Hello again! Another month has come and gone, and it’s time for the next devlog. I’m not letting this one sneak up on me this time! I’m feeling a bit under the weather, so it’s a good time to rest and write this one out now. Remember kids, if you don’t take breaks, your body will take them for you. So it’s a good idea to rest often!

First things first though [I’m the realest]

Second, I have some exciting news! Whoever was manifesting for us the most is our MVP. Artificium and ‘Oops! You’re the Hero!’ has been approved for another showcase! A more formal announcement will be coming out soon, but I can barely hold in my excitement for this! The last convention I attended was my first one ever, so I have no idea what to expect at all. This year, I’m planning new additions, and already getting things together. This one is also scheduled for more days, so the mental preparation has also been started. I didn’t realize this until last time, but the amount of energy given to be in a convention/showcase is immense! From the planning, to the set-up, to the actual day and interacting with each new person, you don’t really understand how much there is until you’re doing it, and what you end up missing. Like last year, I had everything prepared BUT FOOD to eat. So we will be avoiding that mishap this time around!

Continuing with housekeeping, development of the game is going! Animations, level design, and new scripts for combat are all being added, as well as SFX! It’s all coming together. I spoke last time of the levels, and now we’re chipping away at the fourth level, with hopes of starting to focus on the last one very soon. 

I’ve also started working on a website for Artificium! I am completely buns at that stuff, so I’m very grateful for the friend that has offered to take the reins for it. That will hopefully be done within the next month or so, and I’m hoping to share it around the time of the showcase! 

So there’s definitely been a lot going on - lots of things to keep track of and juggle as we continue the unstoppable march of passing time. But even with all the busyness, it’s exciting! Things to look forward to, and hope for. And those are pretty important. 

With our housekeeping finished, we can move into what this devlog is supposed to be about! We’ve been going over different aspects of ‘Oops’, from art - to the music - to how the studio itself has been run the past couple months - eventually I would love to even dive into all the bugs this cursed project has thrown at me and has stretched my brain around at some point. However, given that I feel October is a month of stories, what better timing to go into the narrative of the game! So go ahead and pull on a comfy sweater, grab your favorite beverage, and sit around the imaginary fire as we dive into the ‘Once Upon a Time’ of this particular fairy tale. 

I believe I’ve brought this up before for what the origin of ‘Oops’ was: I wanted to make fun of the ‘Chosen One’ trope, the idea of a singular person whose only purpose is to save everyone and everything, and does it with an unwavering resolve. Maybe I just wanted to be edgy in my youth, but as I’ve gotten older, the realization that you have to do things, and only you can do them, has become more apparent. It is, however, more likely, that the willingness or want to complete the responsibility doesn’t mean a hyper-optimistic hero. 

Which is where the Thief comes in! Right off the bat, I thought [and still think] that it is so much fun to play as the bad guy. It’s one thing in a game, where your actions of destroying people allow a darker path, but to take a character who is very much out of their element and put them in a position where they are assigned a completely opposite role they usually play? I eat that up. And that has always been an integral part of the Thief with him being a very sarcastic, unwilling piece of the story. He really did just want something to be a quick grab n’ go fix, and ended up taking the piece that would place a whole new world on his shoulders. 

As I’ve been going through the game and building it all out, I’m really glad I’ve gotten the chance to get to know a lot of the characters. When I built out the demo, it felt like it was missing something, story-wise. So I set out to experiment, and discovered that it was the choice of the player, narratively-wise, that was missing. Originally, the player could only go straight through the level and was required to fight every boss, however that didn’t feel like it fit with the character of the Thief. He doesn’t want anything to do with the Hero business, so why should he? 

This created an interesting discussion of ‘what were the stakes’. Since there are no upgrade or level up systems in the game, what would make the fights worth it? And the answer truly became: 

Would the player save people in need, given the choice. 

There were no wrong answers, no punishments. The Thief is still the Thief. But would you, as the player, choose to help when the paths offered an easy way out, or a tough fight. Some designers would argue that’s bad design, but I run this clown show. I decide what honks the horn. 

Even with all of that, however, I always wanted the goal of the story to stay the same. The Thief is deemed as the Hero, but immediately asks Tut how to get rid of it. And that’s the entire story. There were a couple reasons, the main one being I didn’t want a huge project that would be so bloated I could never see the end in sight. Feature creep is a real thing, and you gotta work hard to beat it back with a broom! In the same vein, I see a lot of people saying they want shorter games, a little bite of an adventure they can relax with. I think I’m proud to say that this game can offer it, and is a good slogan! ‘Finish it in less than 2 hours’ should catch some eyes, haha! And overall, this journey for the Thief was only supposed to last so long. He’s got the rest of his life to do stuff, being the Hero isn’t the only thing on his plate. 

That isn’t to say, however, that I would be opposed to bringing back the Thief at some point. 

Jk ahah….unless…

Either way, this is all shown in the later levels, as well as more characters and their development. I’ve been working with the Enchantress character a lot as well, and I really do like her. She’s the balance to our Thief, and I think was a part of the missing puzzle in this fairy tale. 

And I hope you enjoy this story! Like I mentioned, the more I’ve grown, the more it’s been reflected in this idea of responsibilities and the labels that are created around a person’s role. I don’t think you should be bound by a specific idea, and I hope it comes through in this story. Or maybe it’s just a silly little adventure! That wouldn’t be a bad thing to think about the game as well. 

But that’s enough of my ramblings for this month! Next month, I’m thinking of writing about the preparations for the showcase, and then following it up with a breakdown of how it went! If you’re in the Midwest, I do hope we get the chance to meet each other. And if you aren’t, feel free to check out the work that Artificium will be doing! 

And go ahead and check out the lovely people who are doing amazing work on the game!

The development team: 

Paige: https://pnthorsen17.wixsite.com/my-site

Pedro: https://pedrofigueiredo.artstation.com/albums/2133675

Guilherme Alexander: https://www.guigagliardo.com/

Victor: https://www.lemondropmusic.com/

Me: https://linktr.ee/katiea_athanatosdev

The Studio: 

Bluesky:  https://bsky.app/profile/artificiumgames.bsky.social

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/ArtificiumG

The Game: 

Itch:  https://athanatos-dev.itch.io/oops-youre-the-hero

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3166160/Oops_Youre_the_Hero/?beta=0

Thank you so much for reading, and for tagging along on this adventure <3 

• Kit 

P.S. I’m getting another tattoo, and that’s gonna be so cool I’m v excited about it