jibs Devlog 11/16/25

This is written on NOV 16th, 2025.

Current State of the Game

BIG NEWS!!!! We have THE TRUTH to our story!!!!!!!


In last week’s devlog, one of the next steps is to work together on fleshing out the story & key events. With that, we have brainstormed and came up with the actual TRUTH as to what happened on the town & Blueberry! This process took quite a bit of time (3 hours-ish in total meeting time) but with this truth down, working on all the perspectives will be a lot easier and cohesive.

Talking about the perspectives, we have also decided on the 4 perspectives regarding what happened to the town and Blueberry, that being:
  1. The falling Curse
  2. Strawberry is a ghost haunting everyone involved
  3. Blueberry is killing everyone involved
  4. The old kid is plotting something insidious
All of these still need minor details and fleshing out, and our plan is to look at the conclusion of these perspectives and work backwards, mapping out which bits of information will be given to the player until they reach one or more of the perspectives listed above.

Aside from these 2 main narrative decisions we have made, we have also listed out some key events that we want to happen, as well as planning out roughly the 5 days period of the game.

We have also decided our secondary interaction will be picking up rocks and collecting them! Maybe do something playful with them, but that’s for a later version.

Moreover, we have also playtested the current version a lot more, which has led us to a decision to test out various iterations of the Dialogue System with the Winter Showcase Build by having the different kids players talk to operate under different Dialogue Systems! More on this at C’s Devlog! The goal of this is to see which system works best for players to have fun with the stickers system, feel less guided, and have (or feel like!) the beliefs emerged from within the players’ own minds.

Overall, it has been a very discussion & meetings heavy week with us barely touching Unity because we needed to have all these key narrative elements down, but after this we can now head back to the game with a more solid story in mind!

 
Art by @ azigashimitoru

Next Steps

  • Caelan is still working on the dialogue system, now with various iterations
  • Jib will work on the Rock Collecting interaction
  • Jib is gonna focus on art stuff, sketching out the key events & items. Ideally we can have a visual in which shows the art style of the game, and what is or isn’t interactable.
  • Together we are also working on the 2 UI screens! Jib is on the stickers messenger UI and Caelan on in-world interaction UI.
  • Reference Research! We have got some research books to read through including a book about emojis and its history and artbooks, as well as some more films (Anatomy of a Fall) & games (Earthbound)!!


Pollyanna Cover Art by @amelicart

~Personal thoughts Section~

This Past Week
It was very fun to throw out narrative ideas and actually tried to form the story together. Caelan’s experience in writing has proven to be really helpful in guiding us towards forming the key events and different perspectives. It did take a while for us to flesh out the narrative, and that does make me a little bit anxious because we barely touched Unity and I barely drew!!! However, it was a much needed time for the narrative, and with a more concrete story in mind, everything else does become a bit smoother.

What im itching to do next
Drawing the visual of key events!! Establish the game's visual style! And dive even deeper on research materials that we have gathered!
Also, designing the playful rock collecting interaction, woohoooo vacation sim!!!