Valiantine is a 2D-3D hybrid RPG developed by Narwhal Productions, released on March 29, 2024. You play as Emily, a young woman on a quest through the abandoned ruins of a castle on the frontier of a vast and deserted kingdom, searching for an artefact magical enough to risk her life for. Take heart, adventurers.
- Explore Castle Aleyssia, all that remains of a time long gone
- Defend yourself against foes both vicious and mild using a magic blade
- Experience a mythic and mystic take on Valentine's Day lore and tradition in what may be the greatest Valentine's Day game ever made

Play the game now at https://narwhal-productions.itch.io/!

A 2D-3D RPG about love, courage, and longing

Valiantine

AndrewExclamationPoint

https://narwhal-productions.itch.io/valiantine I'll edit the speech in in a minute, but tradition comes first, and the bot owes me one more point. <3

- Squashed a lot of animation bugs relating to edge cases and transitions
- Fixed a few spritesheets
- Cleaned up some esoteric things like the main menu transitions having some clipping
- Added a friend to the main menu
- Added oodles of sounds

See you tomorrow night!

So much wrapping up that I need a list!
- All scenes have enemies now
- Added various environmental details (e.g. water wake in the flooded tower)
- Inventory and battle screens now have "Tutorial text" on by default. There's a toggle in the options menu to turn it off if you've got things down, but buttons are hard, so you can always turn it back on too.
- Slopes work! Emily no longer takes a flying leap off of every set of stairs she climbs.
- The final boss enemy set is in place, as is the gate controlled by its defeat
- Various other bits of text have been added to indicate how to control interaction text advances, checking spells and descriptions of gems, and swapping inventory tabs

Steadily, bit by bit, Castle Aleyssia is coming alive. Today I did a BUNCH of tuning and tinkering with everyone's stats, fixed a lot of bugs and found a few more, and put down about half of the castle's population.

Me and the gang rolling up to the Valiantine release day? Everyone is here, with all their moves and base stats, ready to tussle and torment as you explore Castle Aleyssia. They can spawn each other in and just generally give you a hard time!

Added a bunch more sounds today! There's a bunch more to go, this'll just be an all week thing as I do the rest of my final stuff and cleanup. It's like the game is coming alive before my ears...

Started on the sound effects adding journey today; you can hear a bunch of Emily's voice clips! The bit crushing is an intentional effect as sort of an easy way to unify all the different places I'm getting audio from, and it matches the pixel aesthetic.

The Petal Golem's moveset isn't very offensive - it mostly casts helpful, non-attack-related spells and takes naps. Sometimes, it does both at once! I programmed 2 of its moves today.

Wrapping up the Forgotten Lover's move pool today! Between his floral spells and vine-ridden attacks, he'll make for a formidable foe.

Working on bringing the Forgotten Lover up to the end-game state of things today! He still had some old animation logic that I needed to kick around a little, but his moves are well underway and very well supported by the current enemy implentations.

Out of all the melodramatic dialogue and blurbs I've written for this game, the game over sequence is absolutely my favorite. Did the whole sequence today - take a peek.

Today I amended the saving process to include chests and gates! No more duplicates or lockouts. I also patched a few bugs and started on the game over sequence - started in on an implementation and switched course once I realized there was an easier way than the initial approach.

Today I implemented all the rest of the spells, and all of the game's saving functionality! It's now possible to store and load a save file, so if you get bored halfway through, you can hop over to a save point and call it a day. This is a clip of Weather The Storm, which is my favorite spell purely for how wonderfully the lighting effects turned out.

Today I did lots of scene transition and cutscene stuff! Brittle constructs indeed. The game is now completable in the sense that you can obtain the item that signifies the end of the game, read the ending dialogue, watch/skip the credits, and loop back to the main menu. The pause menu is now a lot more robust; all the buttons are there, and the load to menu and quit ones work just fine. Also,
- Victory animations now play correctly when you exit a battle
- The Gem of Courage's spell is complete
- All rooms except the boss room now have all of their unique interactables
I had kind of a scatterbrain day, but it's all off my list now!

Today was a lot of digging around through the codebase and hooking things up under the hood, but the result is this! All the necessary structure for spellcasting is pretty much setup, and now playing with numbers and sequencing animations is the easy part. Here's a demo of the Gem of Heart's spell, Take Heart, in action - it was the only one I implemented today.

