Demo Launch : A one year dream achieved !

Hello friend !
For a start, thanks for reading me as I'll write my journey as Leart's  game creator.

Ideation
The journey started the 13th of October 2019 as I was thinking of a game that I can make on godot for coding camp where I teach kids how to dev games in fun ways. Mario with a mouse came in mind, so I did a simple one-week dev game of a platformer where the player interact with the mouse on some enemies or puzzles.

Conception
Even if the game was just a game loop, the teens loved it and asked their friends to test it and enjoy it together. I knew at that moment I had a good mechanic to explore. So I started to think of this little project as a game that people could buy.

I started to game design some more mechanics, level design, write a small story and characters background. And a month later it was time to prototype as I wanted to feel what I had in mind.

Prototyping
I started to dev some basic jumping levels to test some cooperation with some friends but I really started coding when the infamous covid lockdown was set up in France in March 2020. The prototype was a 1h-2h game with jumping puzzles and some enemies with growing difficulty progression. As I play tested with some more friends and even some randoms met in game jams after the first lockdown I could see the potential of the concept : A vulnerable character protected by a guiding light in dark world full of danger. 

The final test of my prototype was to play with my mother and it was a success ! Non-experienced players could play at Leart with an experienced or even hardcore player and enjoy it together !

Demo work
The prototype wasn't enough to showcase the three core player experience I was aiming to create: Exploration, Cooperation and Solitude.

In the middle of August I reworked the base-code and created something that was more likely to become a game worth of showcasing. I added some dialogs, more animations, more sounds and music, some more graphics, UI, a real encounter with some basic AI and way more play testing.

As the scope was getting bigger, I asked for some help from a promising sound designer, Alexis, who is currently working on the music and sound effects. Another great indie dev, Fax (check him out : https://fax37.itch.io/), is helping me by creating some props for the game as I needed some incentive to make the player with the mouse explore the environment.

What the future holds !
You'll hear more from me in the future as I will write more about many aspects of the game to come, the challenges we face and the little victories that may come from this journey.

We are aiming to bring this project to a full priced game with 5 chapters that have each unique environment. Though, this scope may change in the future this is what we are looking for in the next two years.

Thank you for reading me, friend, and I'll see you in the next devlog !
Daydreel