. I finished the game logo on the beginning of the week et I started designing buildings. After some try, I had finally found a good looking and pertinent style I will use for the global mood of the game. Since the buildings are the central elements of the game along with villagers, I used strong lines to be able to highlight them in relation to the elements of the scenery.

Besides graphic design, I have dedicated some time to update my development schedule to take into account the final dates of certain events and deadlines.

I also took the time to communicate on Socials. It's so good to share his work and talk with other gamedevs 😁

🗓️ Week 5 (27-31 october)

🕙 Worktime: 41 h 15
Workload: 🟡 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord
• Mensual post (this one)

🎨 Art

• Buildings design
• Keyart and Steam Capsule design

💼 Other

• Administrative tasks 🥱
• Accounting 🥱

Weekly review

Another and last busy week in terms of graphics. I continued working on buildings design until the middle of the week. I announced and shared the logo and the final name of the game (It is Ellsydia for those who dont get the info). Finally, I worked on the keyart of the game which is a very important thing for the visual identity of the game. It will indeed be used for all communication and marketing materials of he game but it will primarily used for all Steam platform capsules!

📈 October review

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

October month was rich on artistic creations but was especially a huge crucial step in the game development. Reveal the name and the logo of the game was really motivating but also a little scary and intimidating, as it indicates that the game project is very real and that there is still a lot of work and many steps to take before the game release.

Next step, Steam page creation! It will be a great premiere to me because I only worked with Google Play Store platform on my last game project.

See you next month for a new report! And hopefully, an update on Ellsydia's first wishlists!

Thank you for reading 🙏