All scene transitions are implemented - you can walk the entirety of Castle Aleyssia! Transitions now also retain your correct direction of motion from point A to point B. I also did some work on the main menu and opening scene - there's now an opening dialogue segment to read for story content- and had a recording session with Emily's VA and did some sound editing on her clips! So excited for y'all to hear Emily come to life with the voice of the ever-effervescent Kate Rosiene. I'd never been a voice director before, but I read up to make sure I knew how to give good directions.

Welcome to the next level - scene transitions work a treat (and took a lot of treatment to work), and you can now carry all your goodies from scene to scene as you roam the castle. I'm just over halfway through putting up the doorways!

I finished off the rest of the basic scene implementations today - every room has a scene, collision geometry, lighting, etc., and a few bells and whistles each! Now to string 'em together.

Today I implemented the majority of the functionality in rooms 2, 17, 16, 4, 7, 19, 13, and 20! Barring a few special interactions, enemies, and scene transitions, all of which will have their day, these rooms are shipshape and tested. Only 5 rooms left until all 23 rooms are in this state. Happy spring break!

Now here's some finished gosh-darn key art! I've never had the time to make box art for a game I've made before, this was a blast.

Well, plans changed a little and I hit the road today instead of tomorrow, which means I can start my spring break dev streak earlier tomorrow! In the meantime, though, it meant a little less work on this. Still, all the major players look good in color.

Just a little more done today - once I best my last midterm tomorrow I'm gonna go all the way and finish this as a treat.

More work on my key art! It's coming out rather clean so far.

Didn't have a lot of time tonight, so I just started doing the linework on my key art. Really excited to see how this turns out.

Kzzt! Not the greatest effect in the world, but hey, just like lightning, it'll only show up for a moment. Maybe I'll do effects animation for fun this summer, this was a blast and I feel like I can do better!

Made the static version of the other spell effect I need today - lightning! One of those things I've never done in pixel art before, so I spent some time on it. FX are so cool and tricky, I really admire the folks who do it as their main thing.

Posting early so I can make the DevLUp UF Chipotle Fundraising Event (TM) - today I'm implementing scene 6, the Garden! These trees make everything prettier.

Today I modeled room 9, the ascent to higher up in the castle - and this was the last room model! Every inch of Castle Aleyssia now exists in a .blend format.

2-for-1 special: Today I modeled the boss area and the bridge that goes over it to give you a sneak peak before you have access to it! Showing the player any kind of interesting perspective on the castle, as always, will demand a lot of trees in the future. Worth it, though.

I modeled room 11 today! Re-evaluation based on camera perspective has been a constant to-do on this project - in this case, I'll be pulling the camera up to have a look at a tower + peek over the north ridge of the castle, so I might need to come back and do touch-ups.

The overgrown plaza was definitely one of the more time consuming models, mostly for splitting everything up right for collision, but overall, today's work to create another memorable room was a success. The design philosophy behind all of the stuff I've been doing is essentially to create 23 different weenies so that mapless orientation is either not a problem, or the fun kind of confusing.

Modeling room 20.5 tonight - I initially forgot to even put it on my spreadsheet! It's the penultimate room in the game, a balcony over the vast northern frontier, and a signal to the player that the fight is over - after catching glimpses through crumbling walls, and having not been there proper since the start of the game, you're finally in open air again, literally on the other side of the worst.

Sketched out what’ll really be my only piece of key art today - something to use as box/cover art that really catches the eye!

Just a lil fireball animation for the Fireball spell tonight!

Every time, I say, "Wow, it would be cool to have this room be on one of the castle's edges so you can see the surrounding forest!," and every time, I underestimate the density of foliage required to create that illusion. Working on implementing room 10 tonight.

Implementing rooms 15 and 3 today! I'm excited to get the heal statue in room 15 all squared away so it'll look really cool with the usual heal camera angle.

Today I modeled room 3, and sometime in the near tomorrow, I'll be done modeling room 4! I humbly admit that I put off these big ones to the end because of how many tiles I'd have to place.

Today I did all of room 18's setup, and before I crash tonight I'll have finished modeling room 20! The implausability of a heart-shaped hole forming in a wall is overruled by how cool it's going to look.

Getting on that room grind - today I sort of bounced around, modeling Room 6 here, implementing Room 18 there, adding the skybox as I bounced between scenes. Castle building's a blast when your heart is in it.

The Gem of Cunning's passive effect is to grant two turns a turn cycle in exchange for an attack and defense debuff - pretty fair trade if you ask me. Today I implemented the logic in my BattleManager to allow for this peculiar power.

