"Hey Der, Undy!" is an adventure game in the style of Thimbleweed Park and Monkey Island, with a lead character inspired by the streamer, xxxindyxxx. His initial quest is the seemingly benign need to gain access to his local table tennis club.

Development progress: 

I am working on part one of what I plan to be an episodic series. It is essentially an overly long demo, where I have learned to use Adventure Game Studio (AGS) and C from scratch.

The game is currently playable to a finish, given my knowledge of where game-breaking bugs currently exist. There are placeholder graphics in many places.

I have a long list of "quality of life" improvements for the game which I will action next.

Design decisions: 

The game uses the Tumbleweed template in AGS. I have customised the verbs within this as I don't want the full verb list of a typical Scumm Engine game. So the game simply has USE, PICK UP, TALK TO and LOOK AT. These verbs are versatile enough to cover everything required in my puzzles. 

Challenges faced:

AGS has helped enormously, as my previous game making experience was limited to QBASIC. However, even with the help of AGS, I have had to learn how to add some rudimentary C to my game to resolve puzzles and help the game progress.

Feedback: 

I have used two play testers so far - me and my wife. My wife is not a serious gamer by any means, but I was both pleased and also slightly alarmed by how smoothly she progressed through the versions I have let her test.

I do worry this game will add up to about 4 minutes of content, but I'm sure that is just anxiety. I also have to emphasise that this is Part 1, it's free, and I certainly don't want to make this project any bigger. The next episode will be playable without having ever played Part 1 - but you'd be lost story-wise.

The two pieces of advice I've most borne in mind so far are: 1) "It doesn't have to be perfect." and 2) The game needs to be about getting players to the next room. The appeal of the game lies in always being close to discovering the next part.

Visuals: 

I am not an artist. All characters are initially pulled from a creation tool which I purchased. I have then changed them extensively - the faces especially are my own work. 

The backgrounds are mostly collages built from real world images, reduced to a limited colour profile and skewed to fit a 200x500 resolution. The backgrounds scroll as the characters move.

Sound and music:

I'm most confident about this aspect. I have a very large library of music I have written and recorded that could easily be incorporated into this game. However, I'm also quite ready to write and record new music. I want each area to have a theme, and I enjoy the process of doing this. I will use Caustic.

I have not committed to sound effects yet. Atmospheric background is probably more likely than specific "foley" type sounds.

Voicing - I have commitments from a few people to offer their voices to the project. This is *not* a full voice project. I will assign a few catchphrases to each character, which they will use in the context of their interactions. Think Baldur's Gate or Command and Conquer.

Marketing:

This game will be free. It's being done for fun. I don't expect much uptake, and I have limited myself so far to giving updates on Twitter. I expected to distribute the game manually on request to anyone interested, but I am also considering posting it on itch.io (hence the dev log).