It's Done. ...for now-

When it came to the final stretch of finishing this project before its decided deadline, a complication that’s pretty hard to plan for put in a hitch in the progress… I got sick. Not the sick that goes away after a few days either, so I had to keep working between naps and probably too many thermoses of tea. The first thing that needed to be worked on was the animations. It was something that was important to the visuals of such a simple but silly game, and now seeing them all implemented, the game would’ve felt much more lifeless without them. First, I drew all the frames for the bard basic walking animation, and then made a little idle animation that would play if the player left the bard alone for a few seconds.

Then I animated the card playing his lute, and made a version of the bard walking while also playing his lute. I coded all these in using Unity’s animators and animator variables, adjusting the timing for certain frames like when the idle yawning animation would play.

The next being that needed to be brought to life was the wolf… which was a type of walk cycle I have never animated before. Who knew accounting for double the legs would also make the animation double difficult to draw! I tried to do as much research as I could, and even though the end result is hardly realistic, I think it’s passable for a cursed creature anyway. I made 3 different versions of the run animation with the wolf  being at different levels of being cured, and then had a lot of fun making a cute animation for when the wolf is finally cured. Furthermore, I also decided to have it poof of the screen to make its disappearance feel less like “it’s dead now”.

I also make three variations of the wolves idle animation. A bit simpler than the bard’s animation, with them just bobbing in place to give the feeling of them breathing.

Another “simple” way I thought I could improve the look of the game with with some nicer lighting. It didn’t really end up being that simple to add, as I had to convert all the materials of every object in the game… but it looks nicer now! I made the music aura bubble softer looking, and made some simple animated music notes that float around the bard as they play.

I also made cursed things like the rocks and wolves glow when they are cursed, and added little exclamation point that glows to import intractable things in the levels.

Speaking of levels, I had to design a few more of those. With all my different elements of a level made into neat prefabs and orginized in a way made sense to me, I made a base level to work as a blank canvas. For the additional two levels I designed for this game, I sarted with a canvas something that looked like this.

I made the seconds level a spacious winding road that really pushes the player to use that new string they just got, but gives them a lot of spaces to loop around and run away if they find themselves in big trouble.

The third level isn’t so generous. You meet Luther again who gives you the final lute upgrade, which you’ll probably need for this narrow winding road filled with angry wolves.

Unfortunately, because of my sickness I wasn’t able to give this game the proper ending I had planned. As a compromise for my sanity and health, I sent the player off with another letter from the king, hinting at some of the ideas I originally wanted to include in a more cinematic ending to this silly game. I hope the bit of humor I attempted to incorporate makes up for some of anti-climatic feelings a letter might bring. The game’s plot ends as it begins, in the form of written word, and even if our bard is mute throughout the game, that seems pretty poetic.