Thank you to everyone who has commented so far!! I really appreciate it! :')
Day 2
I was feeling really low energy today, so not a whole lot got done. I didn't get around to reprogramming the jumping mechanic like I was planning to, but I'm sure I'll get to it in good time. Instead, I spent a lot of the day thinking about the game and working on my design document. In thinking about how I want to approach the level design and story, I think I've settled on a subtitle and a basic premise for the game. The game is now subtitled Calamity at Mage's Tower, and as the name suggests, some Bad stuff (dark magic, monsters, etc) has happened at Mage's Tower that Mari will have to investigate and resolve.
All that said, not a lot of that will actually read into the prototype I want to make! I will probably try and make a tileset for the Tower's interior so I can use them in the prototype, but otherwise a lot of what is in my design document right now is just there to help me make decisions about the kind of level design and functionality I want to integrate into the prototype for this jam.
In addition to working on the game design doc, I've also made a bit more progress with Mari's sprite:
Look at Mari go! She can walk! :-0 I'm still not 100% happy with the animation, so I'll continue to tweak it over the course of this week. I ended up tweaking Mari's design just a little; maybe the most noticeable change is the fact that her eyes are now black instead of blue, which was a hard decision to make, but I think this makes her sprite a little more readable and will make figuring out Mari's color palette easier if she ever picks up a new cloak. I'm hoping to up Mari's walking animation from two frames to four for a smoother look, too. I think I will work on art for the game on those days where I don't have energy for the rest of it, like today. I've found pixel arting to be kind of meditative, actually, especially with the right music (I made Mari's walking animation while listening to Shovel Knight's soundtrack).
Also, here's a quick concept for what I want the game's HUD to look like:
These new HUD elements haven't been integrated into the game yet, but they're going to be my primary interest after I nail down Mari's movement. Just left of Mari's health and energy are all the different spells she'll pick up and use over the course of the game. She'll be able to cycle through these with a button press (I'm modelling this after how the select button is used in games like Super Metroid). Left of her spell loadout is where the game's map will be. I don't quite know how I'll integrate it or if there's even enough space in the current HUD, but I'll figure it out when I get there. (:
That's all for today. Thank you for reading!