Hi! 👋

This year, I’ve managed to actually finalize my own game called SSiS 🥳. I’m super happy about it since my 6 previous games (made in my spare time) never got beyond Proof of Concept phase. I’ve decided to write a devlog about it, to share my experience and to motivate myself to continue working on it. I’m going to write about my inspirations, the tools I use, my workflow, and my plans for the future. I hope readers will find it interesting and maybe even useful.

The big WHY? 🤔

So why would one spend all his free time to write yet another game? I’m a total computer geek 🤓 and I love both games and games development (gamedev). There is so much neat technology and surprising concepts used in gamedev that one needs to constantly learn new things. And this is what keeps me motivated - the constant learning process.

Sure, it would be great to gain some money 🤑 from all this hard work I’m putting into this project, but there are also many other things that I’m getting from it:

• learning new things: script writing, building a plot, game design, publishing, marketing,
• having fun,
• getting better at programming,
• and most of all: seeing people actually playing my game and enjoying it 😍.

Goals 🎯

I’d love to have a finished game, but at the same time, I’m enjoying the process of making it. I’m just a hobbyist, so I don’t have any deadlines or pressure to finish it and I want to keep it that way. It’s a way of relaxing for me, to release some steam after a long day of work.

Secondly, I’ll do my best to add, in each devlog, something that will inspire 💡 the readers. In general, I’d like to cover the following topics in the future:

1. terminal emulators (tty) and ASCII ART,
2. about creating roguelike games in Python,
3. how to write a good game plot,
4. challenges in writing dialogues for RPG game,
5. tools for creating maps for roguelike games,
6. usage of ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot as some of many tools to create my game

The meat 🥩

For today’s takeaway, I’d like to share a game I just found and can’t express how it amazed me. I thought I’d seen a lot of ASCII ART, terminal-based games, and different game art styles, but this is something really astonishing: The game is called Stone Story RPG. Let’s start with this trailer:

Release Trailer

Look at this animation 🤩! It’s so smooth and natural looking. Still, everything is so ascetic - mostly 2 shades of white and black background plus some color accents here and there. Plus shadows and simple anti-aliasing or even dithering. It’s so simple, yet so beautiful 😮. I’m really impressed. Even the flourish elements of UI, the logo, and its animation - just wow 😲!

The Gabriel Santos, the creator of this piece of art, is using all sorts of tools in his game (even the Unit Engine), but those animations are written in a plain text editor (Nodepad++), frame by frame 🤯. This is benedictine work, I’m telling you.

Here is him explaining how he did it:

• ASCII-art Techniques & Animation Tutorial - Part 1
• ASCII-art Techniques & Animation Tutorial - Part 2

Game home page:

• Stone Story RPG

Summary 📝

That’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Will try to write more in the future. Stay tuned!

Get inspired 💡, share 📣 and create 🏗️!