The Announcement Post

Heyo. If you're a returning reader (very unlikely), welcome back! Otherwise, I know I'm sending this blog post to some of my friend groups, so welcome to the blog! If you want to read the previous updates for THIS version of the game, begin from the 'Eight Years' post down below. Everything before that is for previous iterations.

So, for the new people (the majority of people reading this, really), the game is...

(I just wanted an excuse to put the logo here, okay?)

CQ0 is... remake of a remake of a reboot of a revamp of a game I made when I was 13, called Cereal Quest. Trust me, that sentence is not an exaggeration! One day, I will make a video detailing the history of this project, and the sheer amount of (failed) iterations it's gone through over the years, but that day is not today. Instead, this will be the day (we're waiting fooor!) that we get into the game's premise.

For those totally unfamiliar, CQ0 will be an action platformer with some puzzles, and shmup segments too. It'll be quite hard, but everything in the game will be possible no-hit.

Additionally, it's quite inspired by the Distorted Travesty series, particularly 3 and 4 (of which I'm a tester), so you can think of this game as a... Distorted Travesty 3.5 from another dimension.

The original Cereal Quest was a regular RPG made in RPG Maker VX Ace, but since this one's a 2D platformer it'll be made in Game Maker 8.2. (Not Studio 2, as I am very fast with and far more confident in using 8.2. And don't worry, Zephyr, I saw that GMLive is available for 8.2 aswell, so I'm definitely buying that).

Now, let's get into the characters! 

The main character of the game is Roger, a stoic man with an... indifferent look to him, who lives by himself in the middle of nowhere. One day, he goes out to visit his friend Mr. Skelly, when the two of them make a disturbing discovery...

 

The deuteragonist, Mr. Skelly, will also be a playable character, the second of three, in fact! He is a renowned knight of Castle Skelly, serving under King Skelly (do you see the pattern yet). He doesn't meet with Roger in-person much, but the both of them are good friends, and will certainly benefit from each other's company when the frigid wind comes, and the shade creeps in.

Now, I won't post many details about the third playable character. Mostly because I want her to be a bit of a surprise, when you unlock her.

The two things I will say is that firstly, she will have a shmup moveset, inspired by CAVE games like DoDonPachi and Deathsmiles, and secondly, unlike Roger & Mr. Skelly, you won't be able to switch to her at any time, only in certain situations.

Now, enough about that nonsense. Let's talk about an entirely different game, Distorted Travesty 4!

I am... almost? done playing DT4, my personal white whale and the definite biggest inspiration for this project. I'm up to the last few bosses now, and I'll probably be done within a few weeks. Or a few months.

Yes, that's right, I've been playing this game semi-regularly for the past... I believe since late September of last year? (I remember I only really got into it after I beat Silksong).

So, getting to 6 months for a single playthrough now, and I'm not even done. I also haven't taken a break from it longer than about a week. That's just how long and difficult this game is.

Because of that, I have been slowly, slowly corrupted. My last post mentioned that CQ0 wouldn't be as hard as DT4, and it would be a "maybe 3, but definitely not 4 button" combat system, yeah?

That's completely out the window. The abyss has consumed me whole, and now I am obligated to spit out something that is disgustingly difficult and complex too. I am sorry. I apologize. There's no going back for me now. Although... the abyss is quite nice, I like being here.

I will say, it is likely that nothing in CQ0 will be as hard as lategame DT4. But that's mostly a testament to how... mind-breaking lategame DT4 is, rather than an assurance that it will be possible for normal people. However, I will add some difficulty modes to the game (as I believe those to be superior to difficulty sliders personally), so don't worry too much about it.

As for the length... My estimate is for the game to take about 30-50 hours to complete, but that could vary wildly. I definitely want it to be possible to beat in one sitting though.

With that being said, something that's not too important, but still relevant for this blog, is that I've changed up the aesthetic of the game dramatically. It is now substantially bluer than I envisioned at the onset. However, I won't go back and re-update the blog's aesthetics, because hoo boy I do not want to mess with Blogger's weird aesthetic interface again. So, enjoy the fiery look, because it's here to stay.

Anywho, as an example of what I mean by 'bluer', here's the title screen:

 

(I was being very literal there).

By the way, the resolution of the game is indeed 480x360. However, that is simply because it is God's resolution. It can scale perfectly to MOST monitor sizes, and it's in 4:3, which y'know, means it also accommodates for 4:3 monitors. You'd be surprised at how many people still use a 4:3 monitor nowadays.

Since the player character is quite small (32x32, all the sprites here are scaled up), that means I actually still have a bunch of screenspace to work with, despite the 4:3 resolution. I had it at 16:9 before, but I felt that made the main character look super small, so changing it back to 4:3 helped fix that.