The Gem of Heart's passive application is one of the trickiest in my catalog - when it's equipped, HP and MP are inextricably bound. Practically, this is achieved by a condition checking if the gem is equipped in all of the crucial methods, and performing an alternate execution if it is. An initial equip of the gem will average out your existing HP and MP, and put the cap for both at the combined max you have for each stat normally. Quite honestly, I'd LOVE to make a whole RPG centered around casting from health, as the mechanic is a late-game find here and will go woefully underexplored.

Working on adding a skybox! Unfortunately, my lighting has been dabadee-dabadyed, so I'm working on having my sky and keeping my lighting too.

Working on the pixel art aspect of the reveal trailer - the date is just off screen...

Today, tomorrow, and Tuesday are all going to be finishing the trailer for my game, so very secretive until release - it’s just going to be a short release date reveal, but I’m learning a little bit of everything on this project, and that includes some editing 101! Today was just a bit of work on the animation, though.

Render coming in just a minute - I'm polishing up the last few bells, and then the song revamp will be done! Here's a look at the whole 2 minute MIDI file for a picture of what goes into this stuff.

First verse melody is done, and I'm trying out some layering with the backing violins that's working really well so far as an accompaniment. This is just so much fun, and I'm no longer so disappointed in this track. I'll be pushing through the rest on Saturday.

Working on the song rework with what time I can steal from HW today - I'm nearly done with the first 'verse's' melody, so that leaves the bridge to really scrutinize and then most of the rest of the song to mutate off of that. Hopefully done Fri or Sat!

Took some time off from computer graphics to keep working on the rework of the battle theme and got another phrase of it done! It's nice that it repeats itself quite a bit, I don't have too much more to do before I can begin pasting and pitch shifting things to complete the song.

Turns out I'm not done writing my vow - I opened up Reaper tonight to mess around a little, see if I was able to take any of the wonderful advice I've been given, and turns out I can! I'm in the process of smoothing out a lot of the awkwardness of the track, mainly redoing the backing percussion to sync up better; switching the primary melody to a violin and pushing the BPM up ever so slightly has already improved my outlook on the piece (although I WILL get the flute in there somehow, mark my words!).

Well, it's not perfect - a little too slow and a little too empty - but for my first time trying to write an RPG battle theme, it's at least a swing in the right direction! The Solitary Vow is a riff on the main title's name, The Lonely Duet; where the latter is a passing, fading duet where only one voice remains where once were two, the former is characterized by a strong central voice all the way through.

Composing right along today - still working out the main melody, but no fun major change screenshots to post today.

The quest for a main melody begins! Currently going with a flute, since I love a good tense flute. My habit of sneaking The Lonely Duet into every piece of music this game has continues and cannot be stopped.

I finished up a pretty nice violin-based bridge today! I love when battle songs drop their main melody for a moment to let a non-primary instrument take over. I'm not quite sure what compelled me to make that segment **before** any of the actual song, but now I can build the song around having that bit in it, which will be interesting!

I'm going right on through to the last major track I need - the battle theme. Today was about feeling out a couple instruments and the pacing of the track, trying out a violin for a bridge I came up with and some percussion for a basic beat. Composition certainly isn't too fun to watch, and it takes a while, but that's the rub - I can conjure 3D castles or program magic and mischief all day and get pretty far in one sitting if I put my mind to it, but I'm nowhere near good enough to rush the music, so I'm getting it done now to make sure I don't have to try to.

And, done! The discerning eye might note two files here instead of one - rather than stick to one version of this track playing for the entire duration of your exploratory time in Castle Aleyssia, you'll hear the piano-only version (v1) for the first half of your quest, and upon entering the second half of the castle, the more full version (v2) will become what plays. I think v2 is perhaps the more engaging track, but there is a wonderful solitude inherent in v1 which aligned too well with my game's tone for me to leave it behind.

Almost there! Just like with the main piano, I'm figuring out engaging and unique ways to make the backing tracks work within the theme. Everything to the right of the blue line is what's left WIP.

Well, I've concluded that an untrained composer can only meander across the gulf between C6 and C7 so much before they run out of ideas, so I think final length of the track will be just over 3 minutes. Tonight I started working on the other tracks - an accompanying harp that plays off of the main melody, and a lower piano to give the whole affair a little more weight and cohesion. Hopefully I can finish it tomorrow!

Well, of all the ways to miss a day of posting (not a day of work, mind you), I always thought it would be something more drastic than falling asleep waiting for laundry. Oh well! I'll double post today to keep the spirit and keep rolling along. Here's the third WIP of my castle song - 3 minutes into a wandering piano solo, with give-or-take one left to wrap it up.

