Sarena

I've been working on a story called The Nays with @nimbusstev.bsky.social for most of my life and finally started sharing it in the form of Twine stories the past few years. I'll post more about it in future posts! Check out the first chapter ("Eventure") here: the-nays.weebly.com/the-gek-even...

At the GDEX Game Awards, my game, Sir Dude World, won best in show for the #GDexGameJam! I accepted the award up on stage. It was exciting, and I got to see some people playing it on the show floor at the COGG booth too. 🎮 Play the game here: michellerakar.itch.io/sir-dude-world #GameDev #IndieDev

The Nays skateboarded and ate tacos in Frank Lady World. Chozu & Scott became close friends, causing a ruckus and making fun of the other Nays. Tropik was fed up with their partying and sent them back to The Gek World. 📘 Read the Reveal of The Gek Eventure here: the-nays.weebly.com/reveal-of-th...

The Nays met new friends online in a VR chatroom. Chozu and Scott bonded with Dallasama and Punchy, took over a channel, were all banned from the World for their misbehavior, and were sent to a new World: Frank Lady World. 📘 Read the Frank Lady Eventure here: the-nays.weebly.com/frank-lady-e...

A couple of weeks ago, I made a game for the #GDEXGameJam: Sir Dude World. Check out my process for how I created this game in a week for the jam: #GameDev #IndieDev #RPGMaker

I finished my game for the #GDEXGameJam! Sir Dude World is a puzzle adventure game where you play as Yaguzi, a time traveler who travels between dimensions to stop a meteor shower from destroying his world. Complete timed missions and rest each day to regain energy. #GameDev #IndieDev 🎮 Play it:

I finished my #GDEXGameJam project last night and made a lot of quality-of-life updates! The biggest one is that I added a new bar that shrinks as abilities are active so the player can see it visually. I also added icons above characters to show who you can interact with. #GameDev #IndieDev

Last night was a big development day for my #GDEXGameJam project! The game's done, but I'm still polishing it. Yesterday I implemented a flashlight mechanic puzzle, all of the story, and a lot more! Look forward to the final playable link coming soon. #GameDev #IndieDev

I've been working a lot on parallax mapping today for my #GDEXGameJam project. Most events are in place and working now. I also finished the last map, Mr Dude World! I added meteors that change in quantity, depending on how far the player has progressed in the game. #GameDev #IndieDev

I finished most of the backgrounds for my #GDEXGameJam project! I added a few of them into the game and just need to save out some layers and then draw 1 more. Lilim Town and Terica Middle School definitely took the most time since they're bigger. #GamdeDev #IndieDev

I decided to implement a crawl sprite for Yaguzi when he's crawling through the tunnels in my #GDEXGameJam project. It involved a bit more eventing than I initially thought because I wanted him to face the correct directions and appear inside the tube properly. #GameDev #IndieDev #RPGMaker

I finished all of the animations for all of the characters in my #GDEXGameJam project. I just exported the sprite sheets and got them into the #RPGMaker game, so here are most of them on the same screen. #GameDev #IndieDev

I finished the character lineup for my #GDEXGameJam project! I still need to animate them and turn them into sprite sheets, but the drawings are there. I might change up the effects a bit too, so they can fit more with the UI style, but we'll see if there's time. #GameDev #IndieDev

I turned all of my thumbnail background sketches into rough digital sketches for my #GDEXGameJam project. Now I'm laying out rough collisions in the engine to figure out the scale and positioning of everything. #GameDev #IndieDev

I sketched the background designs for the rest of the maps that I'm planning for my #GDEXGameJam project. I like planning them on paper first so I can be rough and focus on the layout of them all. I decided Lilim Town is gonna be vertical instead of horizontal, unlike the others. #GameDev #IndieDev

I spent most of today programming the core mechanics in my #GDEXGameJam project! @nimbusstev.bsky.social joined me to draw one of the major backgrounds too. I added new placeholder UI related to the new character ability mechanics we came up with. Making good progress! #RPGMaker #GameDev #IndieDev

The #GDEXGameJam started today, so I decided to concept a little game idea centered around Sir Dude World for it! I threw together this little test in #RPGMaker for a dialogue box. Not sure about the transition and font yet, but just trying some things out to see what works best. #GameDev #IndieDev

I'm usually not a fan of the flashlight mechanic in games, but I decided to make one for this short room in my #RPGMaker side project, Vote Milkshake. It works similarly to how the follow light did in my Stage Left game, using events and player position to track it. #GameDev #IndieDev

Last weekend, I made a couple of mini #RPGMaker projects with my brother where we tried to finish things quickly rather than focusing on polish, which is a little different from our usual projects. Here's a blog post where I talk about these silly little projects: #GameDev #IndieDev

Yesterday I decided to take a break to make a little silly game for fun, which looks very different from my normal, more serious projects. This is Vote Milkshake, using mostly premade/downloaded #RPGMaker sprites. I had fun playing with effects and making custom menus for this. #GameDev #IndieDev

In this Linkship Competition devlog, I talk about how I continued working on the core battle mechanics and started on some animations: #GameDev #IndieDev #RPGMaker

A couple of weeks ago, I made a short memory game called Stage Left. Check out my devlog where I talk about the process I went through to make this short mini-game in 6 hours: #GameDev #IndieDev #RPGMaker

In this blog post, I show some of the various projects I've been working on over the past few months:

Last night I had a dream that I made this game in #RPGMaker, so I decided to make it a reality! I spent a night making this short little memory game where characters show up in a random order each time you play. 🎮 Play the game here: michellerakar.itch.io/stage-left #GameDev #IndieDev

