"Approximately every two years, Earth and Mars are at the closest point to each other in their orbits." - NASA

This Lonely Universe is a short exploration of the isolation of earth, as personified in human form. Terra lives mostly alone, with only her companion Lune to keep her company. Her closest neighbor, Venus, she only sees once every eighteen months. Her second closest, Mars, every twenty six.

Got a late start on this, but glad to finally get going. I don't know if I'll finish, but I think I've set my scope low enough to make some pretty good progress. My main goal this time was just to start something, so if I do finish, that's just a bonus.

I'd love to do something in Unreal or Unity, but I think realistically with my lack of proper programming skills this is going to have to be a Twine game. But hey, at least I know how to draw stuff.

The characters live on boats that slowly circle the city center, Sol. A lonely existence, they only ever see their neighbors on rare occasions so even the slightest opportunity for company is an event in itself. The game starts as the player arrives on Terra's vessel. It's nice to not be alone, but will this uninvited guest be a blessing or a curse?

Here's some sketches for the game:

Starting to get a little familiar with the Twine interface. Images were a little odd to get going. Seems like you need an external host, so I'm probably going to be using Imgur for that. Started off with a quick "Hello World" test project and I feel like I have a basic understanding now. I haven't written Javascript since high school, like 15 years ago, so that's probably not happening, and I've also never done anything with CSS. I'm also suspecting my writing is going to suck. But again, the goal here was just to get something going, and if I finish the project in any form then that's just a bonus.

I have been doing some more sketches for characters now. Since the character are all on their boats, it makes a lot of sense that the tower at the city center, that represents the Sun, would be a lighthouse. That also lets the sky be permanently night, with a day night cycle coming from the rotation of the lights in the lighthouse itself. Really need to grab my scanner from downtown instead of taking shots with my phone.

Also have been thinking of a new character that can come by - Hailey, the wanderer. A "hiking" girl based on Halley's Comet.

Wow. Already almost 6PM here. Working on this on and off at a casual pace, mainly Drawing art and laying out structure. I'm terrified of the writing, but once I start into it it shouldn't be that bad. The illustrations are going to be the largest part so I'll probably save the majority of them for after the jam.

Title card is up. Not sure which version I like better, but I'll likely be redrawing the scene in higher detail for the final thing.

Figuring out just where my these branches are happening and what is being said. I wish there was quick reference for the syntax and formatting (using Sugar Cube 2.14.0), but things seem to be going alright anyways. I can't say I play many Twine games, but as far as making things go this is pretty fun.

What's the easiest way to find reference for a character's diary? Ask your partner really nicely if you can borrow some pages from theirs. Phoenix's personality matches up pretty well to one of the characters, so this should work out pretty well. :)

Things are going pretty well now and we've been collaborating on the characters and story, but I'm going to have to call it a night. Really wish I didn't have work tomorrow - I think they wouldn't like it very much if I were working on my game, so this one is going to be a late finisher. I'm liking this a lot so maybe I'll just take a day off next time.