12/3 Uplink

12/3 Uplink

Hey, it’s jswessler. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Well, I don’t actually know what you’re thinking, because I’m an introvert, and I can’t read minds. But, you’re probably thinking: “This isn’t Tale of Two Sardines! What are you doing?!”

Well yeah. The big issue I’m having with Tale of Two Sardines is that I’m finding it basically impossible to keep track of everything. The game’s scale has ballooned into something much larger than I was ever expecting. Out of boredom, I began working on smaller projects in early 2024. 

First, I was experimenting with Pygame, making a fairly functional platformer, “Upwards”, before looking into some roguelike ideas. Then, during the summer, I learned Lua and Love2D, and began fleshing out some of the bigger ideas in that engine. Still, I was losing interest simply because the projects were taking too long and felt like they weren’t going anywhere.

Introverts Can’t Read Minds is a side project that suddenly turned into my main focus in about one day. Unlike everything else I’ve started, ICRM will be finished in about two weeks. It’s remarkable how much of the game I’ve put together in just a few weeks.

The protagonist of the game, Lizzy. Apparently, she’s pretty famous in Amherst.

After a very brief stint of trying to turn Love2D into RenPy, I decided to use RPGMaker for the engine, as I’m much more familiar with it. Most of the first week of development was spent brainstorming and writing functions for RPGMaker. This game, unlike most other RPGMaker games, will be 16 by 9, have a fairly high resolution, and feature a full conversation system with moving portraits and special text actions.

Since the second week of development, I’ve settled into a pattern. Design and draw one character, plan out their conversation, then implement it into the game. All of these steps take about the same amount of time: 2 hours. 2 hours times six characters times 3 steps per character is 36 hours of writing and designing, which is around 75% of the work I have to do. Currently, I’m designing the fifth character, writing the fourth, and implementing the third.

A raw portrait image file from the game. Each character will have 30-40 of these in 2-3 different poses.

Music is something I really enjoy doing. Introverts Can’t Read Minds will have an 8-song OST, all made in Ableton Live 11. Unlike Tale of Two Sardines, which took inspiration from lofi and chill music, ICRM’s OST takes inspiration primarily from modern pop songs. Currently, I’ve made seven out of eight songs. Just one left!

Thank you for reading! I’ll post one more downlink before the game releases.