Tale of Two Sardines News

Hey look! Another TOTS Devlog. Are you sick of reading these yet? Because I'm not sick of writing them!

In this devlog, I'm going to talk about my artstyle, how it's changed since Annie and the Art Gallery, and how I'll be dramatically improving TOTS' art!

If you haven't noticed already from all the promotional material, I'm using a somewhat different artstyle than what I used in AATAG. It's the eyes, obviously. Since around this time last year, I've switched to drawing eyes that are much more expressive and more anime-like as opposed to more western-cartoon ish.

O-Obasan, you're really creeping me out! Please go through my company!!!

I started making AATAG when I was very new to drawing and art. I started working on AATAG in August 2021, just 7 months after starting to draw digitally, with absolutely no prior experience in any other medium. Some of the old art in the game really shows this: The poses are really stiff, the characters have blank expressions, and there's no sense of weight or motion.

The other problem I had was my outright refusal to use any references for anything. Besides the inspirational drawings, none of the art for AATAG used any references for poses or backgrounds. At the time, I thought using references was basically just plagiarism and copying, but now I know better.

Does this pose look familiar?

I'm using plenty of references for both poses and backgrounds, and I think it's really helping my art. A common complaint I heard about AATAG was the art, and I feel like I've improved a lot!

That's pretty much it for this dev post. I want to end off with some quick updates on how the game is doing. The music is around 75% done and I've gotten a significant amount of the art done since May. A lot of it is redoing the old animated dialogue poses into the new static ones with Miko's new design. It's a little hard to tell how many of these I need in the game... so I'm just doing a TON of them! The final game is looking to have around 150-200 of these.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to focus on getting all of the puzzles working, then switch focus to polishing what's already there. Like I said before, I want to focus on making the game playable to get my morale up first and foremost.

Thanks for reading and sticking around! You should join my discord server to keep updated on all TOTS related happenings - https://discord.gg/ssJhqeZbDC

- jswessler

Hey look, another TOTS devlog!

In this devlog, I'm going to talk about the scale of Tale of Two Sardines, and why the game is so frustrating to work on actively.

TOTS is shaping up to be a much more detailed experience than Annie and the Art Gallery. This is mostly because of the much more involved worldbuilding I've done for this game. As described in previous posts, this game is all about the world. In AATAG I could get away with not doing too much worldbuilding because of the conciseness of the story you experience, but here I'm not letting myself get away with that again.

I think this is a really good goal to strive for, and will allow people to become invested in a world I've built over the years and a world I love.

However, this comes with a tradeoff. Detail. TOTS is so much more detailed than AATAG that I'm finding it hard to keep track of everything. The main problem I'm having are the hundreds of events and objects scattered around the game. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, as I'd just assign a basic description to each one and forget about it. However, I've been trying so hard to implement worldbuilding in each description that whenever I come back to a room that I've "finished", I want to go in and slightly change everything to be perfect.

I feel like I'm doing a good job keeping organized on what the full story actually is, but it's still hard to manage everything. At this point, I don't think it's worth making a separate document of every object and description in the game (because it would take more time to make than it would ultimately save). The problem I'm having is that I want each section of the game to be perfect before the game is actually playable. That's just not how game development works.

I'm going to stay as organized as I can and prioritize making the game playable from start to finish before fixing the things I've already implemented. This way, I'll feel confident that I have a good base to start from when making revisions and polishing.

If anything, developing TOTS has given me immense respect to other game developers trying to cram detail into their games. Games like Undertale have so much lore and detail and love put into it that I can't imagine what it took to keep track of it all.

Anyways, jswessler rant over. Here are some images of rooms and areas that will be present in Tale of Two Sardines!

Miko loves reading in the library. Or probably just doomscrolling on her phone staring at the state of U.S. politics. Yes, that will be in the game.

Miko's office. That laptop looks a little funky, doesn't it?

Goddammit Miko where the HELL are we?!?!?!

New innovative 2020 technology coming to long hallways near you: Windows!



Thanks for reading and sticking around! You should join my discord server to keep updated on all TOTS related happenings - https://discord.gg/ssJhqeZbDC

- jswessler

Hey look, another TOTS devlog! jswessler keeping a schedule???

Today, I want to talk about one of my main philosophies while making this game, and three results from it that I'm currently working on in the game.

Main Philosophy: Implementing cool mechanics in RPGMaker's limited scope.

Note: This doesn't mean "I'm going to do features that have never been done before!" because RPGMaker (while I enjoy it) isn't exactly ideal for that (as in you definitely shouldn't be making cutting-edge features in RPGMaker). Instead, I'm looking at other games for cool features, visual designs, and mechanics.

RPGMaker games have a tendency to look pretty old-school. While this isn't a bad thing, It contradicts the theme of TOTS. Today, I'll show off three results from this to try to modernize RPGMaker into something cool and fun.

Heads Up Display Something else to look at besides mouse-drawn pixel art.

Tale of Two Sardines will have a persistent HUD. Unlike AATAG, which just only had a HUD in specific areas, TOTS's HUD will appear throughout the game. It is interactive, too! It shows current information regarding collectibles and other game mechanics.

So what if I play Overwatch? Like, way too much. Please help me...

