After winter holidays, what with school starting up again and the orchestra already demanding perfection for the upcoming concert, I realised I'm not going to be so active on GDU as I was during the holidays. So might as well post a blog to explain what's going on with development for this game.
I'm not even sure if Insanitalia qualifies to be on GDU. It's a game and it qualifies by that alone, I'm sure, but I haven't seen fan games on this site as of yet. (Whatever, let's hope no one notices.)
Half a Year Later.
It has been more than half a year since the alpha demo was released on 30 May 2014, and I'm glad to say that the game has been making a startling amount of changes from its original design. Not only is the message system being revamped heavily (which will require an absurd amount of changes to every. Single. Event. we've ever written), but the graphics are being improved and added to.
The alpha demo was supposed to be an example of how the game runs in regards to its mechanics, as well as introducing its emphasis on text and story. But now with all the new mechanics, Episode 1 will be something entirely different from what it was in the demo (which our team calls "Episode 0").
For the next episode being released, Episode 0 is being added and counted as a part of it. It's due to the fact that our schedules don't allow for extending the rest of Episode 1's story very much–so we divided it and put more than a third of it into Episode 2.
Atmosphere and Art.
That being said, the game does put a lot of weight into not only story, but puzzles. The puzzle in the very first part of the game is an example of what will soon come. We have an extremely linear story-line that only varies in the endings and dialogue depending on your choices–but it won't affect much of what happens in-game for the most part. So even if we can't give the player an open world to investigate to their desires, a brunt of our work goes into making the most of the moment: adding atmosphere, good artwork, etc.
The art is being continually improved thanks to our screenshots artists, and now that we've picked up a new character graphics artist, there's going to be some major changes to the facesets as well.
Character concepts.
Something interesting that we've been doing is working on character concepts. We take many characters, our protagonists, from Hetalia. But we don't take and use them as they are–we recycle their characters, creating new and interesting personalities. The characters from the anime are just a scratch on the surface. Some of them are portrayed walking stereotypes (which is what they're supposed to be, anyway). They have their sweet moments and they have their conflicts here and there, but in the end they're not as deep and fleshed-out as the webcomic characters were.
We've been working to bring some of the prospects of the webcomic to life by making these characters functioning characters in society. They are still retain the core character of their personality that the fans of Hetalia know and love, but written differently and uniquely.
And our antagonists aren't exactly original–but they are. Things are explained later in the game; but the antagonists give a lot of dimension to our story, and a whole other side.
It amuses me how more than a year ago, they were flimsy, 2D characters who had no purpose other than to give the protagonists trouble and lengthen the game. At the most they were psychotic murderers. But now there are more of them, and they actually give to our story.
That was then, this is now.
We've come a long way from Episode 0, the alpha demo. We've added a lot and learnt to organise ourselves better (since, technically, this is the first game my partner and I have ever made that we plan to finish). Two years ago, we were hilariously inexperienced. It took us the entirety of those two years to figure out how to utilise RMXP to the extent we have and even get out one demo.
The story back then was enough to make me physically cringe as well. The changes that I suggested at that time to my partner were taken into account, thank goodness. And now we've turned it into something else entirely.
Now that we've been going so long, we won't stop until the story is finished and closed. Even if we aren't very well-known in the fandom, I'm surprised we've able to come up with something as good as we did. The fangame will stand on its own without having as many players as the big Hetalia fangames do.
We're continually adding more and more to the story as we go, even though we've already planned out the plot and characters in detail. For two years we've been writing this story, and I expect we will be writing and making it for much longer. There will be new scenes, new characters, and new stories to enjoy.
A lot of it is only interesting if you're a Hetalia fan (which I am no longer, unfortunately), but nevertheless I'm proud of it. My partner and I will be continuing to work on this game for as long as we need to in order to complete it.
Until then, I hope to be posting updates now and then. Episode 1 will be out as some point, although it's taking much longer than anticipated. But the more time put into it, the better.
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