A fair amount was accomplished this month, amazingly even with the fact that I was away from home for a week and enjoying the BEEAAACH!! ☀️🏖️🕶️

It was a really, really good month for art!!

• The movement functions for the player were polished up a bit with a glowy animated “walk target” that appears where the player clicks.  Once the heroine character steps on it, it disappears in a poof of light particles! ✨
• Some very rough sketches were laid down for the actual, playable map.  View the whole thing + some insights into how collisions are placed on a hand-drawn map in the Map Re-Drawing Begun post!
• I made some new brushes by hand in order to make drawing grass and flowers much easier!!  See them, in addition to some greenery being placed on the background, in Painting Some Sick Grass.  Bonus footage of cute poofy clouds from a chimney!
• New Art for the Player Character was done!!  We have a heroine, folks!!
• And finally, :O! A Friend!, shows an NPC character who will be present in the playable build.  We are reaching ever closer to its availability!

🌼 Onward into September!! 🌼

🐇 Thank you so much for taking the time to read my summary of what I’ve been up to over this month, and if you’d like to help in any form, consider the links below to either become a patron or just to donate once through Paypal any small amount~

Heya!  Although it’s not quite the end of the month yet, I wanted to make this round-up post before July actually ended, because of the time-sensitive bonus that is only relevant before July 31st~

Here is what I have been up to in only the few weeks it has been since diving full-force into creating games!!:

• The screenshot above shows my most recent update.  If you view the post itself, the screenshot is actually animated, and shows the scene in action!!  There are a whole bunch of colorful little animated icons that serve to show what emotions the character is speaking in a cute and interactive way~
• In just yesterday’s post, I had most of the icons drawn but not animated yet!
• From Sketch to Screenshot – This post details how rough and messy my work-in-progress sketches are, where I rough out how I want the UI to look and even scribble incredibly silly placeholder characters LOL.  It’s available to view side-by-side with the finished version of the same screen, just to see the difference!
• Playing with Particles: Glowy Lights & Fireflies – Fireflies always look so magical in games!  This post, which also has an animated demonstration, shows off how I create pretty, soft, and glowing lights for background detail.
• Dialog Boxes & Typewriter Text – Another animated demonstration, this time showing the dynamic message boxes and text that appears within them.  It’s a minor effect, but one that is massively engaging for the player!  There is also a sneak peek at some actual code in this post.
• Animating Game Characters – This post, which includes an animated demonstration AND a look at the code behind it, shows how I get my art work to move around and look alive in a game.
• Drawing a Game Character – Finally, this post, which is visible for everyone so that they may get a glimpse at what kind of content is available in the rest of the feed, provides an example of how my art work grows from placeholder characters to full-color designs for the final form of the project. 🌟

There are actually a couple of other progress update posts that I didn’t even list just now – you’ll have to check the activity feed over on Patreon to see the rest!

If you’re interested in watching these projects come to life, as well as playing demonstrations as soon as playable builds are available, you’ll need to become a Patron!  Please consider doing so – it is a small investment that is non-figuratively life-changing for me, allowing me to pursue this and create cute and positive games as I have always dreamed of doing.

AND!!!  If I reach my first goal of $150 before July ends, I’ll be able to put those earnings toward upgrading my Game Maker license to allow finished games to be available for Mac and Ubuntu users as well as PC, in addition to being able to make browser-based games that do not require downloading at all and would be available to play freely~!

💟 Thank you so much for taking the time to read my summary of what I’ve been up to over this month, and if you’d like to help in any form, consider the links below to either become a patron or just to donate once through Paypal any small amount~

Does anyone remember this incredibly cute game called Bread ‘n Butter?  It used to be hosted by Outspark, which doesn’t even seem to have their own landing page any more and visiting them will simply redirect you to the MMO Fiesta.

Bread ‘n Butter was a time-management simulation filled with quick minigames, all populated by some of the cutest art work of the sweetest little pastry-based characters!  The minigames are a bit like Cooking Mama or Wario Ware, where you do a quick, simple task within a fairly short time limit and then quickly move on to the next step.  The time & money management system in Bread ‘n Butter applied to the bakery/cafe that you owned, where you had to strategically place your finished baked goods around the store and have a part-time worker staffed.

It isn’t available to play any more (and the copywrite years on these screenshots don’t go higher than 2008…), and for a number of years there was like 0 information about this game on the Internet at all, and I was wondering what the heck happened to it or if anyone else even played it!  Then, Outspark created this photo album on Flickr, and I can almost immerse myself in the sweetly cute and cheerful world again with this wonderful selection of screenshots!