So! About the gameplay. You have two attack buttons, Melee, and Radiant. Holding up or down will also perform a different attack variant. Essentially, you have 6 attacks per character mapped to 2 attack buttons.

Melee is pretty self-explanatory, but Radiant is a unique name for a reason. Early on, you'll get this item called the Radiant Rod, which allows you to use Radiant attacks:

 

(Image may not be the sprite used for the item in-game, but I wanted to at least give you an idea of it).

It's greatly inspired by an ability in DT4 (of course), and you can think of it as a type of magic attack. Radiant attacks also have up/down variants, and each variant is a separate element (although for example, the up variant will be the same element on both characters). Every single attack variant will also have SOME kind of interaction with other attacks too, so there's plenty of combo opportunity to be had here.

But essentially, you have 12 attacks total, with 3 elements, split between 2 playable characters (Though, there's actually 5 elements since one of your melee variants is unique, and melee itself counts as an element). That's ALSO alongside the character switch button, a (non-iframe) dash button, and probably a guard/parry button. Lots of buttons and combat options here.

I say probably a guard/parry because, while my main inspiration, DT4, is a fairly parry-centric game, I'm not sure if having one will add much value to mine. We'll have to see how the combat plays out with the attack variants, and see if it fits.

If I do add a parry, though, you can rest assured, quof, that I will have the circle indicators like the ones from DT4, to telegraph the parry timings. Memorizing wonky timings won't be a problem here.

Now, unrelated to the game, later on I want to use this blog to talk about other games and VNs I play, in sort of a review fashion. Most likely after I'm done with DT4, as it's been consuming all of my time...

Currently on the docket I've got Demon's Crest, Paper Mario 64, Subahibi, Drakengard 3, Nine Sols, and Captain Wayne (All of these I've played a bit but haven't finished). You can suggest other games to me on Discord or in the comments if you want to, but no guarantee that I'll get through them.

That's all I want to say for now. See ya, space cowboy...

Another Update

Hello there. I'm supposed to be waking up in around 6 hours from now to make it to a doctor's appointment, but why not waste this precious little time I have on writing a new post? You people of the future will certainly appreciate having more words to read on the screen, right?

As for why... Zephyr made a post on the DT blog today and that sheer fact inspired me to make a post of my own, as a tester and as a dev.

Mostly, I want to make this post to highlight some changes I've made to my plans so far. Ideas are cheap, and I'm going through a lot of them because I want CQ0 to be my final freeware game, so I want it to be perfect. Although, I've always been quite the perfectionist, so I dunno, maybe that's just my modus operandi.

Recently, I saw a video I was quite inspired by, (made by one of my favorite YouTubers btw, Mark's quite based), which made me realize many of the mechanics I'd planned for the game were extraneous (such as a full-body parry that didn't do much other than a guaranteed-hit counter-attack, and like, 6 different types of collectibles that served little purpose).

So, I'll be stripping most of that back, and focusing more on core ideas like positioning, learning how to dodge attacks, and having a 2-button combat system (maybe 3, but definitely not 4). That doesn't mean I'll be stripping away the depth, though.

Most of all, I want to make hard bossfights. The way I'm planning it, the difficulty will absolutely brush up against DT4's, but I promise not to make anything absurd. It will, absolutely, be easier than DT4. If I ever make something of around the same difficulty, or harder, then I've fully gone off the deep end and I may never return from the abyss.

I've been obsessed with difficulty recently. Which is understandable, as I've just finished a 30 hour boss grind in DT4 a few days ago. This game is making me lose my grip on reality, bit by bit, but it's fun. I still stand by what I said in the previous post. Nothing even comes close to the design of that game. It's fucking painful, but it's also utterly incredible.

Really, I only had two things to say about the game here, huh? I guess you can consider this a TL;DR: I'm stripping away a lot of the more extraneous stuff I discussed last time (and some things I hadn't mentioned), and the game's gonna be harder than I was previously planning. Well, okay, I'll go into a little more detail.

As far as work on it goes, there's a team project I'm a part of that will be releasing on the 27th, and after a much-needed break, renex and I are gonna work on the new engine, and this game will follow with that.

(27/12/25 Edit: It released!)

With the speed at which I can make things, I'm expecting this game to take a few years from now for it to release. Take that with a grain of salt, but I will definitely be giving at least a few updates a year. I don't wanna pull a Team Cherry, but I also don't want to fall to the trap Woolie showed us all those years ago. Although, I think CQ0 is quite safe, as it recontextualizes the source material enough that lawyers probably wouldn't care.

