Hello human beings! This is PlayerXT and this is...

◇ Day 44 of Demo 4 production ◇

And today I decided to bring to life an idea that's been swirling in my head for months (or maybe years), an idea that will completely change the meaning of the game... and maybe life... an idea so spectacular that...

A shop...

Yeah...

I'm going to make a shop... Yay!

Okay, while testing the game for the 100937th time, I realized something very funny, the game's collectibles are... completely useless!!

(And when I say funny, I mean desperate...)

Sooooo, a shop would be the perfect opportunity to add some utility to those cubes that are cluttering the level, besides being the perfect opportunity for me to pay for food and finally have a simpler way to increase my maximum energy...

(Did anyone know you can increase Willy's energy limit by eating fruit? Anyone... Yeah, adding it to the list, invest in more tutorials)

So, the entrance to the shop would be located on the second island of Hubworld 1 and there you could spend your precious collectibles on things you'll probably leave aside later or consume...

(Yeah, welcome to capitalism...)

Okay, before anything else, I'll start by checking Hubworld to see where I could put an entrance to a shop...

[2 hours of checking and definitely no stopping to play some random game]

Ha! Found it! The shop will be...

At the top of the mountain on the second island!!!

...

(This was definitely a completely professional choice and not an idea influenced by the wooden cabins on snow-covered mountaintops that appear in almost every movie...)

Okay, location chosen, time to do the main part, the shop itself, which means it's time to spend hours drawing sprites and preparing the aesthetics of everything... yay!

[Imagine a super happy montage of me drawing over a million sprites]

And done! For the floors and background I decided to follow something similar to the sprites of the main Hub, but unlike those that look like a type of purple earth, the ones in the shop are more geared towards some kind of ancient construction, like a medieval castle, of course following the purple color palette connecting to the Hubworld style.

With the sprites ready, I started developing the area. Now, shhh, I'm going to tell you a secret you can't tell anyone...

I copied the background from Space Avenue...

Yeah, but to make it different, I added a more cyan-green color, and voila!

And this is even a lesson for you who are starting out in game development: there's no shame in using repeated assets. After all, not everyone has the bank account of those big companies out there, right? And also, research says that only 9% of players will notice these details, source? My intellect, obviously!

Now that the background is organized and the sprites are done, it's time for...

LEVEL DESIGN...

(LEVEL DESIGN...)

(Level design...)

And as I was watching a gameplay of Assassin's Creed Shadows (yes, watching gameplay, unfortunately my PC can't render the beautiful leaves of that game) I got the idea to build some kind of floating temple... how does that connect with the Ubisoft game? I don't know! I just let the ideas flow, I don't question them.

So, I started building the temple where the shop would be, the small islands around it that would serve as a path for Willy to reach the shop, and I even made small sections outside that the player could explore to collect items, and everything was ready... only the shop part was missing... how beautiful...

Then came the question: who would own the shop? Without really knowing what to do, I started drawing a random character, and before I knew it, I was creating a whole lore about him and how he connects to Willy's subconscious...

And what's his name?

Well... he's the owner... of the shop...

(I'm feeling very inspired today...)

So, I made the final adjustments, created an animation, and the shop already had an owner! Now all that was missing were the products, and...

I'll leave that for tomorrow! After all, based on my years of experience/suffering, I foresee myself writing several "CODES" and testing the game more than a million times, and since I want to preserve what little remains of my inner brain for today...