Hey there Cutie Club,

After EGX Berlin (and London) we’re finally back into development and already have some updates to share 🙂

Weather System

We’ve added a weather system into the game. Depending on the time of year, Wimba Island can be prone to different types of weather. On top of that, different types of weather will effect Jellies in different ways.



New dialogue box (again)

At EGX Berlin, we noticed players weren’t realizing that there was a scrollbox in the dialogue UI and that more options were available. Additionally, we realised the old UI didn’t work well if two NPCs were talking to each other.

Based on those, we redesigned the dialogue box again to make things more clear. And for dialogue choices, if more choices are available the arrows will bounce to indicate more options can be selected.



EGX Berlin

We had a great time at EGX Berlin, meeting lots of old and new fans of the game! Our booth was always busy and we joined the Let’s Play 4 Charity stream playing the latest beta build. Hopefully we can attend again next year! 🙂



What’s next?

Sebastien and Taylor are working away on building out the last areas of Wimba Island while Stephen and myself are coding some super secret new features…can’t reveal anything just yet 🤐

In the meantime, make sure to join our Discord and be sure to follow @alchemiccutie and @CIRCLE_Ent for future updates.

Hey there Cutie Club,

We're excited to announce that we'll be showing Alchemic Cutie at EGX London and EGX Berlin this year! If you haven't gotten a ticket yet, there's still time...but move fast, they're starting to run low! :)

Tickets for EGX London (Oct 17th - 20th 2019)
Tickets for EGX Berlin (Nov 1st - 3rd 2019)

We've also got a new trailer just for EGX. Check it out below!

Hey there Cutie Club,

We have some updates to share today!

Environment Interaction

First off, we've been working on introducing alchemy to the environment to bring more fun to the game world. Every season will have different environment objects to play your flute on and find crystals.



New Flute Mechanics

Speaking of flute playing, we've completely revamped the flute mechanics.

To tie in with progressing to the different areas of Wimba Island, we've also added a progression system to the player's flute. The player has a limited number of transmutations shown in the top-right of the HUD. The flute will recharge throughout the day, or, if you want to completely recharge your flute, you can return home and sleep.



As the game progresses, you'll activate shrines in the game world which will expand your flute meter allowing you to perform more transmutations each day.

A homely home

Sebastien has been working on the tileset for interiors and has built out the player's home (left) and the grandparent's home (right). They look so cosy! :)



What's next?

As mentioned on our Jellycast, we won't be able to attend PAX and Gamescom this year (*sad jelly noises*). However, we are looking into attending a conference later in the year (hint: it may be in the U.K.). We hope to have more news soon :)

Tom has been working away on porting work and will have something cool to share soon. Taylor has been detailing The Plains (no spoilers yet) and has recently begun detailing The Forest part of the island. Stephen and Caoimhe has been working some new features which we'll share in a later blog post ;)

In the meantime, make sure to join our Discord and be sure to follow @alchemiccutie and @CIRCLE_Ent for future updates.

Hey there Cutie Club,

It’s been a while since we’ve recorded a JellyCast so here’s a new cast where we talk about what we’ve been working on. In the video you can also catch a small preview of Wimba Island 😉

And if you’re interested in games programming, Sebastien prompts Tom into a 20 minute detour on programming around halfway through the cast 😛

https://youtu.be/cSIQ4RzXPgE

P.S. If you haven’t signed up to the Cutie Club yet, you can do so here. As always, make sure to follow @alchemiccutie and @CIRCLE_Ent for future updates.

Hey there Cutie Club,

We’ve been busy the past few months working hard on the game and we have a lot of updates to share today! 🙂

New Logo
After a lot of feedback and revisions, we’ve updated the game logo! Our new logo is a lot more readable and 200% cuter. Check it out below! 🙂



A Wholesome Adventure
At the end of May myself and Sebastien worked with Talespinners to plan out the full narrative of the game. We have now finalised the story points of the game and are writing the finer details and dialogue. A special thanks to Matt Gibbs and Cash DeCuir for lending us their expertise!

New Team Members
We have 4 new members on the cutie team helping us build our wholesome RPG! Augusto Zanellato, Stephen Kelly-Hannon and Caoimhe Tiernan have joined us as programmers for the summer to help build out more gameplay features (more info later!). Taylor Richardson has also joined us as a Level Artist to help us bring Wimba Island to life. Expect a lot of updates in the coming weeks! Also, Caoimhe’s mom baked us an Alchemic Cutie cake which was yummy!



Building Wimba Island
Taylor and Sebastien have been hard at work building out the first area of the island. Wimba Island is split into 4 areas; The Plains, The Forest, The Springs and The Mountain. The plains is where your home and Wimba Village are. There’s lots of villagers wandering around, fields to explore and catch jellies. Check out a preview of Wimba Village below!



What’s next?
We have a lot of updates and announcements coming soon so we won’t spoil anything yet! However, we would recommend joining our Discord server as there may be something new there soon 😉

As always, make sure to follow @alchemiccutie and @CIRCLE_Ent for future updates.

