This page is a recreation of my Senior Capstone project website from Fall 2019.
EDAMAME DAYS – Seedling
A project that documents the creative process of a slice-of-life fantasy RPG about magic beans and being trans. |
EDAMAME DAYS – Seedling
A project that documents the creative process of a slice-of-life fantasy RPG about magic beans and being trans. |
Before I can tell you what EDAMAME DAYS is about, I have to start who the creator is.
That’s me! I’m a nonbinary and transgender artist (they/he) and aspiring game developer who loves lighthearted adventure stories with magic and fantasy elements. This game was born out of a realization that I never see myself represented in the media I enjoy. I wanted to see more trans/nonbinary protagonists in casual games for all ages that aren’t centered around their suffering. For me, the increase in various lgbtq+ representation in indie games and webcomics gave me the courage to come out and find myself. By creating this game that combines my passion for storytelling with my own personal trans experience, I hope that I can also do the same for someone else. |
EDAMAME DAYS is a narrative-driven side-scrolling role-playing game. This game takes place in one of Earth’s many parallel universes called a《LAYER》. In this layer, the sun doesn’t set. Everyone is a plant dryad, and instead of blood, mana flows through your veins. You play as Eda, a young humble bean dryad who’s learning to control their bean-growing powers in a magic school. Eda, who also happens to be transgender, is who the player will be emotionally engaging with. Through Eda, the player will interact with this strange, leafy, magic-laden world in a way that’s specific to the lgbtq+ experience while (hopefully!) having fun. Basically the world and its characters serve as a representation of my own experiences of being nb/transgender, with Eda being a bit of a self-insert. |
EDAMAME DAYS: Seedling
This specific project is meant to keep track of the game development and process of creating EDAMAME DAYS. As the game itself is not yet finished, the most important part is to show how such a game came to be. I want to give insight behind the creative decisions I took that either appeals to my specific, star-filled aesthetic style or integrates my own trans experience. |
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS –
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After sketching out character, background, and UI concepts, I began to translate them into actual game assets. This is one of the most messy parts as it involves a lot of drawing pixel sprites and snipping them together to adhere to RPG Maker 2003’s tile-based mapmaking (pictured below). During this process, I learned that the detailed drafts I drew up really made a difference in solidifying my concepts.
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I tend to create assets as I place them in the game, so it was a gradual process of building up each map to see it all come together. Check out the result on the right! During this stage, I make sure that everything visually looks intact and that the player can flow from scene to scene without any hiccups. No dialogue yet! The final step is where I’ll really be able to add personality to the characters and context to the situations, but of course you can’t grow a plant without a pot. |