Up to nearly 2:30! I'm writing a bit that feels like climbing to the top of the castle and briefly looking out over it before going back down. Today's showoff post includes an image of the full track MIDI so far that kind of looks like the tile texture for the top of the castle walls, which I thought was fun.

Another WIP! I'll post them every time the main melody gets another minute, and I broke the 120 second mark today. Still the same compositional idea,  just sort of meandering - I think minute 2 has taken sort of a darker turn, as perhaps a looming darkness might find an innocent traveller around any corner in this old castle. I know I'd be shaken something fierce to run into human remains, no matter how passively they might just be leaning against a wall. As I walk away, I might wonder how many other eyes have those empty sockets of bone and dust gazed into...

1:12 in - my main strategy here is to sort of just let this calm, singular piano take me where it will, like the notes are drifting through on the breeze. That's what I imagine midday abandoned castle exploration music is like, so that's what I'm doing. Maybe I'll add a bell tolling later in the track - some rusting piece of metal, ringing out a useless warning to uncaring ears...

Still working on this track! My biggest hurdle with musical composition is stringing different phrases together, and this piece is challenging me to step up and do my best to build those bridges - just because the castle is falling apart doesn't mean this track can. I'll hopefully have a minute of it to share tomorrow.

Switching gears from doing rooms for a little bit - the vibes just feel off right now. I have a solid 30-second foothold to show on a new music track for Valiantine today, and I've felt much better working on it. While composing for a specific length isn't usually a healthy or orthodox approach to making music, I'm aiming for at least a 4-minute track on this one - it's the exploration music for the castle, and the only one of its kind, so I want it to not be too repetitive.

Didn't have an overabundance of time today, but trying to figure out how much floor space to give the boss arena - there needs to be enough space for the encounter, but little enough that it doesn't feel empty. This is my current area, but I think it'll need to be wider.

Room 10! These little treasure rooms all need something to stand out - this one's gimmick is that it's sort of a tower sticking out from the main castle, and its east and south walls have crumbled to allow more light in. There's also a weird hole in the wall!

Wrapping up initial work on room 12 - this will be an interesting one to put into the game since the top of the room will be about level with the top of the fortress, so I'll likely end up modeling a lot more broken walls outside of the interactable space in the room to create the effect that you're near the highest part of the place.

Doing the modeling for room 12 today - this and room 9 are pretty similar, so I might be able to get away with a 2-in-1 with a couple tweaks to the damage on the walls!

Just finishing the scene cleanup on the Lost Woods! Getting the shadows right on all of these is a daily little challenge.

Just doing a little room import work this evening - most of the models have something that needs fixing when I bring them in. Here, it's that the hallways are too short and cut off where the camera can see!

I did some more work on my date reveal trailer for Valiantine today! It's coming along well still, and I'm excited to share it - that said, the way my life's gone in recent times, I'd sad to provide the update that Valiantine will *not* be a Valentine's Day release. I've kept my final release date ambiguously hovering in Q1 2024 in case things went south at some point in a way that I couldn't control, and whaddaya know, the last few months made me cash that in. Getting this thing done in a way I'm happy with is more important than a date anyway! **I'll be putting out the release date reveal trailer on Valentine's Day** to at least get some of that synergy, and no matter what, I'll have Valiantine out by March 31 - the extra month really will be the difference. Excited to share the rest of the tomorrows I have on this project with y'all!

Did some more music work today, trying to find Valiantine’s next track (the overworld backing track in this instance) - wasn’t really successful. I started on a Western piano-style cover of Daisy Bell to ease my woes, though, and that’s going alright!

Made a little item get theme today! It's just a rework of my main theme, but it's a nice little bit of musical continuity across the game, since I'll try to avoid overusing the main theme itself in gameplay.

Finished up decoration, collision, shadows, etc. on room 21 today - how you get here is a secret to everyone.

Closing the book a little earlier tonight to start the semester right, but I'm super excited to be fully back in dev mode after keeping it pretty low-key this break. I did a lot of setup work on Rooms 5 and 8 tonight (they all have names, but it'd be confusing to throw 22 different names out in these posts) - Room 8's water effect is now present, as is its key item! It's cool to start to see these little glimmers of gameplay come through.

Started working on importing and setting up all the scene models I've made so far for gameplay today! Here's one of the dark rooms WIP.

