Trifoil is an underdevelopment puzzle/exploration game which takes influence for The Witness and Knot Theory. It's due to be released late 2021 on itch.io and steam. In the mean time enjoy playing the prototype and follow Trifoil development as I take it from a prototype to a full featured Indie game by following me on itch.io or twitter. With that out of the way enjoy the devlog.

Over the weekend I did my first pass at a player character. Meet ball of pure energy.

Don't mess with the ball of pure energy.  I'm pretty happy with how the it turned out considering it's first character I've ever done art for. It's simple, cute, references games of old like pacman and most importantly fits into the theme of the game. I've also added simple eye movement that is context dependent:

However there's a bit of a problem with the cuteness. Trifoil is going to be a deep puzzle game and I'm not sure how well a cute character fits into that. The thing is I've got to be realistic about my (lack of) artistic abilities and a more complex character art is not achievable for me without months or even years of practice. I'll consider running a kickstarter to raise funds to hire an artist at some point. But honestly cute ball of pure energy will probably be good enough for the finished product. I keep reminding my self the Room To Grow has cute art and it's one of the hardest puzzle games I've played. Solo game dev is a balancing act around ability, quality, scope and time. I'd like to know peoples thoughts on this topic.

In other news I'm busy putting together the first level. I've done some coding to make sure the exploration  area and puzzles work together. I've redone the tileset graphics to give the level a more consistent neon wireframe look. Designed some new puzzles for the level and am slowly planning out how the level will progress. Let me know you think:

That's the update for this week. Thanks for reading.

-- Andrew

Trifoil is an underdevelopment puzzle/exploration game which takes influence for The Witness and Knot Theory. It's due to be released late 2021 on itch.io and steam. In the mean time enjoy playing the prototype and follow Trifoil development as I take it from a prototype to a full featured Indie game by following me on itch.io or twitter.