Himig Devlog #14
Tag: Himig »
Summary
Made a public devlog of Himig’s progress for the past year or so.
Content
Note: This development post was previously only available on Ko-fi. I replaced old GIFs with JPGs to save space.
Hello! These public devlogs ended up being a yearly thing, but it should start to slowly become more frequent as I continue making good progress in the game’s development. 🌱
![A boy in a school uniform, sitting on a bench at a park. A dog, a cat, and a few birds can be seen relaxing nearby.](img/himig/devlog14-1.jpg)
After the previous devlog, around the middle of 2022, I mainly continued doing environment work. I completed some terrain and general assets that I need for a few of the game’s locations. I also did a bunch of animation work for the game’s characters, mostly for the many people that you see around town every day.
It took more time than what I expected, but I did learn and improved a lot in the process. I feel like I found the balance between how I want the game to look like and what I can do with my current art skill now.
With these, I hope that the game’s sceneries will be full of life and make people enjoy just hanging around and relaxing at random places in town.
![Interactable circles shown on top of the terrain. A door icon is on one of the circles.](img/himig/devlog14-2.jpg)
After all the 3D work, I started to experiment a lot and do my best in designing the game with accessibility in mind. Trying out different layouts to make menus easy to use, creating adjustable settings as I go through the game’s various systems, and figuring out how to offer alternative methods of play are some of the things that I tackled, and am currently working on a solution on.
I was doing limited-control options for an old prototype I was making a long time ago, and remembered it while implementing control remapping for Himig. I was interested in play without having too many buttons to press, due to a physical condition.
Thinking about it again led me to research more about game accessibility and slowly became more invested in it. This is only the beginning for me, and I hope to learn a lot more about making games playable for more people going forward.
![A cat laying down in front of a food display cabinet with croissants in it.](img/himig/devlog14-3.jpg)
To let more people know about the game, and to see if there are any opportunities for the game to help me survive life in some way, I applied to a few showcase events, funding programs, publishers, and other things, failing a lot but still getting a few successes throughout the year.
I also changed the game’s pricing from free to paid, in hopes of it helping me continue making games in the future once it releases.
Himig was fortunate to be a part of events like the Beyond Indie Showcase, the Nightmarket Festival, and just recently, the Access-Ability Summer Showcase.
The game is currently being made with support from the Toge Game Fund Initiative. With their help, I am able to try out certain ideas and further improve on the game while receiving feedback from experienced game creators.
![A boy in a school uniform, looking at a creek from a small bridge.](img/himig/devlog14-4.jpg)
Near the end of 2022, I got COVID once again, causing development to slow down for a few weeks. Due to multiple infections of it, I sometimes get nerve and muscle pain, or random fits of tiredness, even up to now. I adjust how much I work on the game when those happen.
It doesn’t help that the heat in my country is at a new all-time high this year, too…
Thanks, world.
(These are kind of not related to the game, but they do affect its development, so I felt like I should write about them a bit.)
In any case, that pretty much summarizes most of the previous year and the first half of this year. Thank you for reading this far! 😇
I’ll continue working on the game so it can be something that people can enjoy and smile about. ☀️
If you’d like to support Himig’s development, please consider sharing it to your friends, wishlisting it on Steam, and becoming a member on Ko-fi, where I do frequent updates about the game. 🙇
Thank you for your support. Stay safe. See you next time! 🌳