Over the past two weeks, I’ve been working on the intro and am now focusing on the opening and tutorial. Making the opening is always challenging because it’s a battle between rules and exceptions.
All the voices are AI-generated for now; for the pitch build, it’ll stay this way, but I might record them for the official release. Since there doesn’t seem to be much voice content this time, I’m also thinking about keeping it as is.
I’ve captured more footage beyond the previous video, but the background lighting and music aren’t implemented yet. I’ve consolidated most dialogues into a chat window, so you don’t have to read everything if you don’t want to, and when you do, you can focus on the dialogue without distractions. I changed this because I received feedback that players found the radio-based storytelling during gameplay hard to keep up with, but I’m not sure how it’ll turn out.
I’m trying to set aside things I can’t control and focus on making a good game, but sometimes it’s tough. Kind words from users occasionally serve as a pillar of support.
After developing and receiving feedback from users, I realized a few things. The most important is that ‘the user’s feedback is always right.’ The second most important is that ‘the user’s solution is almost always wrong.’ I learned that if I blindly follow the second point, it will not only waste time but also ruin the game, so I need to carefully examine the feedback. Whether the feedback is helpful or extremely unpleasant, I need to analyze it carefully, and if it’s about something beyond my control, I have no choice but to ignore it. After all, I don’t have the ability to make a game that satisfies everyone, nor did I quit my job and expose my family to risk just to try to please every player.
One of the most regrettable things after making the prologue was that, I couldn’t fix a major issue even though I recognized it. For example, people said the camera was uncomfortable or that it caused motion sickness, but the biggest problem was the level design. I saw only one user who pointed this out as a level design issue. If the circumstances had allowed, I would have completely remade the level from scratch, but it was unfortunate that I couldn’t.
Apart from that, I’ve come to understand more clearly which areas show results when I put in the effort and which just end up wasting time. It feels like this is a slightly different issue from whether the final product is good or bad. I’ve started to distinguish between areas where it’s worth being ambitious, areas where ambition is pointless, and areas where ambition isn’t even necessary. Since this is my first time making something alone, my eagerness often got ahead of me, and I was just rushing to get the basics down, which ended up manifesting as shortcomings in many areas.
The outcome of the prologue is so poor and disappointing that I want to remake it someday. I tried to maintain the same code as Chapter 1, but it was impossible. Even though I already knew that, I made the mistake of daring to imagine it could work. As a result, it’s now difficult to touch the code for the prologue. Whether after Chapter 1 is finished or at some other point, I really want to remake the prologue.
And someday, after making up to Chapter 3 or Chapter 5 of Axiom of Maria, I’d like to combine all the chapters into one and release it as a remake. I wonder if that will be possible before I die.