One of the biggest obstacles to making faster progress in Izrand is that I thought I should do all the tilesets by myself, with no help and no resources that anyone else made, as when it came to Luxaren I did all the tilesets there by myself.

I recently decided this mindset is silly, as it's slowing down the project significantly. I'm using a lot of different tilesets than Luxaren here and I'm using tons of placeholders that it's going to take a long long time to make all those resources.

The first thing I've done is started using Caz's amazing Pixel Fantasy tileset pack to fill in gaps in my own tilesets. For an example of how that looks, here is Hayal Forest Road, where the actual road, boxs, wooden barriers and the guard house are from Caz's pack:



Thanks so much for making such an awesome pack, Caz! :DDDD This is going to save me (and my poor hand) a lot of work haha!

Tilesets of other areas are being completely, slowly, but I hope to amp up tileset production soon too! It'll be nice to share screenshots that I haven't been sharing because of placeholder assets.

Here is the harbor where the game begins, for example!



In other news, Avee is still hard at work doing character sprites for the game, and they are still turning out absolutely amazing! He is so good at translating the fine details of a character's design into sprite work! :DDD




I guess this doubles as a secret introduction to some characters you probably haven't seen before, haha! Hope this gets you curious, and a huge thanks again to Avee for all the hard work and attention to detail!!! :DDDDDDDDDDDD

Thanks to everyone for sticking around! I know development time on this is slow (a lot of it's on me for biting off a lot with this project, haha) but I'm determined to see this all the way to release, no matter how long it ends up taking.

It's been the better part of a year since I started developing Izrand Allure, and I've put off showing off a progress chart of some kind, which is because the way I'm making Izrand, with a lot of placeholders, feels a bit different than how I did Weird and Unfortunate and Luxaren. So I've gone with a progress chart similar to Sgt M's that break down work a bit better.

Before the chart, I want to state some caveats. First, all the hero battlers are placeholders (tho we hope to get those done soon). About 70% of the hero sprites are also placeholders still. No dialog/cutscenes have been inserted into the game itself yet. That said, even without the cutscenes, the game has about 3 and a half hours of gameplay.



Looking at this chart, it looks like the game is under a fifth done, total. It's hard to say for sure at this point, but it's looking like it's going to take at least another three and a half to four years to get done at the rate I'm going.

What about a demo? I usually have one ready by now, right? Well, with all the placeholder assets and the job system, that becomes a bit more difficult. I need to get sprites done for the heroes (walking and battle) and finish up all placeholder assets in early areas, plus the way the job system works, I need to finalize several aspects of it before a demo or else your save files might not carry over cleanly. I'm sad to say that this means I can't give any sort of date for a demo yet >.<;;

Thanks for joining me in this project, and as much as I want to hustle more and increase my rate of progress, I'm still working with what's realistic for me. Hopefully things will go smoothly from here! :DDD

I'm not always great at promoting and building hype for stuff I'm working on, and seeing as Izrand Allure is still in the early stages, it's hard for me to decide what is and isn't worth a blog update. If things go as planned, I'll have some big announcements soon, but for now, I figured I'd show some day to day progress and things that are being worked one :D

First off, we've got fresh new character designs courtesy of MakioKuta! Meet Caspian and Miray, a villain duo that will be harassing the heroes at several points over the adventure!



Big thanks to Maki, it's always fun working with her on these character designs, and she never disappoints with the results :DDD

Getting animations to work how I want has been a bit of a learning experience with MZ, but I've gotten the hang of the basics and can pretty much do what I want with Effekseer, tho I'm not great at some of the fancier stuff. That doesn't really hold me back any, and I've got a lot of animations done for the game! They take a little bit to draw pixel by pixel, but I really enjoy what I'm able to do! I'll put just a small sample here :3



Also been doing a lot of enemy work! You'll be pleased to know there's a large variety of enemies that'll be just itching for a fight with our heroes! Like Luxaren Allure, enemies appear static on the screen but will jump to life when attacking, casting spells, or taking damage! The preview gifs for them turned out a little wonky, but it gives you an idea of how they'll look in-game!



And let's show off random monsters moving around just for giggles!



Okay, that's enough of a peek behind the curtains! There's more to show like tilesets and eventually character assets as well, but I'll leave that for another day! :DDD As always, thanks for checking in with us, and I hope you have an awesome day! ^_^

Hello everyone! :D Thanks for checking out the new page for this new game-in-progress! A big thanks to RMN staff for approving this page and to Sooz for proofreading, editing, and rewriting my game description and character bios, which were a little rough around the edges XD;

I figure I'll structure this like a Q&A, even though no one's asked yet:



When did you start working on this?

