root vegetable boy

CHORUS MACHINE DEV LOG #14 - DECEMBER 2024

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Hi everyone! I can't believe it's already 2025. I'm well over a year into development at this point, which is really cool, and also kind of scary...

I don't know how many people have noticed, but in case you haven't yet, let me take a moment to introduce you. Where I have formerly been referring to this game as PROJECT CM is now a proper title:

Initially I was planning to have the title reveal occur with the trailer release, but things went a little differently! My dear friend Olivia reached out to me at the beginning of December with a really sick opportunity: showing a demo of what I've been working on at DADS Chicago for an event called Castle Tower Labyrinth hosted by BITxBIT. DADS Chicago and BITxBIT are both near & dear to my heart, so it was a very easy YES from me!

If anyone recalls the first playtest I did back in August 2024, the version I sent out was very similar, but much more polished (& much more difficult). Armed with both a deadline and the knowledge that a bunch of strangers were about to play my game, I was finally pushed to add in some key elements: the first miniboss's death animation, sfx for healing, a proper pause menu, among other things. I gave a couple different versions to my partner to try out, and at their urging, rather dramatically spiked the difficulty of the entire game at the last minute before building the executive and emailing it out.

Apparently, it was a huge hit! I don't live in Chicago so unfortunately couldn't attend, but several people messaged me about how well-received it was. At one point there was a line to play??? People were doing speedruns??? It was extremely surreal, but I'm so happy people liked it, and it's definitely given me the motivation to keep going and hopefully one day complete this project.

Big plans for 2025, everyone! I really really really want to release the full FLOOR ONE DEMO (the first area/the first ~20% of the game or so) either this year or next. I think this year would be realllllyyy ambitious. But we'll see how things play out!

After I sent out the BITxBIT demo version, I worked on a bunch of small stuff for my version. I implemented the title screen at the beginning of this log, complete with sfx, music, & full code functionality. I worked on a lot of sound effects this month, and it is always astounding to me at how effective they are in grounding the player & cultivating mood... something as simple as moving through a menu can suddenly feel very tactile with the right small noise. And, it is a nice change (challenge?) from writing music, which takes up so much more time/space.

I also added some rooms, and I worked on a little bit of dialogue. Then I took a break for a week because I really needed one.

As always, there is lots for me to work on, and only so many hours in a day. But compared to the state of last December's log... a lot can happen in a year. I'm really excited to see what 2025 has in store for CHORUS MACHINE.

Well... let's go find out!! I'll see you next month!!!

Originally posted January 1st, 2025.