Almost finished World 1! It's an oddly lit ocean. I think that this game will actually have a tutorial character. I am thinking a bat-winged Knifin named "Coral". After I add her into the game and a way for you to exit the level upon compleating it. I think I'll be able to post a video of it on my youtube channel. So look forward to that!
I'd like to real-talk about something for a moment.
(PICTURES ARE WAY BELOW)
Wings of Glass part 2 is on hold, and instead of going with the idea mentioned before. I am going to take a much less time consuming game that's just an action 3D platformer made for to be fun. This game will recycle the Wings of Glass engine but take it in a direction where Mayfly can't go. No puzzles, just good ol Mario 64-ish cute 3D platforming. There will be some stuff you have never seen before, and the new character will have much more adventures states, she runs faster, has more stamina, and jumps higher. And she can fight. But she cannot pick up items, since she is perpetually equipped with a sword.
This pending project is not meant to replace Wings of Glass, I am just still in the process of trying to figure out how to finance Wings of Glass 2, and this seemed like the most efficient way to give me a little bit more time, since I will be able to use the sales of this mini-project for more Wingsverse stuffs. As much as I hate to admit it, I simply do not have the time or money to give you the Wingsverse in a polished form right now. And there is no point in just half-baking it and giving you a mess instead. If I'm going to make Wings of Glass 2, I want to make it the version you deserve!
But until then, how about I tell you a little about this mini-project. Unlike Wingsverse, this new game gets to be really zany and unbalanced, I'll set aside my perfectionist mentality to just have some fun with the Wings of Glass engine. I thought of a loose story that won't require much text or translation since the story is to be mostly told through visuals. But I will disclose to you the whole idea.
Ashley Dengra is a normal American high school girl and aspiring artist. The story opens up with jump cuts of her going to school and doing school stuff, but slows down when she decides to go to the art room when it is empty to get some nice quiet alone time to draw. Her sketchbook has her name on it, which is how we know it's "Ashley Dengra". As she opens up her book, we see some really untrained attempts at an art style drawings of some original characters of hers. As the pages turn, we see improvement in her technique. She stops on a page that is not finished. The page shows a rough sketch of a girl. A name can be read at the top, "Misa Ikko". Ashley proceeds to finish it with paint. And as she makes the last brush stroke, the camera zooms into the painting, and the game just starts us off in a scene that looks just like the painting as we control this "Misa Ikko". This adventure is a metaphor for Ashley finishing every page in the sketch book over a few years.
Misa Ikko, both in name and design is intentionally designed with a lot less care than my other characters. Basically I took all of the stuff I learned about art and design over the past decade and a half and threw it out the window to try to tap into something more wild and untamed. Misa Ikko is meant to sound and look like something a naive teenage girl would think looks good. So she is given a pseudo Japanese sounding name, way too many tropes in her design, and a conflicted color scheme. I'm tempted to have on the doodle the words "Original Character. Do not steal" as a caption on the paper.
Anyway, this will be a short fun game, and I am actually working on it right now. Going to be speeding through this as fast as possible.
I just finished messing with the WoG assets to modify Mayfly's model into a design for Misa Ikko:
New Patch Notes!
Since the idea seemed to be liked here and on twitter, I went with it.
Now Mayfly changes color when her stamina has been used.
Also, the addition of having some key words highlighted to help dyslexic players read more easily.
Enjoy!
Stamina visual?
I noticed people seem to have trouble understanding how the stamina works. I was thinking of making a quality of life tune up to the game in making it to where Mayfly's pallet changes depending on if she has a fresh stamina or not. Where in she would turn white haired and dark skinned after spending stamina. She would return to being light skinned and blonde after refreshing.
Does anyone like this idea? Or is it just silly?
An Idea for the Future
The base of a Grasswings wings have a soft grassy feel to them, the same grass (and flowery) stuff also grows out of her head. Some Grasswings have antenna, some don't, some have antlers (it's also possible that they might have something resembling a tail). Jewelhook and Spearwing are both take inspiration from mixing a dino with a classical mythical creature. Jewelhook is a therizinosaurus-unicorn, and Spearwing is a raptor-dragon.
Future ideas. I have run this idea by a few fans and friends and they seem to like this option. The idea is to make a short slice-of-life 3D-platformer game, pending name = "Wingsverse": You play as a traveling Fluffear who notices that her old friend lives in a nearby village, so you decide to visit her. Your friend is the Grasswing depicted in the concept art, she lives in the same town that Mayfly (in reference to you, she is a stranger). The game spans 10 days, and your objective is to help make the villagers happier by being nice and helping them out. There is never enough time to do all possible events in the game, so the game will have replay value in trying to play out the 10 days differently. You can even interact with Mayfly to get a better understanding of what kind of person she is.
Mechanically the game will be quite similar to how Mayfly controls in this game, except instead of a spooks, it's all carefree cute slice-of-life stuff with low steaks. Instead of a linear adventure, it is more similar to Super Mario 64, except instead of collecting stars and keys, you are making the villagers happy.
So yeah, Wingsverse would be a direct prequel to this game and have a much different tone and more casual friendly difficulty. It would also open players up to a nice place to figure out more lore and world building of this world.
Do you have any thoughts about this idea?
Ovservations on the Project
I was just thinking about the possibility of making it to where all the characters in the game have 2 names (first and last) instead of just one. It wouldn't really affect the story in any way. But it just occurred to me that giving the characters a first and last name would make it easier to get google search results that bring you back to Wings of Glass. Still on the fence about it though.