The story and all the ideas that comprise Izrand Allure came together late last September and I began working on it in earnest in October of 2021, though hand surgery meant I had to stop shortly after starting. Not to mention I had been working on monsters, tileset assets, and animations for an undecided fantasy project (that turned into Izrand Allure) for most of the year in change since finishing Weird and Unfortunate Things are Happening so it's hard to really say when work on Izrand started, exactly XD



How far along is the game?

It's still in the really early stages. I'll just list off the work I've done in no particular order...

• Tilesets: 10 (in different states of completion, as many have placeholder assets, only 3 or 4 are close to what I'd call "done")
  
  
• Monsters (sprites and Dragonbones animations finished): 74
  
  
• Monsters complete (with their moves all working in-game): 25
  
  
• Animations: 130
  
  
• Maps: 53 (with only about 20 near what I'd call a "finished" state)
  
  
• Character sprites: 0 (unless you count monster map sprites and event object sprites, then 23)
  
  
• Actually complete dungeons: 2
  
  
• Actual script: Very very bare bones.
  

What does all this mean? How much of the game is actually done? I'd probably have to say we're still firmly in "Less than 1%" territory here, so there's still a lot to go XD



So when will it be ready?

Really hard to say. I've stated that the release date will be "sometime this decade" because it's gonna be real hard to tell. It will take at least 2 years, and I'd have to really be working turbo-fast with no real life issues to make that, which is extremely unlikely. I ask for your patience while I get it all done :DDD XD;



I saw Job class stuff in the description. What's that about?

I have always really loved the versatility of job classes that can be switched in games. In specific, I come back to Final Fantasy V once every year or two just because the job class stuff is so much fun.

I'm reigning back my own class system a little, just to keep myself sane, so it's a little bit different. Each character starts with their own unique class with their own skills, but it's very much "good for early game only."

Beating bosses unlocks new classes for the characters, but not all characters share all classes, so you'll have to experiment with different characters to get the party you want. In total I've got 20 classes and their skills planned out, which seems like a lot, but feels a bit different when not every character unlocks every class.

A big element is "growth from job class mastery." Instead of getting perks that would only affect a "freelancer" type class (which this game doesn't have), the perks you gain from mastering job classes apply across all of your jobs. Aside from each character's starting job, every job unlocks 3 passive skills along the road to mastery. 2 are usually stat bonuses and the third is another unique perk that synergizes with the class, like a small permanent reduction to MP costs for the summoner class.

I must admit some level of worry about these systems, as they are more complex than anything I've done before and will be harder to balance. I think I'm up to the task, but in the worst-case scenario where it all blows up in my face, I may have to scale down. While I think that's very unlikely, I want to be upfront about the risk, just in case.



Wait seriously is Lynette from Luxaren Allure really the main character?

While I consider this an ensemble piece that will explore each character, Lynette is very important to the story and is the closest thing to a main character (tho Vivica is close, too). Lynette didn't get a character arc and didn't change much at all in Luxaren Allure, which I felt was a major failing, and I want to give her a proper shot at things.



Boo! I hate Lynette! I don't want to play a game with her!

No one's actually said so, not so far anyway, but I worry this will be the case (please let me know if you feel the same way, if you don't wanna play because of this!). Lynette is very unlikable in Luxaren and also at the start of Izrand. However, I really think once she's gone through her trials and tribulations, you'll find her a little more interesting as a character.

If not, you'll have a lot of other characters that will hopefully interest you in this game. For a large portion of the game you'll have 6 party members (possibly 8 by the end, but that's a topic for later) so even if Lynette is a bummer to you, I hop the others will be enjoyable enough to overcome that.



Luxaren Allure? So this is sequel to a game you made earlier? Do I need to run off and play all of that before I can play this?

Izrand Allure takes place in the same world as Luxaren Allure and shares a main character. However, I very much want this to be a game that anyone can step into and enjoy, without having to complete Luxaren first. Lynette's whole deal will be covered quite extensively here, so you'll understand her even if you haven't played LA. That's why this isn't called Luxaren Allure 2 or something similar. I really want it to be something anyone can play.

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Now that I've asked myself a bunch of fake questions, do any of you have any real ones? Plop them down in the comments if you like and I'd love to answer them to the best of my ability! And thanks so much for checking out the start of my long journey with this new game! I'm so excited to show you more of this new land! :DDDD