this is my game Lumbah Jump a hardcore platformer where you only control the
jumping but it has one huge problem and now everything is going to change [Music]
[Music]
so this huge problem lies within the story but obviously to explain that you need to
know what the story is so act one Lumbah and the fire a little Lumberjack character Lumbah
is out one day collecting wood and with a rumble in the air he rushes home to find
it on fire as a dragon flies away into the mountains above Act 2 Lumbah and The Wizard
in a state of rage Lumbah goes after the dragon and on his adventure he meets a wizard so this is
all I've revealed so far on this channel but there are two more parts to this story act 3 Lumbah and
the dragon trials and act 4 Lumbah and the dragon which fully completes this story but the huge
problem I've got is the story doesn't really match the game I'm making my idea for the game timeline
was to only show acts 1 to 2 where you meet the wizard you'd start at the woods make your way
through the mountains up through the clouds and then to the Wizards Tower then what happens you
just meet the wizard that's the end of the game to me it feels a little bit anti-climatic you just
beat all of these difficult platforming challenges after falling over and over again and that's the
ending really I originally thought that I could figure this out later so I kept working on the
game and I even made a devlog about it which I got loads of great feedback and comments on thank you
very much for that someone in the comments give me some some feedback about the name which I already
knew was a problem Lumbah Jump let's assume you know nothing about the character nothing about the
story what would you search for you'd probably search Lumber jump right and lumber as in wood
well the game has nothing to do with wood which is a problem so if you were to search it you probably
wouldn't find it and your expectations might be different because maybe you're expecting jumping
logs or something it doesn't really match the game so I thought right okay I better figure this out
in order to do that I need to Deep dive into the story to try and find the best name for the game
and this is when later arrived I've had so many problems trying to figure this out this deep dive
into the story in the name and the game together has just given me more and more questions that
need to be answered and I found actually that my one big problem is now three big problems
problem number one is the motivation when I look at some of my favourite games there's always some
sort of motivating factor that helps drive you to finish the game or to complete it or to play it
or whatever like Super Mario for example Save The Princess and jump King there's a smoking hot babe
at the top kinda like this babe why does Lumbah want to reach the top and get to the Wizards
Tower is it just to see where the dragons went it seems kind of underwhelming for motivation like
play this game and you can find out where a dragon went but anyway let's move on to problem two which
is the resolution you know when you actually reach the top what happens in some James you
have an epic boss fight you save the princess or you get the smoking hot babe or whatever but in my
game I kind of had the idea that you just meet the wizard and The Wizard would just I don't know help
you I guess I mean there's a bunch of scenarios that could happen the wizard is good maybe he's
helpful Maybe funny or maybe he was expecting an Amazon delivery driver or something instead
either way it's another problem so let's move on to the third problem which I think is the identity
does the story match the game mechanics why is Lumber always moving I guess you could explain
it by saying maybe he's angry that his house is on fire so it just can't stop till you get the
top and why did Lumbah's axe go why can't you chop things he is a lumberjack after all did he just
drop it when he saw his house on fire did it burn maybe look those are my three main problems and
I think my concerns could be answered right and trust me I've been trying to answer them for week
now I've been trying to come up with some sort of solution that makes the story and the game
Feel Complete but instead it really just feels like this story is full of cracks and Halls it
makes it feel very weak in the context of the game mechanics and I think I know why
I'm basically trying to merge a story idea that I've got with a game idea that I've got when they
really just don't work well together and like a struggling relationship to get it to work there
has to be a compromise but because I love both of these things individually I'm finding it really
difficult to want to compromise on either of them kind of out of fear that I might make one
of them worse so think they have to break up unfortunately there's a new guy in town
a while ago I was working with my friend on a game and I pitched him a story idea I had which I was
super passionate about thought we didn't use it and ended up going in a different direction it's
something to do with squirrel nuts not those nuts and eventually we abandoned that project
altogether but that story about this character has stuck in my mind ever since and it matches
with the game mechanics that I've got so maybe I should use that story and you know if it doesn't
work I can always just go back to the lumber story and patch up the halls or try to but little did I
know it would go so well start with translating the character design into pixel art I love the
little details of this little plant pot character then I roughed out all of the levels based on the
story idea no ending spoilers of course I gathered a bunch of reference for an abandoned lab setting
before creating a very rough concept of the scenery in a sort of Rusty lab with a skeleton
scientist this isn't finished and will change but I wanted to get a loose idea inspired by the story
idea I did some more level design and even added a new level mechanic after fixing the bugs that came
with it I made some really challenging platforming sections with it which has some very harsh
punishments to get this new idea to the same point as where I was with Lumber story all I had left to
do was animate the character which after some trials and redoing I got the basic Idol running
jumping falling and splat animations done and in the game this wasn't without its problems
and challenges but the more I developed this idea the better it gets and it feels solid I
don't want to reveal everything about the story just yet but just know that it solves all of my
three problems the motivation if you reach the top you save the world the resolution well I'm
not going to spoil the ending obviously but my idea is a complete story and the identity well
I think it matches the game mechanics perfectly but I guess you can be the judge of that when
I reveal more this is Plantfall yeah you get it because you're a plant and you fall even the name
makes sense but what does that mean about Lumbah? there's a saying in creation or writing Kill Your
Darlings and it means to be comfortable letting go of stories ideas and characters that you are
emotionally attached to for the sake of creating something even better so I guess I'm not using
Lumbah for this game and that's why this has been a super difficult decision for me I want to get
to the end of it and get that Dragon just as much as I know some of you do but I hope you can trust
me on this one I've got a gut feeling that this is what's best for the game and what's best for
the Lumbah story part of the reason I built this rig and Illustrated some parts of the video like
this was because I am practicing I think telling Lumbah's story in a comic or animation would work
way better I can fully explore the world without the constraints of game mechanics that don't work
with it or make it worse but that's for the future let me know what you think about it anyway I do
hope you're excited to find out more about this new character and story and if you're interested
you can wish list the game now on Steam oh and one more thing this character needs a name any ideas