Hello!

Just dropping in to inform you good folks that the release of the upcoming demo will be delayed to May. Reason being that there will not be enough time to finish all of the new artwork by the original date, and also, I just need a bit more time lol

In any case, I am happy that I am working on Linus almost non-stop these days. Before I picked up development again, I hadn't worked on it since the beginning of last year, which is pretty terrible. But now that I have a finish line for the next demo in sight, I am really motivated.

Hello.

After six years I will be releasing a new demo of Linus: The Forgotten Days on 3/3/21.

(Please be excited.)

Hello!

Here are 30 minutes of new gameplay from the upcoming release.

Hello again, folks/friends.

I figured I'd give a much-needed update on the status of the game and what's changed since the last demo release 4 years ago. A lot has changed in that time, both in the game itself, as well as my perspective on what kind of story I'm aiming to tell. The goal has always been to tell a personal story about a character's life, but I've since increased the game's scope to be something... different. What's important to me now is the idea of a single person affecting other people, including the player. It is a passive concept that involves the player reacting to the story, rather than being the one who sets things into motion. Interesting and lifelike NPCs are my favorite things in games (wassup Radiata Stories!), and I'm curious to see how it'd work out if an NPC was given a central role in the story as well as the capability to change the story themselves, and in turn, for the player to react to those changes. I think it's a neat idea that's worthy of being explored!

The reason I've been toying around with this concept is that... well, I am honestly tired of always being the all-powerful Dragonborn/Space Cop Jesus/Chosen One hero in games. You could be the hero in Linus, or maybe someone else could. :p

I have some ideas on how to implement this and I am incredibly excited to see if it all works out or if it becomes a horrible nightmare. Either way, I'm sure it'll be a learning experience.

Besides that, I've started implementing a certain gameplay system for the game's Etonmarch chapters. For those who don't already know, Etonmarch is a military college the main character, Linus, gets sent to when he is 13 years old. He then spends the rest of his adolescence in this school making lifelong friends/enemies, getting into trouble, doing cool shit, suffering horrible tragedies, ect. Basically, it's Harry Potter meets Suikoden. Anyway, I am planning on implementing a Persona-style calendar system here, with each day of the school year offering a choice of different activities and events for the player to partake in. Either they can hang out with comrades, train, explore, sleep, or what have you. This all sounds like a ton of work but it's been in the planning stages for years and I am very much looking forward to getting it in the game.

That's about it. Thank you for reading and for being interested in my anti-power fantasy!

G'bye!

when will i be playable? :(



Hi.

I guess I should apologize for going so long without an update. I honestly am not good at caring about anything to do with the game besides the actual development, so things like blog updates and posting screenshots are a bit of an annoyance to me. That being said, I should be 100% better about keeping those who are interested in the game up to date about how development is going (especially since it's been so long!), even if I do find it a bit irksome.

To start with, I've spent the last year and change working on LINUS as well as a few other projects. Progress has been slow, but there's a reason for that. LINUS is now being developed on the VX ACE platform. ACE is just all around more comfortable for me and it allows me a lot of creative freedom to take the game in interesting new directions, which wasn't possible when the game was on VX. Despite it being "rebooted", the plot of the game will still be the same and the existing content (the prologue demo) will still play out in much the same way. Narrative-wise, the game will be 90% the same as my original vision. When it comes to gameplay, I've chosen to take LINUS in a completely different direction.

When I first started this game, I was obsessed with telling a massive story and if that meant that the player had to sit there and read tons and tons of text for minutes on end without any form of interaction with the game, then so be it. These days, I'm still interested in telling a massive story, but in a way that gives the player more agency in the telling of said story, which hopefully will result in the game being a much less passive experience. I am working on some really cool gameplay systems that I hope will elevate the game into something much more memorable in that regard.

Besides that, I've also been working on a new turn-based tactical battle system that I'm really excited about. I won't go into too much detail here, but in essence, I'm aiming for a battle system that involves the game having a fewer number of battles, but making those battles truly memorable. The battle system I am hoping to implement won't just revolve around players choosing commands from a menu, but will also introduce narrative and action elements into encounters as well. Hopefully it will be neat!

That's about it for now! I know it's a bit of a short update but I will try to make use of this blog more often in the future. Thanks for reading!