April Dev Log

April Dev Log

Wow, are we nearly halfway through 2020? Could that be true? Well, it is if you look at the calendar...

So what's been going on with the Isle of Bobbin during April? Well, it's been a story of two halves... Two weeks of massive progress followed by two weeks of literally not much.





As you may already know or have guessed, I have a day job which became busy over the last couple of weeks, enough to mean that even during Ramadan (which we work reduced hours) I've been working late. This has knocked me off schedule for a sprint or so (sprint as in Agile method of working). However, I also produced about a months worth of work during the first two weeks and so I don't think I'm behind at all...

I worked very hard on character dialogue (again!!!) but I think I really got much better at creating much more interesting characters. I also finished the book shop programming and apart from the individual books I now have a working place you can go once a day and pick a random book to read through.

When I say a bookshop I've actually been creating books you can read; now this is only 2 pages, but it's complete with pictures and enough writing to make it worth reading. I also have been trying to recreate an art style of old fashioned books, almost like an etching or print, which was really fun.

So what characters have I been adding? So far, the most interesting is Cullodena the cat who runs the bookshop. Cullodena only refers to herself as us, or we and speaks in a mysterious way, she also spends most of her time outside of work on top of the Cat's Cafe sign where you can shout up to her and ask her questions. It was really fun writing such a character into the game and she also has a love affair with the Punk hedgehog called Boyd!

Now, Boyd is a strange tale, he's actually looking after Adaira the older badger and there is a BIG mystery surrounding their relationship which I won't spoil here.

Oh and there's Glenn and Finella, the married cat couple who live every day like its Appreciation Day (basically Christmas but without the religious part), but really Glenn always refers to the fact that he 'won a lottery' and wants to avoid some people who may, or may not, want some of that money back... His wife, Finella, loves Appreciation Day so much, that she forced him to decorate the house with these celebratory decorations! This is mainly due to the fact that she never leaves the house in case some of Glenn's 'friends' from the mainland find out they are on the island!!

So lot's is going on, on the Isle of Bobbin now!

What's the plan for the next month? Most likely I'll add some of the school scenes in the game. I'm working on the two Hedgehog sisters who are the teachers, I think I want them to be very reluctant and lazy which makes you help them out in teaching the kids; I'm thinking they could be exchange teachers that are on the island to get experience in a smaller school before returning to the mainland with some much-needed experience. Something like that anyway... Let's see! Maybe you could let me know what you think.

Anyway, apart from the development of the game, I've basically done NO SOCIAL MEDIA, to help promote the game at all... Yuck... I'm so bad at it... I wish I could get into it and find the time... but I'm still stuck on getting a Steam page to point people towards... Basically, I suck! But then I guess keeping up with the game development at this early stage is time well spent - there's no point in showing off a game that won't exist or that will be rushed because I've spent all of my time on Twitter or whatever...

So that's it for another month of the Isle of Bobbin!

I hope you're all safe and well and speak again soon!

Much Love
Steven