^ The sign-in screen!
This REALLY shows how adorable the character designs were.
Wouldn’t you, like, buy stationery and stuff with these characters on them??

I also ADORE the color palette – sweet pastels over a neutral brown & honey-yellow base!
I have a similar color scheme in one of my own game projects!

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This is the “world map” screen – you actually had to travel to different locations
to gather different ingredients, such as harvesting chocolate from the woods
(where chocolate kisses grow on trees) or scooping up sweet syrup
from a volcano filled with it.

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A results screen like this would show you how successful your bakery was.

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An upgrade shop – I was never really able to grind enough gold
for the single gold item here, and the rest all need real currency.

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There were some serious upgrades available if you could put the money towards it!

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This is one of the “main” screens you would look at while playing.
The top screen shows characters working as well as shopping in your bakery,
and it’s kind of a constant that you’d keep your eye on as time passed by.
The bottom screen changes frequently, and it is where you play minigames.

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Omg, look at the cute little faces on the whisk and all of those little clumps of batter!!
I remember playing this minigame with great frequency,
mashing the arrow keys like crazy lol.

Still easier than getting batter unstuck from your whisk in real life. T – T

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Another minigame involving grinding flour.
In order to actually play these minigames and thus actually have supplies for your bakery,
you had to gather the raw ingredients from the forests and stuff, first.
So, it wasn’t like you could just grind through minigames,
you actually had to go out and collect the base materials, too.
There was kind of a rhythm to this game that you’d settle into,
like collect – turn into usable ingredients – bake – place in bakery.

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Here is an empty bakery that needs filling!

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In all of the bakery screenshots above, in the top-left corner are shown the current
part-timers available to put to work and manage your store.
You had to actually be strategic about how much some of them cost
and what strengths and weaknesses they had!

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And, finally, here is the chocolate-collecting minigame in the forest. 😋
There are lots of minigames like this in other games – the one I always think of
is the fruit- or jewel-collecting minigame from Kirby 64.

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Thank you for taking the time to enjoy this cute game alongside me!
I still miss it a little bit, but knowing that I have shared its cuteness
with other people is like spreading its love even long after
its lifecycle, and that’s like spreading happiness, too!

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If you enjoy this post, consider supporting BonBonBunny~
Thank you very much. ☺
🌱🍄🌿🍄🌱

In June this past Summer, an incredibly cute MMO that I had been enjoying closed its servers. ・°・(ノД｀)・°・  But, I enjoyed it heartily in the time that I played!

I’m a big fan of X-Legends’ games!!  Their artwork and character designs are sooo cuute, and they always have the most colorful and whimsical backgrounds and settings.  Spirit Tales was ESPECIALLY whimsical, because it was the ‘tiniest’ and cutest of their games, in terms of character design~

See?  It looked like this!

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This is going to be a reeeeaaally image-heavy post, so I’m putting a cut here!!  Check out the rest of my memories (and my cute spicy red bunny character) below!

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a little while since my last Steam game roundup!  Here is a selection of games I’ve discovered recently that are widely varied, but the connecting thread throughout is that they have cool or pretty art work!

As with all of my Steam recommendations, G2A is the preferred method for getting Steam keys on the cheap!  You don’t have to wait for the games to go on sale, just pick up a key from there for a couple bucks!

Littlewitch Romanesque: Editio Regia

That’s quite a title! oAo
Littlewitch Romanesque is a sim game reminiscent of Princess Maker!!
The art is sooo beautiful, and scenes play out in comic panels and speech bubbles
for a very artistic effect!

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Audition Online

This is an MMO from the early oughts, so if you are/were a fan
of games like Mabinogi or Dream of Mirror Online,
then its visual style will look about comparable!
This is a rhythm game where you can customize a cute anime character
and compete (or cooperate) with others online!

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Treeker: The Lost Glasses

This is a mysterious and meditative adventure/puzzle game.
I was drawn to it because I looooove the lowpoly environments –
awesome abstracted trees like those in the above screenshot
are my absolute weakness!

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Journey of the Light

Another adventure puzzle game, this time with an overhead view
and beautiful painted natural environments!
The color scheme is cool and blue~

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Cloudbuilt

This one is a high-paced action platformer!
The characters in the art work look so cyberpunk-y and cool!
There are some very imaginative environments for blasting through! *o*