I will say with 100% certainty that it will release after DT4. This means that you, dear reader, will be able to feel my pain before this game becomes playable. I recommend you feel my pain.

Apologies for the somewhat unnecessary yapping, by the way. As the quote goes: If time didn't exist, I would've written a shorter letter.

Now I need to go to sleep, or else I'm gonna wake up in a worse state than if I pull an all-nighter. It's in 5 hours now. Good night, and see ya, space cowboy...

Little Update

Heyo. I've been working on this game in the background, but obviously other things have taken priority. Here's what I've got.

So far in terms of progress, I've got most of the music picks, about 30% of the plot (mostly the important scenes), and I have a project file with most of the main movement mechanics. I also have most of the animations for the main character, Roger.

Lastly, I've also got most of the equipment & collectibles planned (because obviously this game needs collectibles). 

I've been debating whether or not I should wait until this fabled engine is done (we haven't even started on it yet), or if I should just continue on the 'mechanics testing' project I have right now. I'm not sure, though I'm honestly leaning on the former, even though I've written a lot of code already.

For designing this game, I've been taking some inspiration from games like Silksong and Nine Sols, but mainly Distorted Travesty 4 (3 aswell, to an extent).

DT4 is, in my opinion, the most intricately-designed 2D platformer I've seen, but it's also like, the hardest game ever made (and I'm not even on the halfway mark).

CQ0 definitely won't be as disgustingly difficult as DT4, but you can expect a level of difficulty comparable to- and likely a fair bit higher than- Silksong. I'm a sicko, okay? I make games for sickos.

I like hard games, when they're mechanically complex. Which this game definitely also will be. I want to make it a game where you HAVE to use your entire set of abilities to actually succeed.

I won't reveal any real details yet, mostly because while I am confident in my current plans & design for the game, I'm well aware plans can (and do) change  There's a decently good chance I completely change some mechanics that I consider to be completely core to the game down the line.

With all that said... I have run out of interesting things to talk about. Really this was more of a "yeah I didn't forget about this game" post. See ya, space cowboy... 

Eight Years

Hey there. I'm SquareDork, but I mostly go by Square now. Been a while. Most likely anyone who read this blog back in 2017 is long gone, same with readers from 2021 / 2022, but if you ARE a returning reader, welcome back!

 

Unlike the me of 2021 / early 2022, and the me of late 2022 who hid the newer posts out of shame, I celebrate my past, and I will happily keep this piece of my game dev history close to me, mistakes and all. Suffice to say, I've grown a lot since then, both as a person and as a developer.

 

So, why did I suddenly decide to revive this, yet again, after so many years?

 

Well, nostalgia, mainly. To this day, I'm still fond of Roger, Mr. Skelly, Sergeant Razor, etc. All these characters I created for this game hold a special place in my heart.

 

It also feels cathartic to me to finally work on actually finishing this one thing I made when I was 13, but reshaped, reassembled, and recontextualized. Well, it'll still be called Cereal Quest 0, as that's a pretty cool name, but still.

 

This project has been the one singular through-line I've had for my entire game dev journey. I've forgotten about it for years, neglected it, revived it, cancelled it, but it's somehow held on, in some form or another. It's followed me through some pretty pivotal moments of my life.

 

Gosh, I could go on and on about what went on with me and this project these past 3 years- so much has happened- but I won't stuff your face with more details. I'll only talk about that if people truly wish to see it. It's quite a long and protracted tale.

 

So, finally, we get to my current plan. I will finish the IWBTG fangames I have going on right now, and then get to work on a new engine with my friend renex (you might know him if you're in certain Game Maker circles) which will directly lead into this game.

 

In short, I got nothing to show until like, next year. But do trust me that I am determined to see this through.

Final Monthly Update - Except it's not the end, don't worry.

Hey. Technically, I've done things over the course of may. Not many things, but some, for sure.

I started work on the actual game, and I've done pretty much the entire intro to the game, although not the first area. That was at the beginning of the month. I spent most of may doing nothing tangible. Just thinking about things and myself. 

I will say, if you think "thinking about things and myself" counts under "waste of time", unequivocally, you ought to fuck off from here, and never return. I don't want people like you to ever come near me.

Fun fact, I actually had a first draft for this post, in which I went on like a 1000 word tirade about what I just said there in the last paragraph, but way more violent and very long-winded. But it goes to show how passionate I am about that subject. I will not tolerate people who believe that personal growth is a waste of time.

