HERRO EVERYNYAN!!!

It's been a long time since I've updated you regarding The Far Land of Magic: Mother's Cursed Spell. I want to apologize for that sincerely.

Making this game has felt like it's been forever. It's honestly tough to make a game like this. I'm not very good with art, music, or environmental design. Mainly the art, I've realized that's the one aspect of making this game that takes me so long.  I look at the many other people who have made their games. And even though the art for some isn't the greatest, it's memorable. I have to come to realize that.

I want to be able to make this game as good as it can be not just for myself, but for those interested in playing it. I want to tackle all of the optimization issues. I want to push out very appealing and adorable artwork of all my characters. I want my world to be exciting to see and explore. I like that GENUINE player experience for a sub-genre of games that was popular when I was a pre-teen. I know it can be done. This kind of game can be fun, exciting, challenging, and memorable. Many indie developers inspire me to do what I do. And I feel like putting off this game for a while doesn't do it justice.

I want to make it up for all of you guys, so I'm sending out this devlog to you all...

By the way, HI! My name is Miijii-San! And obviously, I'm the developer of this brand new Danmaku game that takes inspiration from games like Ikaruga, and most certainly TOUHOU! (Yes! Touhou!) This is a game that I envision will pop off with the right audience. Even if it doesn't, I've now made it my mission to ship this game out as best as possible, ensuring that I can make it accessible and enjoyable for everyone. Most importantly, I want it to be memorable. I want people to play this game, and still remember it as the game that even though not many people play this sort of game, they remember that they enjoyed the gameplay, the characters, the music, and the story overall.

But enough of the sappy talk! Let's go over the changes that have been made to the game since my last devlog post.

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So... first off, Grimoires aren't a thing anymore. I considered it feature creep, and the scale was too broad to handle. I needed to switch my sights on what the game truly wanted to be (and that is a Danmaku). When I push out another Alpha build for people to try, they'll notice that no grimoires will spawn.

Great! I got that out of the way! Secondly, I've improved the Gamepad system. This time, it's not super wonky. You can't specifically map the buttons, but you can change types for how you want to move the character (Analog or Direction), and there are 4 button layouts that you can switch between. Decide which type suits you best, and just enjoy shooting and dashing your way through the stages.

I toyed around with the Priority mechanic a bit. In response to this, some of the character's stats have changed. Different spells are associated with each character, and the duration has decreased.

Dashing also takes more Mana from you, but not enough to the point where you can't do much. It's still far from balanced, but it's a lot better than previous builds of the game.

I've also added a "Ease-of-Gameplay" setting where you can enable "Blessings", or distort time as you hold down the SHIFT key. This allows you to learn an enemy's pattern much easier before you go all out and not distort time.

I'm still working up the Soundtrack for the game, and so far, I've got 16 tracks in (while only about 6 tracks are used for the game). I also revamped the Menu screen (there's an actual background now).

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As of the date of posting this devlog, the game is currently undergoing some final touches to eventually be re-uploaded onto Itch. Once that happens, I plan on working on enemy and boss sprites as best as I can, and also work on Stages 2 and 3. Stage 3 will take a while to work on. I need to take some time to look at references for the general setting of Stage 3, implement it, and go from there. My goal for right now in the year 2025 to put out a minimum viable project with at least 3 main stages and an extra stage, as well as a proper tutorial section so that everyone knows how to play the game. I've made a tool to help with the dialogue system, and so I plan on doing some arduous work to remove the old dialogue system in place for this new one. That way, creating the dialogue and story aspects of the game will be a lot easier for me to work with after putting out the initial Alpha demo with 3 of the stages.

I will also take some time out of my day to undergo some art training. I've gotten considerably better. It's just that color-theory is a bit of a challenge for me now. But we'll get there.

Overall, the goal is to have an enjoyable demo that everyone can play by the end of this year. I don't plan to stretch this out more than I already have. I'll make posts on my Twitter/X, Threads, and Bluesky account. It would be awesome if you followed me on those platforms so that everyone can ride along with my growth and development as an indie dev. The support would be tremendous. (〜￣▽￣)〜

Anyways, that's all I have for now! Baiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!