oct 17 - MMGJ, The Beginning

hi hi hi hi! since i wasn't able to join in on MMGJ 10 (Magical Girl Game Jam), im super stoked to participate in the continue-it jam! so, without further ado, lets talk about my ~1st week of progress so far :D

what are you making?

so! i went with an idea i had when i was going to join MMGJ, with a little bit of tweaking. The working synopsis is:

"Play as a 16-year-old highschool student, who only wanted to pass her exams, but when offered a “box of infinite wisdom", got tricked into carrying the torch of the city's next magical girl. Now, you must juggle all the various parts of your life, slaying monsters while studying for your exams and folding laundry, all while conspiring how to get someone else to do this job for you as quickly as possible. The curse of the Magical Girl … hey, at least you can teleport now?"

TLDR: A management sim where you have to balance tasks like studying, working part time, and fighting the monsters invading your city, building up your stats high enough to eventually get rid of the box, your powers, and go back to a regular life!

im very much so inspired by games like needy streamer overload or long live the queen for this game, im hoping im able to balance all the numbers and stats behind the scenes to make it fun to play :3

to be ultra specific, the player needs to build up their level in either Knowledge, Reputation, or Money to unlock an ending where they get rid of the box. each stat has a negative condition when they are too low, and the player also needs to manage their energy that gets consumed with certain tasks (although, you can expect some buffs when the energy is at a certain low threshold wink wink). The night system is more of a "tracker", to try and complete the game in as little nights as possible!

how are you making it?

godot 4! first time using this engine, but i cant keep using construct 3 forever, so now's as good a time as ever.

this is a screenshot of one of the scenes in the build atm, using my sketches of the rooms/objects for now. I am more of an artist that a programmer LOL, so I wanted to jump in and make sure I can make a game that runs at all before continuing drawing everything out

here you can see a bit of what my plan was for this week - implement all the stat values in the script (using some placeholder buttons on the side there to grant stats quickly), make sure players can move btwn scenes without issues, and start slowly implementing the tasks!

this is the room scene, where three actions can occur (study, sleep, pet dog), some that let you leave the room while active and some that dont, and im happy to say thats all working! hard to show at the moment since its all in the console at this point, the visual indicators aren't super clear to the player yet at this stage. Its more for me to know that things work!

so what about the art?

its coming along :3 i have my art style in mind and colors chosen, its just finding the time to do it all. the UI art is coming along as well, hopefully more to show next log!

as for music..well..ill cross that road when i get there. i've never written music before, but i've also never used godot before...so ill try my best

so...next steps?

making more tasks! i have my game doc im working through slowly, making the basic system to put all the tasks in and then tweak the numbers to balance everything. Im also trying to finish the room art, and then move on to the other locations. exciting stuff! hope to see u on the next one?