Maybe I should have finished this.

God, I feel so bad about abandoning this project. It was going so well and then I had a complete existential freakout over the state of the world at the time and just gave up, I think more to punish myself than anything.

A lot of the characters and story elements are still being worked on in a different form (a novel as opposed to a game), I'm determined not to ditch them entirely even if a lot of the details have changed radically, but even that's taking a long time. It fills me with dread that I could have released this story by now if I'd stuck with working on this game despite the bleakness I felt about the future.

Sorry, I just don’t know anymore.

Would anyone want to help playtest this?

It’s still incomplete (of course), but I figured I’d throw it out there anyway.

This is literally the end of the game. After being told that they can’t be let through after fighting their way through a mountain of goats, our heroes simply give up and go home.

realism is fun

Question Time 2.0

This went kind of well last time, so because I once again want to update but can’t think of anything to post that’s both interesting and non-spoilery, I figured I’d do this again: get you guys to ask me (mostly) anything you want about the game. As with before, you can send me an anon ask if you’d prefer.

So, yeah, questions?

Some screenshots of Dolan Woods, an early area in the game with a bit of an unfortunate name in certain circles. This is also how enemies will appear on the field - at the moment, they just roam around randomly and will only attack if you either attack them first or accidentally bump into them; I did want them to try and chase you, but in practice they ended up being a bit too relentless, so I guess I’ll settle for forcing the player to do a morally dubious thing to level up or grind.

Here’s the current title screen for the game. I’ll consider it a placeholder for the time being, but honestly I think I’m fine with using this for the final game (or at least, more fine than I was with the last one).

What do you guys think? Does it suck a lot more than I think it does?

Update

I’m really, really sorry about the long gaps between updates, and how little actual information has been coming out of this project over the past six months or so. The truth is that I’ve been in a massive rut since about March. I’ve been struggling a lot more with personal issues and it’s been hard for me to find the motivation to finish this. Hell, I was practically on hiatus in July and August; it’s been really unfair on you guys and, again, I’m sorry.

I’m not sure what’ll happen to this project in the future, either; I’m finally going back to college this month after a couple of gap years, so even if I do get out of this rut I might not even have enough time to work on the game regularly due to homework. I don’t want to cancel, because I’ve put a lot of effort into this and am really passionate about it (not that I’ve really been showing this on here), but yeah, I’m feeling really lost about Ingrid’s Rhapsody right now.

DOOR DOOR DOOR

DOOR DOOR DOOR DOOR, DOOR DOOR DOOR:

DOOR DOOR, DOOR DOOR DOOR DOOR DOOR DOOR?

DOOR DOOR.

So, quick update: the battle system now uses field encounters instead of random battles. The latter didn’t appear in the demo so I don’t know if you guys would have found it annoying, but just in case you would have, now there’s a slightly less annoying system for you.

Can’t think of any particular tics. When it comes to habits, I guess Cleo apologising a lot might count, as well as Swan’s tendency towards verbosity.

I think my favourite aspect at the moment might be that I’m actually making serious progress on it. Every single time I’ve tried to make a “proper” game before, I eventually gave up because I felt too insecure about it, but this time I’m being way more productive and it actually looks like it could be finished. It’s a nice feeling.

Apart from that, I guess I just like that I’m feeling genuinely passionate about it.

Please ask questions! This blog is getting lonely ;_;

Wanted to update, couldn’t figure out what to post about exactly (except that things are going super-smooth at the moment), so I’ve decided to make a generic post where I ask (read: beg) you guys to ask me anything you want about the game. (you can also send me an anon ask if you’d rather)

So yeah, uh... any questions? Even bad ones?

New Title: Ingrid’s Rhapsody

So yeah, important bit of news! I’ve finally decided to officially change the title of the game to Ingrid’s Rhapsody. This has been in the cards for a while now (I may even have hinted at doing this sometime earlier, I can’t remember), but now it’s, like, definitely happening and stuff. This dev blog’s URL has also changed as a result, as you can see.