Category: Developer Update

Mahika: Prologue approved in Steam!

by candycabinets, posted in Developer Update

Apologies, can’t contain my excitement! πŸ₯³πŸ₯³πŸ₯³

This is it! The pressure is on to deliver our first video game on Steam! 😱

We have 9 months to release a playable version, though I’m expecting we can release it in Early Access mode 3 months before release date. Let’s see how it turns out…

Hope you add the game to your Steam wish-list: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1778690/Mahika_Prologue/

As of the moment, I’m preparing some updates for tomorrow’s vlog demo. I added a projectile weapon and repurposing the map template to suite our first game scene ~ the tutorial scene.

That’s it for the quick update.

Stay Safe! Have fun! And please support our game dev journey 😊

It’s now called “Mahika”

by candycabinets, posted in Developer Update

After a few days of research, we decided to change Sage Chronicles to Mahika!

New name and first game scene

Sage Chronicles is a great game title, but we wanted a shorter name and now it’s called “Mahika“.

Mahika in Māori means practice, but in Filipino or Tagalog it means magic. It still retained the Sage (magical) aspect and you’ll probably need to practice lots of mouse and keyboard movements once we finish this game πŸ˜‚

We also finished the first game scene, admittedly with a little cheat, since we based the game scene from a template hahaha. Don’t worry! We will use our own game assets so hope you all be patient. Pixel art is no joke! 😱

Our game description in Steam is now in review with the new name. Hoping everything is in order.

That’s it for now.

Thanks for reading and watching the demo vlog.

Stay safe! Always have fun!

A new character by Dyethrow!

by candycabinets, posted in Developer Update

As an indie game dev, it’s always exciting to see new artwork! It energizes you and makes you want to perform better to achieve your goal!

It’s amazing how a small pixel art character, created in just days, can pump you up and finish the needed work.

I think I had the flu the past days, and I can still feel the aftermath. Head still aching every now and then, lungs feel like it still has fluids it needs to expel, and I feel tired and LAAAZYYYY…. (NOTE: antigen test still negative)

But whenever I see Dyethrow’s artwork, I feel energized! I tell myself, “I don’t want to waste any time because this kid is amazingly good!“

I won’t be coding for a few days… We’re going on a 2-day trip over this weekend. But I’m happy I got to finish the animations for our new character.

I’m sure I’m gona be pumped up again next week when I get my hands on new artwork!

Stay safe! Always have fun!

Thanks for watching/reading.

Welcome Dyethrow PIXEL!

by candycabinets, posted in Developer Update

I’m happy to announce that Candy Cabinets is collaborating with an amazing and talented pixel artist ~ Dyethrow PIXEL! (woot! woot!) πŸ₯³

As you know, Candy Cabinets transitioned and committed itself to making its first PC game in Steam. So far, we’ve done much of phase 1 prototyping and we’re raring to build the first game scene.

In between doing blogs, vlogs, designing and coding, I was personally on the hunt for a pixel artist, who can help with the game’s artwork. Yep, I’m no Eric Barone who had the time and artistic effort to create Stardew Valley 😜

So I’ve been following Dyethrow for months now and was captivated by his pixel artwork.

I asked him if he was free to create an artwork for our game… But… He turned me down 😒

He did gave me a counter offer. He didn’t want to work on a single artwork, instead, he wanted to collaborate with us to do all the artwork for our game! Wuhooo! 🀩

We’re stoked to have him on-board and we can’t wait for you to see the pixel art world that he will help create for you to enjoy!

That’s it for now.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe! Always have fun!

Load Profile and Character Movement!

by candycabinets, posted in Developer Update

Second week of some serious game development and my hero character is now moving around!

I finished loading the character avatar profile into the playable character prefab in the game scene 😊

I also did a couple of tweaks to the game title menu, save-load panel and character summary panel.

Pretty happy on what I’ve accomplished this week considering it was an exhausting week for me… πŸ˜ͺ ~ day job not giving my brain cells time to relax… *sigh* 😫

Anyways, I’m sure the day I’ve been dreaming for will come soon! πŸ₯³

Oh and watch out for an earth shattering announcement next week! Hahaha! Did I say earth shattering??? Been watching too many anime lately hahaha! But it’s huge for me and Candy Cabinets. My game dev journey hangs in the balance with this event 😱

Or maybe you already noticed something πŸ˜‰

That’s it for now.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe! Always have fun!

Catch you all on my next blog!

Character Builder done!

by candycabinets, posted in Developer Update

One week flew by like a blink of an eye πŸ˜‰

It’s my first game dev vlog for my new game Sage Chronicles : Mystery at Roalon Manor

Character Builder Vlog Demo

The game’s Character Builder is done and I also completed the Load/Save game profile panel which saves the created character to disk. Hope you watch the demo! Appreciate your feedback 😊

I’m Back! With something new! πŸ˜

by candycabinets, posted in Developer Update

Wow! It’s almost a year since a posted a blog. Geeez! πŸ˜‚

Well… I just crashed and burned and had to go on a soul searching journey to figure out if I want to continue on my game dev career πŸ€”

Ahem… I’M BACK!!! I feel refreshed and ready to conquer the video game world! 😁

I started designing, drawing and coding again a couple of months back and I continue to gather momentum towards my indie game dev success!