Hey there Cutie Club,

We’ve been busy with development and have several updates to share today 🙂

End of Alpha
We’ll be closing sign ups to the alpha build on Monday 22nd April. We ended updates to the alpha in March as we started working on the next stage of development. Thank you to everyone who signed up and gave us feedback to improve the game 🙂 If you previously signed up to the alpha, make sure to click the Discord invite link in your invitation and join the server before Monday. We’ll have some surprises for our alpha players on Discord in the future! And if you haven’t signed up yet you can do so here.

Jelly Shrine
Sebastien has been working on the design for the Jelly shrine. Unfortunately Jellies get old and die, leaving behind relics. It’s a tradition on Wimba Island to place relics in the local shrine. There’s a rumor that certain relic patterns can perform alchemy at night…



Jelly Ghosts
When exploring at night time, keep an eye on out for ghosts…



World Map
Sebastien also finished designing the world map that can be found in the player’s notebook. As you discover locations, you can use the map to fast travel. It’s also useful for marking locations you want to remember for later.



What’s next?
Tom is still working hard on porting the engine to the Nintendo Switch. Meanwhile, Dale has started composing the overworld music for the game and Sebastien is finishing up additional gameplay assets.

As always, make sure to follow @alchemiccutie and @CIRCLE_Ent for future updates.

Hey there Cutie Club,

We've been busy since the last update building out Wimba Island. Over 200 Tiled maps will make up the island so we have a lot of work ahead of us!

From rough sketch to Tiled
Sebastien started off with a sketch of the island, then split it into images and imported them as image layers in Tiled. The first pass in Tiled was to do a quick fill of the terrain and allow us to see a rough version of the island and remove the image layers so that we could explore the island in-game. Now, we're focusing on building out the village and plains where the game starts.

Without spoiling too much, here's a section of that initial sketch showing where the game starts :)



To put it in perspective, this area is only 1/16th of the entire island. There are many environment types and locations to explore but you'll have to wait for later blog posts to learn find out more! (hey that rhymes!)

What's next?
After re-working a lot of the UI to improve readability on the Switch's screen size, Tom is now starting to port the engine. This is going to be a lot of work but hopefully we'll have a build running (in some form) by May :) Sebastien will be continuing on the Tiled maps while also working on new tiles needed for locations around the island.

As always, make sure to follow @alchemiccutie and @CIRCLE_Ent for future updates.

Hey there Cutie Club,

We're still busy doing a lot of work behind the scenes in preparation for the beta but we've got some updates!

Environment Tilesets
Sebastien has been hard at work finishing off the tilesets for the different environments on Wimba Island. He's also done a lot of recoloring to make everything look more cuter!



Modding Tools
Tom (me) has finished implementing the modding tools and now all the game's content is packed using the tools. We're still unsure how to test the modding API with the community - maybe we'll do a private modding beta? If you're interested, be sure to pop on to our Discord server and let us know! :)

Localisation Tools
I've also been implementing a gettext library and tool for automating the generation of files needed for localisation. We haven't finalised the languages available at launch, more information will be available at a later date. :)

What's next?
We still have a lot of writing to do and we're starting to do a rough pass of the island's map design in Tiled (this will definitely take some time). Tom will also preparing a final bugfix patch for the alpha in preparation for GDC.

As always, make sure to follow @alchemiccutie and @CIRCLE_Ent for future updates.

Hey there Cutie Club,

We’ve been super busy doing a lot of writing and content planning for the game but we wanted to share some of the progress we’ve been making.

Designing Wimba Island

We’ve settled on a near-final layout of the island and the different environments that appear there. We still need to test if the scale allows for a good balance of exploration and Jelly raising but already we can see the size of the island compared to the alpha.

Click here to see our world size

Building the Village

The Village is located to the south of the island and is where all the villagers can be found going about their lives. From the general store, to the local inn, there’s plenty of people to meet and things to do. Sebastien has been working on the designs on the buildings. Based on the backstory of the world (more on that in a later post!), the buildings are designed to look like they’ve been refurbished and patched up over the years.



Mod Preparation

Tom has been busy finalizing the engine architecture to begin building the game content and to also finalise the modding system. While the modding API already existed in the alpha, the engine was limited to running only the core game files which used the API. Soon, the game will be able to load multiple mods at once.

What’s next?

We’re still extending the modding tools to work as a standalone application and extending the data validation to prevent game crashes caused by bad game data/configuration. Once the village is done, we’ll be designing the other environment types in the world.

As always, make sure to follow @alchemiccutie and @CIRCLE_Ent for future updates

Note: This was originally posted on https://alchemiccutie.com/2019/02/development-log-8/

Hey there Cutie Club,

A quick update that we’ll be demoing Alchemic Cutie at Dublin Games Festival 2018 tomorrow @ RDS, Dublin.

If you're attending make sure to stop by the booth and check out the latest demo. There may be a few goodies to collect too :)