Happy new year, reader! It turns out I’m bad at guessing how long things will take. I haven’t quite finished all the levels for Filcher yet, so my planned release date will have to change from “early 2021” to “pretty early 2021”. My current best guess is mid-April. Yeah, that sounds reasonable! he exclaimed confidently.
I’m almost done with the game’s tenth and final mission. I then want to finish one more mission for the middle of the game, and lastly I’ll make the very first level, which is the tutorial. I’ll then draw all the fancy comic book panels for the game’s story, all of which I’ve thumbnailed and planned out in reasonable detail. I’ve had most of this stuff figured out for a long time, and now it’s just a matter of implementing it, which can be a slog at times.
Also, because I’m an old man now (30) I need more breaks from the computer so I don’t fossilize in my chair (keep in mind I’m doing all this in my spare time). While this is a passion project, my advice if you’re planning to design, code, write, draw, score and sell your own immersive sim is 1) wtf don’t, and 2) Keep it small! I’ve always thought of Filcher as quite a small game, but the amount of custom content required for these 10 levels is more than I imagined.
To give myself a nice break, I drew a Mike Mignola-inspired poster for the game. I don’t know if the in-game comic book cutscenes will be in this exact style. I’ll be doing a lot of drawings, and a minimalist style isn’t necessarily faster than drawing something with more lines and detail… but we’ll see how it turns out! Thanks for your bottomless patience, and stay tuned for more.