I definitely did not spend my time wisely however, and I used up many potential work hours on vapid shit like going on YouTube for 12 hours, or scrolling through Twitter, or mas-- you get the idea. I will say, I did spend a lot of time pondering about the game, and about questions related to myself, and my friend groups. I think that time was well-spent, because it got me to the point I am at now, where I'm confident enough to actually do the things I like doing, that require effort. 

...As for an update about the fuckin' game which isn't somewhat of a nothingburger, well, I've decided I'm gonna stop making these each month, and instead do them when I add features to the game, or just send some sneak peeks of stuff. Speaking of which...

Yeah, here's three sneak peeks. That's the title screen, the file select screen, and when you first gain control of the protagonist.

My biggest flex here is that there's only four assets here that I didn't draw myself. The fonts, of course, the spike on the file select screen (that's a default from the YoYoYo GMS2 engine), the BACKGROUND of the file select screen, and the bed there. The last one's there for comedic purposes, because who wouldn't find the fuckin' default Terraria bed not funny.

Anyway, yeah, apart from those, I drew everything myself. :3

If you can't tell, I'm incredibly proud. Even if some of these assets kinda suck.

That's about it, for now. I want to keep my cards close to my chest here.

Monthly Update #3 - I did some things.

Hey, what's up. I'm making the game. But I'm also not. Most of the time I'm not. I think I could come up with excuses all day, but none would really match "I didn't feel like working on the game" in terms of accuracy.

I wouldn't say I've completely given up, moreso that I decided to start this project at a really weird time for me, a time when I'm not exactly sure what I want to do, or what I'm supposed to do. I've been kind of confused these past few months. I've had a lot of conflicting opinions about a lot of things, and have met with a lot of dead ends in my quest to find the truths about myself. I haven't really come up with a solid answer yet.

At the very least, I don't think I find working on the game to be unenjoyable. In fact, I always come out feeling "that was fun" whenever I decide to work on it. The main problem is that starting work on it means I'll have to, well, work. I think on some level my brain just wants a break from everything.

Nothing I can really say about the game, other than I implemented some features, and they work. I'll figure things out.

See you soon, space cowboys . . .

Monthly Update #2 - Oops I Wasted All My Time

Heya there. Well, technically I didn't actually waste that much time, because I did woork on a lot of things, but I spent most-ish of march not doing much significant progress on the game. 

I did do part of the tileset for the first area, and I've also done some kinda quality of life things like fixing the vines, making the saves work better, and I've also finished up the title screen. Okay, nevermind, I did quite a bit of things. But not really enough to justify the month spent on them. 

I'm going to college, but it's kind of an online-course-but-you-get-a-degree thing, so it's not too difficult, nor eating up my time, so my main excuse is really just anxiety and general not-feeling like working on the game. 

Don't get me wrong, it's fun, but for some reason I can't seem to consistently convince myself to put effort into it when there's a very slight amount of pressure on me. It's weird. I'm trying to work on fixing that, too. I know for a fact this is a motivation problem, because whenever I do actually work on the game, I find it a little frustrating, but fun

I've been planning the bossfights though, and have kind of arrived at a finished music list and list of ideas for the game.

That's about all the game progress I can remember off the top of my head, so I'd have to check on the project to see if there was something I missed.

I don't have a demo ready. At all.

Not much to say today, huh? Well, see you next time, I suppose.

Monthly Update #1 - I Arbitrarily Decided To Start Making Monthly Updates

Hey there! I've been kinda steadily working on this game thus far. I'm using the YoYoYo GMS2 engine and its physics as the main platforming physics, along with some of my own additions, including a grounded dash and an air dash.

I've got basically everything planned out, with the exception of enemies, boss gameplay design, and level layout. I'm intentionally leaving the first and third ones for me to do when I make the levels themselves, but boss design is simply something I just haven't gotten to yet.

I've got some pretty ambitious plans, with the entire game being around 30 hours to complete in full, by my estimates. Though, it could end up being way shorter, as usually happens with my works. There'll be 25 areas, of very varying lengths and difficulties, and 23 unique bosses.

In terms of the game itself, I've been mainly learning the engine, and doing small tweaks on things, along with implementing a lot of features. The core gameplay should be worked on enough that I'll be able to start making levels soon, but there are quite a few features I haven't implemented yet, such as cutscenes, text box coloring, various enemy types, and so on.

But, man, this engine is clunky when it wants to be. For my next project I'll definitely get a more up-to-date engine.

And that's about it, really. By next month I should probably have a minimum viable product or the demo ready.

