Plan for Bryan Edds

Phew, finding artists is tough. Especially if you're just promising royalties, etc. I've gone through a few artists who couldn't pull through. So, after wasting a couple months with that, I decided it was time to put up some cash. I figured there was no way I was going to get the art in within the next decade unless I paid someone. Fortunately, I found a great artist who, although not free, was better than I could have even hoped. Most of you know him - Nauris Krauze.

Fast forward a bit to a few weeks working with him, and I've got most of the overworld art into the game. Cue screenshot -


Looks great eh? And the art here only uses a small amount of the tiles I have thank to Nauris. I have desert, beach, mountain, snow tiles as well. Soon I hope to have town and cloud tiles too :)

So, after wasting a bunch of time, I've finally gotten things on track. If there's a lesson here, it's that it's good to pay for work. Even though $15 - $30 an hour sounds expensive, if you get an artist that works as fast as Nauris and your game is properly small (like an indie game should be IMO) you can get all you need for a very reasonable amount of money (and this coming from a guy who make $7 an hour working part time and going to college).

So, spending money might just be worth it. I know I personally could not continue wasting my time with artists who won't pull through.

An now, for some more screenshots :D

Here's a shot of the move equip menu. It's going to have character pics in the future.


Here's the gear equipment menu. Kinda bland, but totally functional.


Here's a shot of an improperly sized and organized battle screen. Didn't have time to fix it for the .plan :D


Well, that's it for Puzzle Gaiden for now. Things are going well, and I hope to have the whole of scenario 1 finished in a couple weeks. That will probably be enough to release a demo, though I'd rather wait for release before releasing a demo since so many things will probably change in the final.

Thanks for reading my .plan, and especially thanks to Nauris for getting this project back on track :)