Today I gave everything shadows and buttons! All the buttons do something now, there are ways to get to and from the credits and options, the credits roll, and New Game and Continue have camera motions associated with them. NG will take you up to the sky, while Continue, as shown here, takes you back into the castle. Until I have save data and a comprehensive way of shipping data between scenes, this is about all the main menu needs. Time to get back to the game proper for now!

Did a little more environment work (namely, that fog effect was not doing it for me for the hallway) and started in on functionality - getting warmed back up on scripting.

Today I got some of my main menu scene set up! (lighting, decor, and layout mostly, and a bit of figuring out World Space canvas)

Textured my new asset today! Throughout the project, I've been using different colors of brick to accentuate or artificially create shadows, and that's true with the underside of these arches too.

Just a little modeling today - making the shape of the balcony railing from the sketch in the post I'm replying to. No time to texture this evening, so hopefully that'll be my first post of 2024! Happy new year everyone 🎆

Another room! This will be where the final gem, the Gem of Heart, is found. It's overgrown with plant life...

Today I animated something I won't be using! Funny, that. For a while, my plan was to open the title screen on black, play this animation, then shrink the logo into the top left as we fade in on the castle scene. Dynamic, fun, grabs your attention with a little light and forces you to behold the title, throw in some engaging SFX. All well and good. What I realized when I finished animating it and watching it over is that this as an opener is a total tonal mismatch with the solemn, lonely, wistful tone of the game. As much as I wanted to, I can't have my *Valiantine* and eat my *Link to the Past* too. A simple fade out of black as the main theme starts playing will be my new approach to opening the main menu, and at best, I can sneak this into the end of the credits, when the atmosphere is more triumphant.

Today I modeled my main menu environment - as shown by this diagram, the camera will move around the scene to show different functions of the main menu. Apologies for the penmanship, I'm very far away from my regular setup.

Finally done w/ logo animation! I intend to use this in front of most of my solo projects in the next few years - of course I'll keep getting better at pixel art + animation in the meantime, hopefully, but until I'm good enough to where a full overhaul would make a noticeable difference, this will be the opener for my work.

Almost there! The last thing to do is finish up the splash color + any needed cleanup. I added ripples to the second half today and adjusted the timing of the back half to separate the water splash and logo fade-in, since having both happen at once was pretty distracting.

Happy holidays, everyone. I'd make games about every holiday if I had time, but for now, here's the first ever Chrismalantine card (that doubled as some lighting practice), and all my best wishes for this time of year~

Sketching out the second splash today - WIP water shown throughout for ref of what the first splash looked like as a rough. Still needs ripples, but moving right along.

I animated the rest of the narwhal fun today - the water FX on the breach (planning AND coloring) are the last visual to-do.

Sploosh! Half the sequence done; the next step is to animate the narwhal jumping through the hoop.

Redid half of that room I didn't like into its own, and I like it much better! Better ceiling, closer to the original plan, it'll be nice. I want to have a dead body in the corner to really sell the dark spooky room vibe, so we'll see.

Day 365 of my streak! Beats me what Valiantine will look like in a few months, but I know now what I knew a year ago - no matter what, I'll be there for the end. Here's to day 366.

Picked up working on my animated logo again - I'm planning on going all in tomorrow and trying to get it done, but I just got back in on some water and ripple coloring today.

Worked on two rooms today - I don't think I'll be using the darker one, as I originally planned it as 2 rooms and I think I like that better still despite trying this little combo meal. The bigger one will definitely get used though, it's the main fountain plaza and the first save room.

Something looked off to me about my scene yesterday, and I woke up today and was like "Oh! The hypothetical walls don't exist!" and then couldn't do anything about it until tonight. Regardless of if the scenes look like dioramas, we still expect the architecture of the castle to be consistent in our minds, and so it looks weird and fake if the right wall's shadow just breaks off when we stop seeing the actual wall. Glad I figured this one out now.

I mean...pretty cool, right? I am fully guilty of double-whammying the player with cool camera-movement based sequences right out (or in, teehee) the gate, but if frontloading an RPG with narrative-building sequences is wrong, I'll stand with the rest of the industry in not wanting to be right.

Working on the environment design for the Here Stands room! I think I might want to cut the walls down to show more of the trees, and I still need more filler + a white light effect to mask the back better, but it's not half-bad.

Added some collision and decor to this room, along with a view outside the castle! Looks like you reach the other edge if you make it this far...

Working on getting the UV unwrap just right - I haven't had to do very much "clean" modeling on this project, but I'd like to at least make an effort on the parts where it's an option.

Messed up my stairs in the way I wanted today - a little more broken and beaten.

Valiantine

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