Hopefully, this will increase the clarity of certain mechanics, when you pick up important items, and more!

Interesting mechanics As opposed to non-interesting mechanics... Like in Phasmophobia.

Another thing I'm focusing on is having mechanics beyond just "move around and interact with stuff". AATAG did this in two areas, the strobe light puzzle and the audio puzzle, and it seems like those two areas were many people's favorite parts.

TOTS will have a game-wide mechanic of alternating between two dimensions. This will be on a simple button press and will be related to almost every puzzle and story beat.

There will also be more puzzles in TOTS. Here's some teasers of what I have now:

Big Sardine, little Sardine. They're Miko's favorite food!

The audio meter returns!!!

Character Portraits Now in Full HD 816x624 Quality (tm)!

Back in 2022, when I was riding the high after AATAG's release thinking "There's nothing I can't do in game development anymore!", I decided that TOTS would have animated character portraits. Two years later, I finally realized that that was way too ambitious. TOTS will have static, detailed character portraits instead of the faces in AATAG.

I feel that this is a better approach in TOTS for two reasons. Firstly, TOTS doesn't have as many characters as AATAG: 95% of the portraits are going to be of Miko, unlike AATAG's pretty even 40/20/20/20 split between its characters. Secondly, I mostly used faces in AATAG because I wasn't yet comfortable with drawing full-body shots, but I'm much better at that now. Drawing more allows me to convey hand gestures and body language without completely relying on facial expressions.

Lookin at you like AUUUUUUGGHGHH

And here's what it looks like in game. There will also be slide in/out animations that go along with every picture!

Wow Miko, those blue empty picture frames do look really cool! You're such a talented pixel artist!


Thanks for reading and sticking around! I'm going to try to post every week or two here and mirror them onto my discord server (you should join that, by the way! https://discord.gg/ssJhqeZbDC)

- jswessler

Hey jswessler! Where is Tale of Two Sardines???

Alternatively: Breaking News: TOTS Script Found Dead in an Aerospace Major Dorm Room

Well, it's complicated.

At the center of everything is Miko, a character who, in the original script (and in hindsight), was an extremely one-dimensional character masquerading as someone interesting. Miko's original character arc was "Hey, I'm in Japan! Wow, here's a lot of things happening around me that aren't very cool! Oh look, here's a world-shattering plot twist! What should I do now?!"

Miko has gone through several revisions in her character. I've really spent most of this time thinking about the world Miko lives in. Since AATAG's release, I have spent a lot of time workshopping the world that both these games take place in and used that experience to make Miko a much better protagonist.

Deep down, don't we all want to be fleshed out characters?

The game itself has also undergone many changes in its message. Instead of focusing on the plot twist like the original script did, the new script focuses more on Miko and the world around her.

Here's an honest update on where I am with the game.

Story - 95%
TOTS's fully revised script is basically done. There are a few things I still need to figure out, but most of them depend on how I feel the rest of the game comes out. I don't want to spoil anything, obviously, but here are a few highlights.

• More than two endings (including one "good" ending and at least one "neutral" ending)
  
• A real character progression for Miko
  
• Callbacks to AATAG and other pieces of media
  
• 1000% more worldbuilding
  

Programming - 50%
Programming is coming along. There are two more puzzles I have to implement and one that I need to seriously rework. There's not too much else I have to say here. The puzzles are going to be more involved than AATAG, and most of them are going to involve special mechanics or gimmicks that many of you enjoyed with the light and sound puzzles in AATAG.
This part is what I least enjoy doing, and its most of the reason the game has taken this long to make. The scope of this game is much more fleshed out than AATAG and with that comes a heavy increase in the programming and level design.

Art - 40%
With Miko's visual design change, I need to go through and redo all the art that's gone into the game. More than that, though, I need to rethink how I approach game art in the first place. AATAG's art more or less didn't use any background or pose references. At the time I thought it would be fun to challenge myself, but three years later I've learned the value of using references.
I am also changing all the animated character portraits to static ones, similar to other RPGMaker/top-down pixel games like Paper Lily or Ann. This is annoying, but the resulting portraits are way better and way more expressive than before.

Music - 50%
This is the part of the game I most enjoy doing. I actually have 6 songs already made for this game, and my plan is for 12-13 songs in total. I have switched from using Musescore to Ableton Live 11 for music which led to a huge increase in production value.

Cool! What else?

I'm also splitting my time working on a separate project, a speculative platformer called "Upwards". It started as a fun project last year, but I've recently seriously considered it as a full-scale game alongside TOTS. Upwards is being actively updated on my GitHub page, although it's not quite ready for testing yet. Here's a screenshot of what I have right now.

Yes, all the blocks have smiley faces on them. It's supposed to make you feel happy, among... other things.

Of course, I'm also a full-time student in a field completely unrelated to game development. TOTS, like AATAG, is a passion project inspired by what I love, not a full-time job. I grew up surrounded by old RPGMaker games, and I hope TOTS captures the feel from those old games while introducing modern mechanics and ideas that players want to see today.

Thanks for reading and sticking around! I'm going to try to post every week or two here and mirror them onto my discord server (you should join that, by the way! https://discord.gg/ssJhqeZbDC)

Weirdly enough, most people I know in person fit into one of these emotes.

- jswessler