Her Last Night in Lysalkan

GENRE: Interactive Fiction

ROLE: Creator

ENGINE: RPG Maker XP

YEAR: 2025

KEY SKILLS USED:
- Game design

- Scripting

- 2D art (pixel art)

- Writing and scenario design

SUPPLEMENTAL SKILLS:

- Sound design and implementation

This was a promotional piece for Dragon of Lysalkan, which I used to get thoughts and feedback on the game's artstyle, characters, and general writing. 
It's not much of a game in a traditional sense, as a key tenant of the game's design was to make a game with zero meaningful choices. None of the options the player are presented with can impact the story in any way, which ties into the game's theme. But by trying to make an anti-game, I effectively made a game.

The other key tenant to design it as efficiently and cheaply as possible.
Any assets that I had ready for Dragon were reused, with the only new ones being the re-themed green HUD and unique character sprites. The plot was written to only take place in areas that had full graphics ready to go, featuring characters that I already had solid designs for.
I reused cut and rejected concepts that I felt were salvageable. The script drew heavily from a much earlier version of Dragon's introduction,  and a few sprites were originally drawn for this early intro. 
It only took about a day to prototype it. Writing the script took a bit longer. I was away from my main computer for about 2 weeks during the development of this, so I used this time to write and edit the script. The next week after that was spent on editing and implementation of this script, along with some final bits of spritework.
And, overall... it was a success! I got the feedback I needed.
It wasn’t released publicly until the main game’s demo was. This release was in the form of a hidden link on Dragon’s game page, to help emphasize the mystery/conspiracy elements of that game. This felt like the right way to release it, as it's only about 10 minutes long. It simply didn't have the legs to stand on it's own, but worked great as a supplementary piece to the game it was derived from. It's received one update to bring it more in-line with the main game, as the graphics and levels have seen significant facelifts since it's original incarnation.

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Overall, this was a great way for me to practice recycling existing materials and taking more efficient approaches to game development.