Game Concept:

I knew from the beginning I was going to make a platformer since it seems like the easiest type of game to code for my first game. When the theme was announced it took me a while to come up with a way to incorporate the concept of "free" into a platformer, but I eventually decided on the idea of freeing demons from Hell. I figure it fits with my username thematically and it should be fairly straightforward to implement a key-finding and door-opening system into a platformer via code, and I've always found lava levels in platformers visually appealing.

I also want to make it accessible for people with slower reflexes/bad coordination/poor fine motor skills while maintaining a challenge. I've always been pretty awful at platformers due to poor fine motor control and awful reflexes (thanks, autism and fibromyalgia /s) and there are so many games I would love to play that I can't pass level one due to that difficulty, so if I can win the game I'll know it's accessible.

I'm torn between doing a checkpoint system and having one-ups/multiple lives, but leaning toward a checkpoint system where if the player dies they respawn at the cage of the last demon they freed.

First Steps In Learning to Make Games:

I'm brand new at Godot Engine and game making in general, so I've been preparing for the jam by watching some tutorials on Godot Script programming and reading the documentation, and I keep having issues with syntax when I try to write it, especially the lack of semicolons. I'm used to JavaScript and PHP and have tried multiple times to get into coding with Python but the syntax differences drive me nuts, and the fact that Godot Script is so similar to Python is a big roadblock for me as far as coding goes. I suppose I could make a JavaScript/HTML5 game but honestly, that feels too easy for me and would feel too much like web dev (which I've been doing for 5+ years). Maybe one day I could try to make a browser-based game coded in PHP and JS as a challenge, but I'm shelving that idea for now.

I tried out Unity and Game Maker Studio and RPG Maker before settling on Godot, and it's the easiest by far, as far as GUI for building the game goes in my opinion, so I'm definitely sticking with my choice of engine despite the difficulty with learning the code aspect. I've also tried out several pixel art tools before settling on Photoshop CC since I'm used to it and it's comfortable, despite not being built specifically for pixel art. I've been using Photoshop for nearly a decade, starting with a copy of CS5 I obtained in high school through less-than-legal means, so that's one less new thing for me to learn during this jam. Learning too many new skills at once has never worked out well for me (I once tried to learn Japanese and French at the same time...to this day I only know how to write hiragana characters in Japanese and poorly-pronounced conversation about what I had for breakfast is the extent of my French ability).

Creating Assets:

I've never been very good with pixel art but I don't like the idea of a non-pixel style for this game, so I'm going out of my comfort zone a bit artistically. I'm mostly just creating non-pixel art and then resizing the images using "nearest neighbor" resampling in Photoshop to create pixel art, to be honest. I found this procedural generator (https://deep-fold.itch.io/starscapes) for art to make my background with, and ended up with a really cool end result after editing, and then spent the past hour in Photoshop making a tileset for the level. I used coolors.co to come up with a palette for the level so it's all made using the same 9 colors (when you include white in the palette it makes 10 colors).

As far as level assets go, the only thing I need to make now is the sprites for the characters, keys, and cages, then I'll be ready to start putting it all together in Godot. The last thing I'll work on will probably be the GUI for the menus and the achievement and checkpoint notifications since I'm great with UI and could bang those out in maybe 10 minutes.

I also literally just now realized while writing this that I'll need to have some sort of sound design...dang it, that's gonna be hard. I'm hoping to find some free-to-use looping metal instrumentals but that might prove too difficult.

Plans for Tomorrow (Technically Later Today):

I'm going to be busy all afternoon and evening with running errands and going to an 18+ pride festival in my city, so I probably won't have any time to work on the game. I'll bring my laptop and charger with me and maybe I'll get lucky and have some downtime to work on it, but for the most part, the only work on the game I'll be doing will be brainstorming after this morning.

This morning I'm hoping to maybe get a short nap in if my insomnia will stop kicking my butt, then work on level design and maybe do my first bits of coding with placeholder sprites since I'm all art-ed out for now.

Plans for Devlogs:

I have a very inconsistent sleep schedule to do both chronic insomnia and fatigue as well as not having an actual job, so I have no clue what time of day future logs will be posted, though I'll try to stick to either early morning or evening as sort of a day's summary. So tomorrow's log will be Day 1. If I skip a day I'm probably having a fibro flare-up and currently unable to leave my bed, though hopefully there won't be many of those.

Anyway, you can expect today's end-of-day log either late tonight or whenever I wake up the next morning, with updates on my progress as well as plans for the next day's work.

(btw I'm writing this at half-past 5AM after a sleepless night and depending entirely on Grammarly to catch any typos so if there are any grammatical/spelling mistakes I sincerely apologize)