Updates, My thoughts on Omori, TheGameDawg and the future

Hey, once again I wanted to offer an update to production of Crown of Chaos. Currently I'm reworking the name as I feel the culture of the game has shifted a bit since that name was set. Again, I'm working on this project alone when before there was a team of us. At the point that there was a whole team we estimated it would take us two years to complete the game... Yeah.

It's been a lot longer than two years, probably close to 5 years now, so happy anniversary! I am continuing to work on this project, and have made some headway in story-boarding. I have had to make adjustments (quite a few of them) as with my current skills in RPG maker, I can't make fantastical things like I really want to. 

In December of 2020, a game called Omori was released. This game, although some of the themes, art style and design are different, hit home with me as I kind of compared it to what Crown of Chaos 'Could be'. Now, I know that neither myself or the creator of Omori intended any kind of similarities, but it makes me feel a bit more hopeful with the success of Omori that maybe I'll find an audience. As I'll discuss further in the next paragraph, my game is relying heavily on assets provided by RPG maker in the engine. This gives me more time to focus on the game itself rather than spending a lot of time building environments and the like; but it also has its downfalls.

TheGameDawg, in 2019, just two days after my birthday, released a video called "5 Games Made with Default RPG Maker Assets" and included my game. Oh boy. I really appreciate TheGameDawg taking the time to play my game and offer feedback, even if in the comments I was bashed a lot for being lazy. Lazy wasn't what I was; I poured my heart and soul into the game, and originally the assets were placeholders until our artist could finish their work, so we could continue with production and not put too much pressure on them. Unfortunately now, since this is a solo project, I don't have the skills to create assets like most people expect out of RPG Maker games now. It's a bit disheartening to learn that the bar for being anything more than 'an abomination' as one of the commenters said, was to have completely custom assets... 

I don't think, if I am the only one working on this, that there will be a time where there aren't at least a few default assets, but I'm trying my hardest, including the purchase of DLC packs which include a range of new and different assets.  I am slowly working on this project and I really hope that I can get that message across. It's been a long time since any kind of new demo or release, but I fully intend to at least have an updated demo by the end of 2021. The current demo covers the first out of approximately 8 chapters, which if you have played the demo, might guess that it relates to the key system and goal. Now, taking in the feedback provided by TheGameDawg, I am overhauling the way that these plot points come across. Gosh why did the whole team agree to a scrolling text filled with plot dumps, who on earth would enjoy that!

Anyway, TL;DR: Work is continuing, I like Omori and it gives me hope for an audience in this game, thank you TheGameDawg for his feedback, oof mean comments, another demo hopefully releasing in 2021.

Thank you!

- Scwarf