In other news, I am resuming doing commissions to make a bit more cash while I think about what kinds of projects would best be enjoyed by Wings of Glass fans as small projects that I could make to try to make a little bit more revenue to continue working on this project. Since I gather that y'all are most attracted to the art and story telling in the WoG canon. I feel like it'd be best to focus on those things and not try to have some overly ambitious game-play for such a project. Just some brief secondary material that is not necessary to understand the story of Mayfly's adventure, but also fun details in a slice-of-life story that adds a bit more depth to the lore of this world. My best ideas are some kind of Visual Novel with 3D graphics and minor exploration.
1. Follow Salty and Illa just being best friends.
2. Follow the story in the Urban Legend of Comet the Returner from the perspective of Salty as the reader.
3. Mayfly backstory.
4. A story that utilizes more of the designs I've been showing in the concept art that may or may not relate at all to Mayfly's adventure.
P.S. I asked Naoya about what the Japanese name for the demon type "Grasswing" should be, and we came up with "メドウィング" which is said like "Medouingu" (Meadow-Wing). I think this works out because Meadow basically just means lots and lots of grass.
Spanish Sub, and Trivia Part 5
The Spanish sub version of the game is coming along fairly well! I have also been combing through all the text to highlight significant proper nouns and some names to help make it easier for dyslexic people read.
Seen above is another new demon, the Grasswing. My brother challenged me to design a demon that has the classic butterfly fairy design, I told him that I can't really think of any way to spin that idea in a creative way, but I made a doodle anyway. The Grasswing naming convention is that they are all named after flowers. The fluffy patches at the roots of their wings as well as the natural tiara shape that grows on their heads resembles soft grass and flowers. Also, some Grasswings grow either a pair of antenna or antlers.
As an aside... I'm not sure what the name of this type of demon is in Japan, since "Grasswing" and "Glasswing" if written in Katakana, both befome: "グラスウィング" (Gurasuingu).
Trivia Part 4
So today's article is less about canon and more about some behind the scenes stuff. I asked fans how old they see Mayfly as once, they told me a range of answers between 12 and 25, though the average was about 16.5. She has no stated canon age, she's as old as you personally feel makes the story work best.
Mayfly flips around just because my ADHD brother wanted something to spend his floating attention on.
The pause menu of the game is actually designed in a format that I based on the way a web browser looks. I also wanted to make it easy for people with dyslexia to use so items are lead with icons, and the words only come up for the item you have selected, rather than flooding the screen with words.
Mayfly holds unequipped items between her wings. This was done because I found that her un-equipped idle/walk/run animations looked more expressive then the equipped ones.
I have been asked if the purplish-pink goop is demon blood. And, it's not, demon blood is red, as anyone who's gotten the idea to strike a demon with a tool would figure out. It's cannonically called "trapsap" and I intended to make Mayfly have a walk animation that showed her using more effort to get out of it, but never got around to it. The yellow/blue glowey goop, by the way, is called "zapsap".
Mayfly cannot run fast or jump high because I wanted her to be unspectacular and feel somewhat like she could be anyone.
I use slim passes as gates to prevent players from bringing items they are not meant to have in new puzzles. It has been recommended to me that this could be improved, sooo--- I have thought of redesigning the items such that they look like they wouldn't be able to fit through the slim-passes no matter what Mayfly tries.
Dancing Spiders leave Mayfly when she gets too close to a light, or if she enters a pitch black room. Their deal is that I tried to make a set of characters that was nice enough that they are willing to help Mayfly, but also are busy with their own lives and therefore will not stray too far away from their homes.
Technically Wings of Glass counts as a "Collect the 6 Crystals" type of story. The only thing separating this from other takes on that story is that you literally are the crystals and are just tying to become whole again.
Trivia part 3
I drew more of the demons. Soo- I think I finally figured out what parts of the game bother you and make you interested (collectively).
According to my research, y'all like the bosses, but think that the normal enemy encounters are stiff. Or put another way, y'all like when I make give the demons names, and faces, and pasts. Because without those, they're just monsters.
This is just a thought- but I imagine that y'all would prefer if the Twintoes areas were done in a way that had only about 3 specific and distinct monsters that may be given 1-2 wall scratch messages each.
This is likely a change that, at this point, I am not going to make, but, it will inform the way I direct the rest of the story.
Wings of Glass Trivia 2!
Since y'all like when I talk about lore, I've got some for you. There are 22 unique phenotypes for demons (that I currently have thought of). Glasswings are not uniquely human-like in appearance, there are quite a few demons that are fairly humanoid. I'm currently taking a moment to make concept art for all of the demons in order of most to least human-like in appearance. Pictured here are the ones I have drawn so far, except for #3.
Names of demon types are general some word and then a synonym for a limb (roughly). Every single type has a unique naming convention for individuals (i.e. all Glasswings are named after bugs).
I have a question for you. I have often heard people describe my art style as "anime". Believe it or not, I'm never making a conscious effort to emulate anime. In my mind, I'm just making a drawing that is cute, simple, and easy to read. The last time I "tried" to draw anime was 9 years ago.
That said, I get the impression, from the demographic of the people who have purchased the game, that people who wind up buying this game tend to be fans of "anime games". So my question is:
Do you want there to be an actual and intentional anime influence for future Wings of Glass Content?
