Hello! Welcome to the first of many Devlog updates for my passion project titled "The Legend of Kotaro". 

In the upcoming months (and possibly years :S ) I plan to update my progress on the project and give a behind the scenes look into the design and application of the game as I work toward its release. I hope that you join me on this journey and I look forward to sharing my progress, thoughts, ideas, struggles, and successes along the way.

With all that said, I'd like to start this Devlog with an introduction and my initial inspiration for the game and share some early designs for the main character Kotaro.

First off, my name is Jon. I am from Denver, Colorado.  Like most people my age, I grew up with video games and played all the classics. Super Mario, Sonic, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Earthbound, Pokemon, Final Fantasy, etc.  Video games had a key role in my childhood. Playing my dad over and over at Street Fighter 2 until I could finally beat him! Spending hours fueled by pizza and soda at a buddies house playing Mario Party until the Sun came up! Remembering the sense of accomplishment the first time I defeated the Elite Four on Pokemon Blue! Watching my dad play Metal Gear Solid for the first time and being completely blown away by the story, characters, and visuals! Video Games are a media I hold very close to my heart so when I graduated High School and was deciding what to do next in life, making video games was an easy choice. I'm highly artistic and have been drawing for as long as I can remember. I especially enjoyed designing characters. 

I enrolled in a college that offered a Bachelor's of Science in Video Game Art and Design and successfully graduated three years later. Unfortunately, the college I studied at was later revealed to be an unaccredited for-profit company that engaged in predatory practices to encourage enrollment in their institutions with misleading information about the education provided and employment for graduated students. I graduated with a tremendous amount of student loan debt with no real knowledge that translated to the Gaming Industry and an inability to use my degree to further my education. Needless to say, I was distraught and for a long time I did give up on the idea that I could do something in gaming. 

Fast forward 10 years around the time of Covid, and I stumbled across a little YouTube channel called Brackeys! This channel truly re-ignited my interest in Game Development. Here was a guy showing me how it was possible with some free tools and the Unity engine that I could create something on my own. It wasn't going to be a AAA game but it was something that I can learn from and gain some practical skills and have something to show. I followed his Unity tutorials and eventually took a couple of Unity's own development classes and released my first game here on itch. I then hit another road block. For me, scripting is VERY hard. Coming from the artistic side of things, programming and learning the different languages seemed to me a daunting task. 

That's when another YouTube channel peeked my interest. Pixel Pete had a playlist of tutorials he did on the GB Studio engine.  The visual scripting and drag n' drop style of adding assets along with the easy ui of this engine was exactly what I was looking for! After a little research I discovered a vast wealth of information and support for indie Game Boy development and that's when I decided that this would be the best way to create something tangible if I wanted and gain some real knowledge! So for the better half of three years I have been working on learning all I can in GB Studio while developing this game.

With that said, I'd like to introduce Kotaro, the main protagonist of my game and show some early designs. 

This is an early concept piece and color guide for the Shiba Inu puppy/samurai warrior, Kotaro. The design was inspired by the early platformers of the late 80's and 90's; Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, etc. It showcases exaggerated features, simple colors, easily recognizable silhouette, and an endearing appearance(who doesn't love puppies!?). 

I wanted the design to speak for it self.  If this is the first time you are seeing this character, I wanted the audience to quickly understand that this is a puppy dog dressed in traditional clothes of ancient samurai warriors. From this information, we can dig deeper into some of the architypes and themes. The puppy is a young, jovial and naive natured aspect of every dog and serves as the perfect starting point for the heroes journey when developing a story. Also, Kotaro is a Shiba Inu which is one of the longest natural breeds of dogs in Japan and along with his outfit, it becomes clear that this game will be set in Japan and more specific, it is based during the days of the samurai warrior and bushido code. 

Next, a main key when designing a memorable character is having a color palette that is quickly recognizable even if displayed in this flat-square form. I wanted to make sure that the 2 main colors for this character were strong enough to stand out against any colored background but also complimented each other as well. In this case the two colors are the orange of the fur and the deep navy blue of the kimono. I then included a saturated red belt to break up the upper half from the lower of the outfit. The light blue color on the collar of the  kimono was an attempt to add a little more color. In subsequent designs, I do away with the collar. I don't believe it adds anything to the overall design.  

The initial idea was to try and create a 3d  game in Unity and use Blender to model, animate, and texture all the characters and assets.  After realizing the amount of work and time that would be needed to accomplish this, I decided 2D was the correct approach. Then I had to decide what style I wanted to go with; hand drawn like above or pixel art. 

These were two early ideas I played around with. Neither one captured the look I really wanted. But, I did settle on a pixel art style after playing a lot of successful indie games like Celeste, Blasphemous, Shovel Knight, etc. 

Here is my first attempt at doing an idle animation for Kotaro. Taking the original concept design and trying to add motion while also being cognizant of how difficult animating large sprites would be, I felt I was making progress.  This design along with the two above were created before I discovered GB Studio so pixel and palette restrictions were not something I was taking into account. I still really like this idle animation but once I started learning GB Studio, I quickly realized I had to go back to the drawing board!

This was the final design for Kotaro that I settled on that I felt confident would translate to the Game Boy screen. Apart from some minor changes that I needed to make in order to save precious resources, this design ticked all the boxes to begin developing the game.

Now that I had a solid design for the main character, it was time to start crafting the story and designing other characters! In my next post I will show you the initial story I came up with and how I plan to incorporate it into my game as well as some of the early enemy designs. 

Thank you so much for reading and follow "The Legend of Kotaro" Devlog for more!