Wildflowers Devlog:  Week 01

Introduction: 

Greetings, fellow developers and gaming aficionados. I'm Guilherme Neves,  the artist, writer, and game designer. "Wildflowers: Magical Criminal." project made by our small team: "Magic Trails,"It's a pleasure to invite you into the inner workings of our project through this inaugural DevLog, where I aim to provide an intimate glimpse into our creative journey.

While my primary focus will be on the artistic elements, I'll also touch upon the broader aspects of our project, including music, game design, and programming. Keep in mind, this is my frist DevLog, and I have no idea what i’m doing! 

Week 01

🎨 Art  - Guilherme "Atari Boy" Neves 

Before delving into specifics, allow me to share a brief synopsis of our game. "Wildflowers: Magical Criminal" follows the transformative journey of a young protagonist as she discovers her latent powers amidst the mystical Land of Wizards (as yet unnamed). At its core, our game embodies the essence of classic top-down adventures, akin to the Zelda series. Key gameplay mechanics include:

Spell Fusion: Players can experiment with combining spells for unique effects.

Friendship-based Learning: Spells are acquired through meaningful interactions and alliances with wizards.

Here is some pictures the first and original Level design of the game: (some informations were wrote in portuguese, because our team is Brazilian, so sorry for that)

    

After I made this AMAZING Level Design, and the Programmer of the team, Thadeu Alonso, approved my crazy ideas, we started to build the project. 

Even if the game have a old school kind of view, my job as a artist, is try to create a “new look” using old pixel art style, so one of the things i’m doing following this idea is about the city, I’m trying to make a “colonial age” building in the project, something that we didn’t see much in games

I still need to fix some details, like the boat, the bridge, because they don’t seem to be fixed in the same style, but this is the start. 

Now i'm going to pass the torch to the Programmer, he weill speak a little bit about the process of the music and what we made so far

🕹️ Gameplay  - Thadeu Alonso

Our gameplay now have the basics of any classic RPG: movement, interaction, attack... But my focus on the last weeks was our unique mechanics and our combo system. The player will have 3 main skills: melee attack, ranged attack and dash. 

Below there's our melee attack (with some old sprites). It will work like a normal melee attack with a close range to attack enemies and everything that is destructible inside the game.

The ranged attack will be the magic ball: a ball that can be throw and attack things in the way. The player can call the ball back and, combined with the melee. the ball can be hit to fly again, leaving opportunity for some interesting combinations.
There's also a combination using the dash ability that makes the player teleport to the ball.

Speaking of dash, here's our third ability. The player can dash in any direction and destroy things using the melee ability during the dash.

These abilities will be the foundation of our game and we want to create interesting puzzles and scenarios for the player to use them.

🎶 Music - Thiago Velasquez

 “”City by the shore” was a musical theme created in the tranquility of a quiet little town by the sea.

The tranquility of the city, the sun beating down, the fresh sea breeze that refreshes your skin.

Right at 0:17 comes the invitation to adventure, to explore the outside world, to explore what lies beyond the known lands.

Diving into the unknown.

The perfection of life, the movement that makes us move forward.

The violins at 0:32 symbolize good air approaching, birds flying free.

At 0:48 we are invited into a world of uncertainty and fear. Fear of what we are facing, fear of the unknown.

At 1:06 we are filled with the confidence to move forward firmly with our goals.

The dualism of life. The fear of the new that drives us to face the new.

1:16 the theme of the peaceful city begins to transform into movement, a movement of the search for something new, of courage in favor of adventure.”