As I mentioned in my last post, I had the idea to make my art interactive. Being an ambitious dreamer, I immediately drew inspiration from major video game titles. Little did I know, this would lead to some challenges later on.

I immersed myself in games like Limbo, Inside, Journey, Celeste, Night in the Woods, and many others. (Work can be fun sometimes!) These are all exceptional games that I highly recommend. Until this point, I hadn’t played many games, except during my childhood and the occasional new Zelda title every six years. I quickly realized that video games are a unique form of art. In my opinion, some games should be displayed in galleries as art pieces.

Dream on

Fueled by this inspiration, I started working. I had big visions but no concrete plan. This resulted in months of obsessing over the game’s plot, day and night. Sometimes, I had trouble sleeping because the game constantly occupied my thoughts. Dreaming big is motivating and helps me push through the daunting tasks ahead. However, it can also be disheartening when you realize your goals might be out of reach.

I’ve worked with the Construct 3 game engine many times before. It allows for game development without needing programming knowledge. I designed a small house where the game would begin. The main character could explore the house and interact with various objects. A cat would tell you it was hungry, and the TV would play commercials when interacted with. I created the background music in Ableton. As you can see, there is also a Schauermann painting hanging in the house. The working title at the time was "Mom Said I’m Special." I like the title because it has a nice double meaning. On one hand, it can truly convey the sentiment of a loving mother. On the other hand, it could imply there’s something a bit quirky or peculiar about the character.

The early stages of the game were very text-heavy. However, I realized that my English wasn’t good enough to write authentic dialogues. (You might have noticed this already, or maybe not — thanks to AI 😀). So, I had to rethink my approach. By this point, three weeks had already passed. I decided to keep dialogues to a minimum in my game. This was just the beginning of frequently discarding ideas.

I’ll share how things progressed in the next post.

# Check if the player likes the game  
if likes_game:      
print("If you like my creation, please like and comment on the PROBABLY ART game page. Thank you! :)")