Hello everyone, and welcome to our first developer blog for "The Gambit Lost to Time". First of all, allow me to introduce myself - I am William, the chairman in WizDream Games and my role in this project is being the Game Designer and Lead Programmer.
In this dev blog, I would like to address what is perhaps the biggest concern in TGLT at the moment - Inconsistent art styles (to say it kindly), and not enough GIFs to properly showcase what we are offering. Although this is not my field of expertise - We totally hear that! We are not happy with what we have right now. With problems in our face, it is up to us to solve them.
To be honest, it is not as simple as sitting down together and say "This is not good enough". "Not good enough" is still broad, and we have to dig deeper into why that is the case.
The bigger fish to fry is of course, the art style inconsistencies. What was evident when we made TGLT was that it's a very different kind of game to the games we made before (both of them being mobile rhythm games). While I believe our individual assets are good, when summed together, their overall quality lowers due to a lack of consistency.
A certain part of me thinks that the game... might be announced too quickly (taking the advice of bad Steam Page > no Steam Page). Regardless, what's done is done, and that's a lesson we have learnt, that we can apply to our next games.
In any case, to resolve the art style inconsistencies, we recently:
- Appointed one of the artists as the Art Director
- Consulted our friends elsewhere for their opinion and guidance
- Took more time to cook the assets, with consistency in mind at the forefront
This screenshot illustrates our progress from our first iteration of the game (seen in the trailer), to the second one, which is visible amongst the Store Page's screenshots. I do believe there are still lots of room to improve, which is why you will see a third iteration sooner or later...
Aside from this particular screenshot, there are lots of changes underway, as we prepare for our first public demo. I cannot give a specific timeframe, although I hope that can be ready by June.
I must thank the team for working so well (just not very visible yet), and the people we consulted for guiding our way through. As they say, the first step to success is to have the right people behind you.
The next dev blog we do will focus on the skills, and even more on how we are iterating on our art style to create the best results. By next month, many of the icons here will be designed differently, and we will explain on how these skills enhance your playing experience. So... please look forward to it!