The Sapphire Claw

The more dedicated of you may have noticed that I posted a new screenshot from The Sapphire Claw. I’ve been doing a fair bit of work on this inbetween my other work and have reached a point where I can move forward once again.

One of the first changes is that it’s now called The Sapphire Claw – Serpent Eyes. The reason for this becomes very clear early in the story, but is also part of what I’ll outline below.

Another big change is that I’m going to split the game up into a number of smaller games. Although they will each feed into a larger ongoing story, each game will have its own story that reaches a definite conclusion. I’ll also be fleshing out the game a lot so each story, although shorter, will be longer than that portion of the original game was intended to be. (I think I just confused myself there…)

One of the problems I’ve been having is of finding funding, which is obviously difficult at the best of times for adventures. So in order to proceed I’m having to make a lot of development decisions and compromises. But it’s my intention to work those compromises in such a way that I maximise the quality in the way I approach them.

One of these compromises has been with Scout, who I’ve pre-rendered from a 3D model. Although it takes something away from the hand-drawn version, it means that animation is a little simpler for me to complete myself.

Another compromise is that I’m going to have to do pretty much all of the work myself as I can’t afford to pay anyone and because I still need to earn a living I’ll be doing it between other jobs, still. What this means is that I have no specific date to complete the work, but I’m hoping that I can push on at a reasonable speed.

I’ll try to keep you informed more fully as things develop.