Hopefully you noticed that the game title that I’m developing has changed. After the universe knocked some sense into me, I decided to re-organize my game list and I pivoted towards a more viable game franchise that can resonate with the wider PC gamer community.

It’s still a pixel art, top-down, story-driven PC game, but with roguelike game elements to make it more exciting!

And the game story has changed since I feel the Kahel story has a specific niche and its game art is harder to draw.

I’m going with a more traditional D&D style to ensure that gamers are already familiar on how things work and hoping this gives my game a warmer reception.

The title says it all. I’m excited! This is going to be magical! ✨

Will be posting screenshots and vlogs of my game dev progress soon!

If you want to see live progress of my game dev, you can take a sneak peak at my Trello Board.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading!

Starting a new Game on Steam!

by candycabinets, posted in Developer Update

Wow! It’s almost 2 months since I’ve written a blog… Anyways about two and a half months ago, I started preparing for a new game project on Steam!

In between that, been taking Thomas Brush – Full Time Game Dev course and I’m a quarter-way through. Yep I know it’s been a slow pace of watching, learning and finishing the course but I’m getting there haha! It’s a great source of learning and motivation.

The steam game page is really a tedious task but needs to be done. Can’t really publish the page without the initial game art so I’ve been doing pixel art for the game title for a month now and I’ve finally finished the initial artwork!

Won’t be divulging to much on the game details yet but it’s gona be a top-down, pixel art (of course), story-driven game. Been designing and compiling the game features and story-line for almost two years now (oh my it’s been that long) and it’s time for it to come to life!

Once the steam page is done, I’ll move back to building the game prototype.

And that’s it! Thanks for reading this short blog. Hope you stay tuned for updates on my new game!

Welcome to Candy Cabinets website!

by candycabinets, posted in Developer Update

Hello and welcome to (the new) Candy Cabinets website! My name is James Bacero, I’m a C# programmer by day and a pixel artist / indie game developer by night and every free time I can do my hobby! (for now 😁)

I mentioned “the new” because Candy Cabinets’ website has been around for some time now and to be honest, it was a challenge to maintain a proper website that showcase my artwork and projects.

I admit, I was stingy to fund my website (I still feel I am 🀣) since I’m a programmer and the programmer’s mentally is “I can do it myself”!

But at last I convinced myself (with help from motivational videos) to actually bite the bullet and put funding on a proper website builder that can make my art creation, game development and blogging life easier to share!

What’s new with the website?

  • New website theme. I changed the website theme to an artsy / blogger looking theme to showcase my pixel arts and indie game projects.
  • Developer blog. Yes there is one pre-made at itch.io but I have more control over my content posts using a website blog builder. At itch, it’s more on technical blogging while here, I can write whatever I fancy, in-line with my hobby of course.
  • Contact form replaced by Subscribe form. There’s really no value for me having a “Contact form” since all I get from it are people giving me sales pitch to improve my website… πŸ˜’ (Well here we are! 😜). At least the subscribe form gives me the chance to reach out to true fans of pixel art and video games to follow my work.

Why do I do my art work and games at night and on my free time?

I ask myself the same question every so often, and I always answer – “I’m an artist, I want to express myself“

Yes, I get burned out developing, since I develop stuffs (work and hobby) almost 10-12 hours a day! But at the moment, I have no choice. I have to suck it up, work a day job to help my family and then whatever amount is left, I funnel it to my pixel art and game development work.

I know I will finally get there. The ultimate dream of making pixel art and video games a full time business (aside from the extra stuff I want to do e.g. vlogging, aqua scaping and wood working πŸ˜‚).

Is Candy Cabinets still making mobile games?

Unfortunately, I’m letting go of the mobile game development world (for now) and focusing on PC and console indie game development. It was fun developing mobile games, I created two games: Mad Swipe (available on Google Play) and Zeroing (available on Google Play and Apple Store) and I’m grateful to my friends and mobile business partners who helped me create, test, improve and monetize those games. Thank you!

You can see more info about my previous games in the Game Project page.

It was a roller coaster 3 year journey, making mobile games but I know the stories I want to tell and the artwork I want to create would resonate more with video game players using PCs and consoles.

So what’s next?

At the time of writing this blog, I’m taking on the Ultimate Game Dev Course by Thomas Brush and Jason Weimann. I still have a long ways to go! The contents they’re sharing is an absolute gold mine and I have my work cut out for me.

I’ve kind of organized my schedule to watch one video tutorial a day (after office) then create and record a video of me doing one pixel art a night. Hopefully, this gets me to the pixel art level I want to be and also soak up all the experience Thomas and Jason are sharing to get me to the indie game dev promise land!

Expect the usual screen shot Saturdays but this time with pixel arts and indie game development focused for PC.

Thank you for reading my article. Until my next blog.