Moonrabbit Day 2020!! Part 2: Mystery Announcement

Previously on the Moonrabbit Blog...

Happy Moonrabbit Day again! And what a Happy Moonrabbit Day it continues to be! You are currently skimming Part 2 of the Moonrabbit Day Blog Bonanza, if you couldn't tell already by the two context clues (not counting the blog title, which says in big letters "Moonrabbit Day 2020!! Part 2: Announcement" (not sure how you missed that but it's alright just read the first one now and come back when you're done)).

Oh yeah, I forgot I left off the last post on a cliffhanger. My bad. My computer caught on fire from being a Mac and I only had enough time to type "SEE YA", sign my name, press the "schedule post" button and set the release time to 8:00 AM tomorrow before my hand burned off completely and I couldn't type anymore. It's okay though I'm typing on my Wii U GamePad now and I got a cool leopard print robot hand so without further ado, I am finally able to reveal...

​Aw shoot I had the wrong thing copied
Allow me to reveal...

​The Untitled Moonrabbit Game!

​Uh... it's a working title. And not at all related to any cel-shaded puzzle stealth waterfowl simulation games with similar names. Already tried making one of those. It's a very big genre. Lots of competition. Uh, anyway.
I've been working on this incarnation of the Moonrabbit Game since the beginning of July but it's going to have some ideas and themes I've been dealing with/trying to articulate for awhile now. Shortly after I started doing real drawing & scripting work for the game I decided I wanted to release a "demo" for it (just a town made up of three screens that you can walk around and talk to NPCs in) but that turned out to be a little bit more work than I anticipated. I think I'll probably have that ready in a month or two (given how time or energy consuming school ends up being when we go back in a week) so today I'm just going to show some screenshots of what everything looks like right now and talk a little bit about what kind of game I'm trying to make.

There's a lot of stuff here that I'm gonna try to make look nicer as I get better at all this or is just placeholder (you're not supposed to see past the black bar on the left, the message box layout is still the default one, and some stuff I've drawn looks a little janksy (looking at you lamp) to name a few things) but this is what I want the art style to look like and I'm pretty happy with what I have so far :]
Also, that blurriness is just a result of using my 480p Wii U GamePad screen to capture game footage*.

And now, questions will be queried and answers will be answered.

But they won't be your questions. I'm just gonna like, come up with them right now.

Question: What kind of game is this gonna be?

Answer: It's top down, but it's not gonna be an RPG. I'm gonna be mostly ditching gameplay. "Puzzles" and exploring are gonna help with the pacing I guess but the game's pretty much just gonna be about the story and the jokes. I'm not sure how cinematic I'll be able to make it but hopefully it'll be entertaining enough to be worth its hefty price tag of $0 and a couple hours of your life.

Q: I didn't know you knew how to code games! Good for you, dude!

A: hahaha no. Okay, I'm making this in RPGMaker but just, be chill about it, ok? I have some kind of good reasons for using RPGMaker MV. First of all, I don't know how to code a game and I don't want to learn game design/have a career as a game making person. I want make a good interactive story without tacking on RPG elements or other complicated game-y stuff that I don't know enough about to do well. I hope I don't sound lazy here, I'm just hoping to prove that in 2020 you can make something cool without having to know how to code a video game. Armed with a love for story-driven games and the knowledge of how to make people laugh sometimes it is my quest to create a story and a world that I'm not deeply ashamed of. I'm gonna give this my best cause it's something I've wanted to do for years and when I'm done I am going to be done and hopefully you will like it.

Q: How much of the "game" have you made?

A: What's pictured here is like 3/4 of what I've done so far. I worked an hour a day on average during July and two+ a day during August, and I hope to spend the same amount of time making stuff when school comes back but I'm not sure if that's going to be possible. The type of stuff I've been working on so far has been:
- Sprite art
- System changes
- Planning (story & NPCs and general notes and junk)
- "Concept art" feels too official given the quality of the stuff I've drawn in my notebook but ok
- Music

Q: Music?

A: Yeah! I am going to compensate for your kind of lame one word question by announcing that I am getting help for the soundtrack! As it looks right now Thorin my dad and I are going to be working on the music but we'll see how well that works out (I'm not sure how good they'll be at making the kind of stuff I want HAHA dont be mad guys). I'm sure they'll be great :]

Q: What world is the game set in?

A: A fictionalized Moonrabbit world. Nothing that has happened in the game has actually happened in real life- it might reference or explain Moonrabbit culture but nothing that happens will have any bearing on their world. A Moonrabbit will be able to download this from itch.io and play it at home.

Q: Q4 2020 release date?

A: no lol lets come up with a name for it first

​Q: Do you have any additional information to give that would be hard to first phrase as a question?

A: I do! How did you know? Well, first of all, this game does not feature clones or time travel, sadly. In the screenshot in the bottom left of the above gallery there are two characters who look almost identical- they are both placeholders. They were both made to look like me but Henry the Moonrabbit is not going to have a starring role in the game or anything. I'll probably end up using one of those sprites somewhere just because they exist already but the player is just a generic base model that I can change the clothes, body, and face of to make new characters. It was really important to me to have a female protagonist early on (that and lending libraries that you can save your game at) but I would like the writing to get pretty personal and always be authentic so I'm a little worried as to how I'll write a story keeping in mind a strong female perspective... if I feel like I'm not doing a good job for whatever reason I'll switch the protagonist's gender but it's still important to me to have a diverse cast.

Welp that about wraps things up! I think I've been writing for like 4 hours now idk my head kinda hurts...
​Stay tuned to this blog for some development posts - I'd really like to document as much of this process as possible. I already have a little thing about how I'm making some bloops and bleeps for the game's menus planned and a timeline of the red roofed house being outlined and colored in and stuff in Aseprite so those'll be fun to share perhaps. I hope to do a bunch of little posts about things I feel like sharing. Like stories or processes you'd find in an art book cause I love reading those and maybe they'll inspire someone else who wants to make something but thinks they can't (maybe i can't LOL we're gonna find out)

Thanks for reading all of this! If you have any friendly comments or advice or criticism or whatever to give, please do! I'd really like to hear what people think of the art! I'm pretty heavily inspired by Undertale and Stardew Valley, (particularly the art in the old trailer, it looks doable) if you haven't guessed. I hope you liked what you saw/read and that you are having as Happy of a Moonrabbit Day as I am! Bye!

​
 -Still Henry

Total # of times I typed "Moonrabbit Day": 23

​*not really i went further with that joke than i thought i was going to this game will not be playable on wiiu