Camera Anima News

[p]Heyo~[/p][p]First off, if you haven't seen it already, our trailer for Dames 4 Games is up on Youtube!
[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]It was an amazing showcase with a lot of great games and interviews and topics. If you'd like to see the full showcase, you can find it here.[/p][p]As for the game itself, we've hit some big milestones in the past few months. Here's some of the highlights.

Sprites[/p][p]All the sprites for story scenes are now in the game! It's the first time we've seen some scenes with all the pieces put together - dialogue, sprites, backgrounds, CGs, gameplay mechanics, audio, etc. Though there's still work to do before we consider them "finished", some scenes still hit hard, especially late in the game.

Next up, implementation of side sprites into exploration scenes![/p][p]
Backgrounds/CGs[/p][p]All the backgrounds are now coloured! This means we've been able to shift our focus towards finishing colour-work for our CGs.


Testing[/p][p]We've also shifted a big part of our focus towards testing. While the game's playable from start-to-finish, every game has it's bugs. Newly implemented assets need to be checked in-game, and unexpected issues happen.


As always, thank you all for sticking around! More to come.[/p]

[p]We're also excited to announce that Camera Anima is part of the Women's Day Sale event![/p][p]Save your twin sister from a soul-stealing automaton, remember the past, and beware the Artisan!
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[p]Hey everyone! -Imagine a very sparkly spring flower. ooooh aaaah~-

We are excited to announce we will be part of Dames 4 Games spring showcase!
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[p]
Heyo~[/p][p]Happy Holidays, brought to you from Santa Artisan!


Last update, we talked about progress being slowed for personal reasons. The last few months, we've been focusing on getting back into the rhythm of things to close out the year strong.[/p][h3]Sprites[/h3][p]Almost all sprites for story scenes are in the game! This involves getting all character sprites in-game - human, automaton, and flashback characters - and  presenting them correctly. This includes getting their expressions right, positioning them correctly, syncing them to audio and visual effects where appropriate, and more.

While side-sprites need to be implemented, they're far less complex and mostly focus on Essie.[/p][h3]CGs[/h3][p]All CGs have been inked and lined out, including our stretch goal ones! Colouring continues, but all CGs have been added to the game and play when intended.


Backgrounds[/p][p]All but one background is fully coloured!


The last one is a special one. It's a mix between a background and a CG, and it's used during a climactic part of the game. While we can't spoil what it is, the ending is our most CG-heavy section, and the background is a bridge that works between the gameplay and narrative.[/p][p]We'll be breaking for a few weeks to enjoy the holidays, and then continuing to work finaling. Fortunately, we're hitting the point in the project where most of our big ticket items are wrapping up, allowing us to turn our attention elsewhere. This includes:[/p]

• [p]Continuing to colour assets and test the build[/p]
• [p]Balancing QTEs[/p]
• [p]Working on the codices and the gallery[/p]
• [p]And reviewing Steam/itch.io processes.[/p]

[p]Thanks for reading, and have a happy rest of the year![/p][p] [/p][p]Follow us on...[/p][p]Bluesky, Steam, itch.io [/p]

[p]It appears an automaton messed with our updates, so here is the missing update LINK!

Sept Update[/p][p]Heyo~[/p][p]It's the spooky season again. While we have some cool updates to share below, we also want to be transparent about our progress.[/p][p]The last few months have been hard for personal reasons we won't get into. As such, our development time took a hit, bumping back progress we wanted to get done over the summer. The good news, though, is even as a slower pace we've made progress at a slower pace, and we're starting to get back into the swing of things with polish, implementation, and testing.[/p][p]Art:[/p][p]In the spirit of the spooky season, we've updated the Artisan's jump scare CG to match his current design! This has been one of our biggest "nice to haves", and the reactions we've gotten from people so far has been fun to watch : )[/p][p]Backgrounds and CGs are currently being coloured. The last area of the game is the most ambitious background, both in terms of gameplay and visuals, and our colourist's absolutely nailed it! While we can't show it now due to spoilers, we think it's going to be one of the most memorable environments in the game.[/p][p]Testing:[/p][p]Testing's been a two-part process. One, we're testing how the overall experience feels. This includes seeing how well the player transitions between levels, are there any major assets that haven't been implemented yet, what places feel jarring, does the dialogue feel clunky, are there any gamebreakers, and many more.[/p][p]To give an idea of the sort of bugs we've been finding, here are a few samples:[/p][p]More automatons are messing with Steam, so to view our examples, visit our KS Update!
[/p][p]As always, thanks for reading, and have a good day![/p][p]Follow us on our other socials! [/p][p]https://expressomutt.carrd.co/[/p][p][/p]