Major changes to the game's plan

After remembering this game exists, and going through the game files, I have decided it's mostly unsalvageable. If you, for some unknown reason, want to check out the original, somewhat unplayable game, here's the download links:

1. https://litter.catbox.moe/orlnvc.rar

2. https://litter.catbox.moe/51ns42.rar

3. https://litter.catbox.moe/7ggz2s.rar

4. https://litter.catbox.moe/am6zbe.rar

5. https://litter.catbox.moe/ha8kb0.rar

And the original file names, as you kinda need those for the .rar files to work:

Cereal Quest.part1.rar

Cereal Quest.part2.rar

Cereal Quest.part3.rar

Cereal Quest.part4.rar

Cereal Quest.part5.rar

With that out of the way, let's get on with what I actually want to say. I'm going to switch to Game Maker Studio 1.4, and make a metroidvania-type game with the I Wanna Be The Guy engine. Yes, you heard that right, and yes, I have gone insane.

A friend of mine told me yesterday that the IWBTG engine is actually rather powerful, and that it would probably be feasible to make a metroidvania-style game in it. I took that as a sort of challenge, and began work on Cereal Quest 0. So far, I've got a logo, and a couple of ideas.

Beautiful, isn't it? I think it's a great riff on Yakuza 0. I don't really have much else to show, other than this. I'll be keeping you posted on my progress, though.

See you next time, space cowboys!

It's been a while, hasn't it?

Just to note, this ain't an update post. I don't have anything I could really remotely call serviceable. I've got a lot to do before I can come out with something cool.

I was reminded of this game a few months ago, when my internet died out for a day, and I decided to check out the stuff on the deep recesses of my HDD. Turns out, I still had the game files. Utterly intact. The funny part is, this is also the ONLY RPG Maker game I had from back then that wasn't in a half-broken state.

So I decided to continue the game. Possibly just because I like making games, despite having no idea how to make them. To that end, RPG Maker is the greatest tool.

I'm a vastly different person than who I was back in late 2016 to early 2017. A lot can happen in 4 years. Back then, I basically had no fucking clue how to function in society, but now I'm way more mature, and able to see/do things better. It's almost a little difficult to comprehend, because back then I was just a younglin who did things pretty much without thinking.

It's been a really bumpy road to get to here, but I'm glad I went through all that, because now I've come out the other side a far better person. I won't go too much into the specifics, because I doubt many of you will give a shit about that.

One thing I've got to thank past me for doing though, was noticing that tumblr sucked, and making a blogspot blog instead. Because of that, now I don't need to make a new blog, and I can just continue from this one. And now I've got all this... admittedly lame history here. But it's still history.

Even after all these years, I still remember Docdic, Goodle, Ninten45, all those cool people. I don't think they'll ever truly go away from my memory. If any of you 3 are reading, it would be pretty cool to get back in contact to see how life's been doin' ya.

I've also done some searching, and I now realize I might be the only BBQ Quest-like dev from the old days who's still dedicated to making their game. Or maybe there is someone else out there, but I just haven't heard of them. Haven't been able to find anyone who's been active since at least 2017.

Okay, now onto actual game-related stuff.

So, I've been mostly just revamping everything these past few months, been organizing things, balancing things out, etc etc. I've been working kinda on-and-off on it so I don't have much to show.

I think I'll also redo the battle sprites, and a large amount of stuff you do in the game. I won't touch the overworld sprites, though. I think those have a nice charm to them.

I'll probably also fix up the battle system, making it require more thought than "click attack a bunch of times". I think one of my better ideas on that end was to make it so you can time your attacks with the animations to do more damage. Of course, I still haven't implemented this, but baby steps. I still got no fuckin' clue how to code, so actually doing that might take a while.

Either way, that idea's nice because then I don't have to do the stupid RPG shit of making you uber-rely on your skills to do good damage and just leaving the normal attack in the dirt. Though, to make it so you don't leave your skills in the dirt either, I'll probably make it so skills do pretty consistent powerful damage, but you kinda need to have your MP on life support to actually use them more than like 2 times. The upside is that MP-restoring items will be pretty cheap, so you can (literally) afford a kind of skills-only playthrough. I want it so there are pretty much 3 valid playstyles for combat: attack-only, attack-skill hybrid, skill-only. Most people will probably go with attack-only or attack-skill hybrid, but I do want to at least make skill-only a viable strategy, if it can't be fully balanced.

I dunno, that sounds okay to me, but in the end we'll just have to see if I can implement it right. I may have to change things if this is too ambitious for my skill level.

Another thing, the balance of the game in its current state is horrendous, so I'll be improving that aswell. Probably not now though.

Oh, and before it's mentioned to me, I know the link to the demo doesn't work. I don't really care, the demo sucked ass anyways.

I think that's about all I have to say for now. I'm glad I re-discovered this game, and decided to continue it.

See you next time, space cowboys!