I'm Making a Video Game Part One - The Name

Heyo. Zed here. This blog is about video games. I also make video games. I can code actually quite well. I’m working on two video games right now. Both of them are solo projects. Some of the Minecraft maps I’ve shown off recently are actually intended as practice for making the level maps for these two games. I’m out of books to make this year and Minecraft has been useful enough for now so it’s probably time to get some more work done on them. I’ll be sharing every step of the game design process here. If you’ve ever wondered what goes into making a video game, or want to get into the industry yourself, then hopefully these posts will be helpful.

I’ve got two games on the go right now that I’m resuming work on. Astral: Allegro and Astral: Alliance. I don’t have set dates on when either of them will be out because if I knew what date they were done on then I would know how long they were and how many words the scripts are in advance. To clarify, I can’t predict the release date of a game. Not ever. Book or digital. I don’t know why so many companies think they can. To me that means they’ll publish it half done if they don’t meet the deadline. See my previous post about Horizon Zero Dawn for an example of what that looks like.

Astral: Allegro and Astral: Alliance are both set in the Astral setting but in very different locations. The Astral is vast and these two games are designed to show off some of that size but really not most of it. Allegro is set in Chandesh, a steampunk themed continent where technology and nature are in perpetual armed conflict. Alliance is set in Ascala, a peaceful take on modern day life but with magic and public knowledge of it. The names are actually what I’m explaining in this post.

Allegro is named that for two reason. It’s a music term that means fast paced and lively. That’s the design goal of the game. Fast paced and lively. It won’t have an inventory system, crafting, levelling up, classes, or any of the clutter associated with games these days. By the way both of these are open world fantasy RPGs. That’s reason one. Reason two is that the main character can sing. Introducing our main character Reconnaissance Officer Araden Relgrove. He’s our only playable character and his narrative, and his voice, is the entire plot. It’s fast and it contains good music, most of it sung by the main character in real time gameplay. He will be voiced by me. Yes I can sing.

Alliance is a more complex and ambitious game. Taking some ideas from some of the classic Pokemon games I’ve played, I’m taking the core formula from Chandesh and applying it to Ascala but with a twist. The enemies you’re fighting are nature spirits and that species are not normally aggressive or in fact visible at all in the world. Nature spirits can be tamed by the main character and made into summonable battle companions. More powerful ones can be tamed after beating each of the game’s bosses, which also opens a fast travel location on the game’s vast continent sized map.

One final note, both games will be for the Android platform. The Android store is where I go for games to play these days and I have some previous posts about what looks good there these days. The games I’m making will cost money and will not contain in-app purchases or DLC ever. One game, one price, all inclusive. This is what I have planned for this post but I have a lot more to say. I’ll type up more later.

Zed