Hello World - A new story

Hello! Alana Eclogia here. This is the first devlog of my first video game. Woo!

About me:  I'm a French woman in my twenties with a computer science degree. English isn't my native language, but I consider myself pretty good at it now so there should not be many grammar mistakes. Rest assured that I will have my game proofread anyway!

As you may have seen, Puzzle Over is an entry for Markyjoe's Don't Make Fire Emblem Game Jam. While I would call myself a casual, I'm an FE fan and of course I've had ideas about doing my own game inspired by the series. So when I saw that SRPG Studio was on sale and there was  a contest about extending the engine, I felt like trying the adventure.

When thinking about what was "not Fire Emblem", "what is probably possible with the engine", and "what I want to do", the idea of Picross came quickly to mind. A Picross (aka Nonogram) is a grid-based puzzle where you must fill cells based on the numerical hints on the side of the grid to get a picture at the end. I have fond memories of solving Picross grids on the 3DS as fast as possible, and recently was recommended the murder mystery visual novel Murder by Numbers by a friend.

Honestly, I felt that a handful of Picross grids alone did not have much to them. I do not want to time my players, and I am not looking into dynamically-generated grids, so I went with a visual novel part. I wanted to use that one edgy high school-old idea of mine at first, but realized that I did not have the knowledge and skill to execute it well. Its working title was "Pick and Cross". I wasn't very proud of it but hey, working titles are what they are for a reason. With the new plot idea, I searched idioms that would fit as title, and stumbled upon a perfect one! "Puzzle Over" has an element of Picross, another of thought, and a final one of "end" which reflects the death theme of the game.

The cover image of this blog post is an early screenshot of Pick and Cross's gameplay, where your allies can use their skills to unveil or correct parts of the grid (think of the Pokémon Picross skills). Those skills become stronger the closer you get with the respective allies at each of the game's "free time" periods. Using the skills is optional, and I would even say that they make the grids too easy with their current power level, but I found it to be a neat way to reflect your progress. I personally solved all the grids that will be in the game without any help, but I have a lot of Picross experience and the Hard difficulty can get tricky. 

Until next time!

Eclogia