Heya!

It's been an exciting week for ALKAHEST progression, full of chats with creative partners, light setup work in Ren'py, and scriptwriting. Launching a new project in the visual novel engine is as easy as selecting a project name, choosing your preferred resolution, default accent, and background colors, and hitting continue.  ALKAHEST 1.0 is an extremely modest build, bearing an exquisite new logo, the first ten minutes of story, a few blocky placeholder GUI elements, and a single sprite sketch for perspective.  Although the current working palette is subject to change, I'm feeling pretty good about the overall colors and mood for the game!

DESIGN

Divided into four stages, progression difficulty increases or decreases depending on conversational choices made during and between stages. At present, the mechanics remain drag-and-drop-centric, with a selection of alchemical ingredients available to use during each stage. While resource management isn't an issue, timing is key. Rewards and penalties can both be earned through conversational choice and/or mechanical execution.

I won't go into too much detail about other factors! But I can say that the game will contain one potential status effect, two types of endings, and a small variety of ways to obtain them. 

STORY

For the Apprentice of a sketchy peddler of potions, enchantments, and magical artifacts, disaster is always one bad customer away.  When their Mentor returns all wrong from a day of "excavations" out on the city limits, they must successfully brew four potent potions, or suffer the wrath of the entity possessing their Mentor's body. 

Set in Lore City, where death is imminent but not always permanent, our little tale is one of systemic corruption, abuse of power, existential threat, revenge, and found family. Although the game revolves around the actions of one player character and two NPCs, a total of six lives are explored over the course of the story. 

I can't wait for y'all to meet them!

DEV NOTES

• Engine: Ren'Py
• Elements: Art, Simulator Design, Scriptwriting, Programming
• Design, Simulation: Myself
• Design, Narrative: Myself
• Writing, Script: Myself: 
• Programming, All: Myself
• Art, Sprite Assets: Joseph Byrne
• Art, Simulator Station Assets: Joseph Byrne
• Art, Simulator Ingredient Assets: CraftPix.net's Free Game Icons Alchemy
• Music & Sound Effects: Envato Market / Audio Jungle sellers
• Art, GUI: To be announced
• Art, Backgrounds: Mallory Johnson
• Art, Logo: Mallory Johnson

Okay, but oh my GOD, the LOGO! My old friend Mallory really came through with this one. Slid right into my DMs virtually out of nowhere, offered a few sketches based on some font direction and a color palette... then absolutely nailed the ALKAHEST logo for me with next to no revisions required. I'm also tremendously lucky to have her as my background artist! Really, I can't thank her enough for joining the team.

NEXT STEPS: Get the code for Ren'py's drag-and-drop functionality working in the current build.  I've mocked up a few ideas for how to make this mechanic work, but it's really going to come down to good ol' fashioned trial and error.  

I'm also working on a design brief for our GUI artist, who's set to begin working on my commission in July. I want to make sure they're fully comfortable and confident in our new working relationship before revealing their name... but as a longtime admirer of their work, I couldn't be more excited to have them on board!

I think that's all for now. Not sure I'll be able to keep up this weekly cadence for devlogging, but I'll certainly do my best!

Thanks for reading, 
Dee