It’s the end of The Red Market’s month-long pre-production. Also, there’s a super typhoon heading towards my home (Nagoya, Japan), so what better time to post an update?

I managed to finish everything on my list for this and the previous sprint of pre-production, so feeling pretty chuffed about that. Specifically, here’s what I did:

​General:

• A very nice player helpfully pointed out a few bugs, so I fixed them and uploaded a new version of the prototype. No content updates yet, unfortunately!
• I’ve added the ability to pay me thousands of pounds via itch.io if you really like The Red Market (smaller denominations will also be grudgingly accepted)
• Extra time spent on various research for (a) (possibly) commissioning art and music later on in the project, (b) improving the game’s social media presence to the point where it’s not just me on Twitter occasionally posting about what food I happen to be eating that day, and (c) (possibly) looking looking into some form of crowdfunding towards the end of the project.​  If you’d chuck me a couple of dollars a month on Patreon let me know. If you wouldn’t then, uh, maybe let me know but in a nice way please?

Planning:

• Planning all content for 14.5 new monsters, as well as breedings, and super-secret Monster Variations.
• Re-jigging Player Characters, their effects, and their special interactions
• Planning all item and relic interactions with monsters (since each run of the game will be relatively short, with a huge emphasis on replaying to find new monsters, new secrets, and new paths, these hidden interactions are going to be a vital part of the game, rather than just fun easter eggs).
• Planning the game’s Boons and Scars system of semi-permanent but treatable/losable buffs and debuffs.
• Planning in excruciating detail how all stats and story info will be tracked by the game, and how the game’s central time-resetting mechanic will work.
• Making a detailed schedule for full development, including several fortnight-long sprints sprinkled throughout development to cushion the blow of any setbacks.

Next sprint is the first of full production, and will take the form of rebuilding a lot of the current game. I learned a lot about Ink (and about game design in general) while developing the prototype, so before I focus on building new things I’m setting aside a fortnight (possibly two) to make sure the foundations are nice and strong and not sinking into a terrible haunted swamp.

I’ll write a blog post at the end of the next fortnightly sprint. Cheers!

Nick