Χίμαιρα (REMIND US TO WORK ON OUR GAME)

[kevin supermarket]

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hello dear friends and forum-goers. you should really remind us to work on our video game. what is this game, you ask?
...well, truth be told, we still haven't decided on a title yet. Χίμαιρα is the working title until we find something a little more search-friendly we like. but as to what the game actually is,



you play as Chimera, a young woman living in a stone temple in ancient Lycia with her father, Typhon. he is a cruel, relentless man leading the cult of Tartarus, and he has spent your whole life training you to become something stronger than himself. upon your rejection of his offer of becoming the new leader of Tartarus, you are banished from the temple and dumped in the outskirts of the region with nothing but your desire for vengeance and your tantō knife.
the actual mythology of the Chimera doesn't go anything like this, but you see, this isn't a story about the Greek mythos. it's more personal than that.

what this story is actually about is, well, our host Meznamaähki, but in a more exaggerated sense. her heavy identification with the mythology of the Chimera is one she's been attempting to put into some form of media other than abstract thought for years, and this is the means by which we want to do it. game design's one of, if not her outright favorite thing to do. she's wanted to make a game like this for a good while now.
this is a story about someone who views themself more as many parts, more as something inhuman, something loathed by the world around her, something that has only gotten by on the bare minimum and desires change. this is a story about the fight for survival by any means necessary.

that all said... what actually is the game. right, well.
Χίμαιρα is a 2D pixel-art story-driven action adventure game with a prioritized focus on stealth and survival. Chimera has essentially zero form of defense for herself other than her own physical capabilities, meaning you have to be highly considerate of your positioning and when you choose to attack enemies. as the game progresses, you encounter certain stops like local bars throughout the villages or a spot to pray to the moon. these stops provide you with progressive upgrades to Chimera, whether it be something for her stats or her combat kit. between these stops are multiple environments starting from the outskirts of Lycia to the very grounds of the temple you were exiled from. these areas fill up with waves of enemies from either side armed with a lot more than what you have, so you must either fight them off masterfully or take a quieter way out if possible. the ultimate goal of the game is to reflect on your growth throughout the adventure... and also kick your dad's ass out of the temple and disband his cult.

our leading inspirations for the game are sources such as River City Girls, Bunny Kill 5 (the flash game), and this art from DiH_pixels (warning: their profile is just boobs, so just look at the linked post and no further)

what do we have to show for it so far? nothing :D
no, really. despite this concept living in mezna's head for the better part of like, two years now, we just haven't gotten around to being able to do anything with it yet. ADHD sucks bad, yo. but now that we're in a unique position cough cough jobless college dropout, it seems like there's no better time to get real about it. the point of this thread is to both incentivize us to provide updates on anything we do pertaining to this project, but also to have You Guys tell us to Keep Working On It. this game, given it can actually come to fruition, is basically mezna's life work thus far. it's very important to her that she actually gets to tell this story, no matter how much her brain actively works against her. we aren't gonna let it be something that's just "a lot cooler in her head than it really is".

while we don't have anything to show yet, please feel free to ask questions about, give advice or suggestions for, or just remind us to work on the game. the first thing we plan to tackle is a basic walk & run cycle, so that will be the next "big" thing you see from us here. thanks for checkin' this out <3

 

[ChunkOfWax]

Godspeed! I know in my experience, I like to let my Big Ideas stew in my head for a while and instead just choose to work on other stuff that's only adjacent to The Big Idea. It's my way of keeping busy and making progress while I wait for the "right time" to start on something really, truly special. But sometimes I worry if there's ever really a right time to get started. I definitely put it off sometimes cause I'm a bit afraid. Committing to something like this is really commendable. I wish y'all good luck, I hope to see future updates :)

 

[KeplerElectronics]

What framework/engine are you thinking of? I've messed with most of them at this point, so if you want recommendations feel free to hit me up :)

 

[kevin supermarket]

What framework/engine are you thinking of? I've messed with most of them at this point, so if you want recommendations feel free to hit me up :)

godot! we're gonna try what we can to pivot off unity and to something a little... friendlier to us in terms of, like, not asking for a considerable portion of our money if this were to ever become something more than a few friends play out of curiosity or sympathy. that said, we're also pretty Scared of it just because we'd gotten so used to unity over the past four years. we've tried wrestling with godot a while back, but it never really stuck with us. we're hoping to tough through it though.

 

[KeplerElectronics]

godot! we're gonna try what we can to pivot off unity and to something a little... friendlier to us in terms of, like, not asking for a considerable portion of our money if this were to ever become something more than a few friends play out of curiosity or sympathy. that said, we're also pretty Scared of it just because we'd gotten so used to unity over the past four years. we've tried wrestling with godot a while back, but it never really stuck with us. we're hoping to tough through it though.

Godot was pretty cool when I used it back in 2019 or so. Never got far with it but it was relatively friendly, and apparently it's gotten even better in the past couple updates.

Interesting lil trivia fact: Apparently the new Battlefield 6 map editor was built using Godot. Not the whole game, just the mapping tools. Hopefully that spurs on even more funding from big money players like what happened with Blender

 

[kevin supermarket]

STEPS YOU SHOULD HOLD US ACCOUNTABLE FOR (#1):
before we do so much as work on the walk & run cycles, we need to actually write out the game first. i think the major roadblock mez's ADHD is encountering is that we feel kind of aimless despite having a rather vivid mental image of the end product. without actually knowing what we're going to do next or what purpose the thing we're doing now has, it becomes really easy to open up our art program, look at the wip sprites, and decide, "naaah, not today".

the other benefit is that writing out the game and all its components helps us get a sense of scale for the project as a whole. now, normally this is a pretty terrible idea. it's scary to have a fairly large idea for a game in your head, then put it all out there for you to visually comprehend the size of, let alone the potential effort needed to make it real. a big part of this is that we do not want to pressure ourself to do ALL of it. there are something we just aren't that good at or don't know how to do, like music and environment/background design! ideally, we'll consider looking for extra hands to assist where we can't reach, but worst comes to worst, we just have more things to learn how to do.

above all else though, it's also good for us to pace what it is we can do. i'm not sure how easy it'll be to routine-ify working on the game, but so long as literally any progress whatsoever is made, that's better than no progress at all. given our strong suits lie in programming and design of the core mechanics (like the main controls) and we have an increasing interest in doing sprite work/art, we're gonna put our focus there first.

if you have recommendations for any tutorials good for unity devs switching to godot (or, i guess, just beginner godot tutorials), send 'em over! it would be greatly appreciated and would help us start to build up the motivation to tackle this first step

 

[KeplerElectronics]

I remember watching Heartbeast's godot tutorials back in the day when I was learning Godot. not sure how well their newer stuff holds up but I figure it's worth sharing in case its helpful

link to channel:

 

[mugrootbeer]

Brackeys was the singular reason I started messing around with Unity & C#, back when he would make tutorials for it.
He left the internet for 2 years and came back, seemingly out of nowhere, with a bunch of absolutely amazing Godot tutorials!! His style of video is very unique in how it teaches you the basics while not at all being afraid of delving into more complicated stuff. Best of luck with your project!!!

Brackeys

Learn how to make video games! Top-quality game development tutorials on everything from Unity, Godot and programming to game design. If you want to become a developer this channel will help guide you through it! Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/brackeys ► All content by Brackeys is...

www.youtube.com

 

[kevin supermarket]

guess who's making a conlang now