I made a running animation for Ralphie in the Linkship Competition. I wanted to focus on running instead of walking because the pace is a bit faster. I also implemented 4 frames instead of the typical 3 in #RPGMaker games. And used a plugin to allow for a different idle animation #GameDev #IndieDev

I made some progress on our Linkship Competition game today! I've been working on some cooldown mechanics. Once you use an ability, their icon fills up until the cooldown is complete. Then, you can use it again and repeat! Health bars and resource bars are working too. #GameDev #IndieDev #RPGMaker

In this devlog for the project we're currently calling Linkship Competition, I cover some of the early development where we laid out some of the initial battle mechanics: #GameDev #IndieDev #RPGMaker

My friends and I started meeting bi-weekly for our CUPdates project over 5 years ago, so we did a special in-person meet-up for the 100th one this weekend! I took this time to reflect on my projects over the years, so you can check out some of what I presented here: #GameDev #IndieDev #Blog

@nimbusstev.bsky.social and I made a lot of progress on our Linkship Competition game today! I made some basic battle mechanics like cooldown timers, button mashing, and holding buttons. Here's the Navigator's rechargeable weapon used to sabotage the enemy's linkship. #GameDev #IndieDev #RPGMaker

It's been that time of year where work takes over my personal life, so I haven't had a lot of time to work on personal projects. I'm hoping I can get back into things again soon, though! In the meantime, I've just been trying to stay creative while playing games that let me draw and customize.

For our Note Competition remake game, right now we're calling it WING Competition (WIP title). In this dev log, I made some logo concepts, started the Steam integration, did some initial sketches and thumbnails, and updated my debug plugin. Check out the details here: #GameDev #IndieDev

The other night, I decided to make an old-style website using HTML and CSS, designed to look like it was made 20 years ago. I used p5.js, so I wouldn't have to figure out hosting for it. This was a fun little project I made in a night! 🔗 Check it out here: editor.p5js.org/Sarena/full/...

A few weeks ago, I made a personality quiz game for my characters in The Nays. Check out my process on how I developed it here! #GameDev #IndieDev #RPGMaker

Check out the final Macca Masquerade devlog, where I detail all of the additional features we added after the Global Game Jam and how we wrapped up this ambitious #GGJ project: #GameDev #IndieDev #GGJ26

For the past few weeks, I've been working on a 40+ question personality quiz! After you take the quiz, you'll find out which of my characters from The Nays that your personality matches. 🎮 Play it in the browser here and share your results in the comments below! #IndieDev #GameDev #RPGMaker

In this Macca Masquerade dev log, I talk about the initial updates I made on the project after the Global Game Jam to fix some bugs and add more features. #GGJ26 #GameDev #IndieDev #GGJ

I'm heading back into development on our game, previously called The Note Competition! We still don't have a title (tentatively WING Competition), but we had a brainstorming session the other night. So I looked through our inspirations and drew a few sprite style tests for Urom. #IndieDev #GameDev

I updated some of the visuals in our little #RPGMaker personality quiz side project. Then I added a results screen with information about the character, a way to learn more about them, and the option to retake the quiz. #GameDev #IndieDev

So I got a bit carried away with this personality quiz project and ended up making my own #RPGMaker plugin for it! It stores values in internal variables and then calculates which character has the most points at the end. It stores names and descriptions in variables, too. #GameDev #IndieDev

Last month was #GGJ26, so we made a game called Macca Masquerade. I documented my process throughout the weekend, so check out my first blog post, where I detail everything that happened during the jam weekend and where we were by the end of that first week of working on it. #GameDev #IndieDev #GGJ

My friends and I were talking about making our own personality quizzes for our characters, so I spontaneously made this quick little test in #RPGMaker. When you select a choice, it adds points to a specific character, and then at the end of the questions, picks who has the most. #GameDev #IndieDev

In this strategy RPG, play as Kali the assassin on her mission to infiltrate the Macca Masquerade and find the elusive cult leader: Maester Beckon. Challenge attendees to duels, unmask them, and collect masks. 🎮 Play the game here: thegek.itch.io/macca-masque... #GameDev #IndieDev #GGJ #GGJ25

I'm happy to share that we officially finished our #GGJ26 project, Macca Masquerade! We've been working nonstop, debugging and adding more features over the past month. I'll share the link to play it tomorrow, but for now, some screenshots for #ScreenshotSaturday. #GameDev #IndieDev #GGJ

I updated the challenger selection UI in our #GGJ26 project to match the battle UI and dialogue boxes a bit more now that we have a more centralized theming. Also not pictured here, but I made a lot of enemy behavior updates tonight too! #GGJ #GameDev #IndieDev

I finally wrote the rest of the dialogue for our #GGJ26 project tonight! I also did a lot of bug testing and overall tried to finalize the last major parts that are left. Still working through some bugs, but hoping to wrap this game up in the next week or so! #GameDev #IndieDev #GGJ

I updated some of the UI buttons in our #GGJ26 project. Because I added the keys/buttons you press to use them, it caused some overlap. So I rearranged them to be in the places you'd expect and ended up redesigning them a bit to fit into the new layout. #GGJ #GameDev #IndieDev

I finally added the defeat animations for all of the characters to our #GGJ26 project tonight! Once you defeat an enemy, you unmask them and take their mask, which you can use in battle. I drew the faces previously, it was just a matter of saving assets out to use here. #GGJ #GameDev #IndieDev

We made a lot of big updates to our #GGJ26 project tonight! We gave ourselves a deadline to finish it up in the next week or so, so I'm looking forward to sharing the final version then. In the meantime, here's the finished character select screen with all the characters! #GGJ #IndieDev #GameDev

Here's the final blog post for Escape From Tag World, where I reflect on the project as a whole and share the final links to the game! #GameDev #IndieDev