Released: July 2011
My first game, released on Scratch the same day I made my account. Though the story and combat could've been better, people liked the 3D backgrounds. At the time it was pretty unique for a Scratch game. There were a few RPG-style games, but they featured turn-based combat. I chose real-time for my game. Back then, Scratch had a limit of 10 megabytes per project, so I had to link to a Dropbox download of the full game. Ah, those were the days.
RIGHT ON TARGET
Released: July 2011
This game was going to be my follow up to Generation Quest, and I did actually release it on Scratch, but I removed it almost immediately, because there just wasn't much there. I hadn't yet realized that LockedOn was all about story-driven games, and that anything else wouldn't fit. I figured that out a little later, as you will see.
Basically, Right on Target was just a target practice game that involved zero skill, with iLife music, so nobody's missing anything. You can find it on my Scratch test account.
Released: August 2011
This is the series that I am mostly known for. People seemed to really like this first installment, I think because, with the fog, and the unique designs, it stood out despite not having much of a plot.
Looking back on it, I wish I'd animated it a bit more thoroughly, but to be fair, animating in Scratch has never been very easy.
Released: December 2011
I rushed to get TEWP2 out before the end of the year, and I was able to do so! Animating is hard already, but animating in Scratch, especially back then, was clunky and difficult.
Like Generation Quest, I had to share the full version offline via a Dropbox link, but a fellow Scratcher actually compressed the heck out of it and managed to share it on Scratch for me.
The fight between Oliver and Arrdo was a little stiff, but at least it had some environmental damage, (always a good thing for a fight scene to have). I was also adding more to the story.
Released: December 2011
I was very productive the first year. The 1.7 version of Generation Quest updated the backgrounds significantly. I may have spent only three days in total making those new backgrounds, but the impact it had on the style of the game was immense.
This quickly became the most popular version of Generation Quest.
Released: December 2012
A full year after the last part, TEWP3 was released. This introduced some new characters to TEW: Watch and Namo.
Scratch's limitations in terms of storytelling became too great. I was tired of trying to animate in a program that wasn't designed for it. I knew I had to switch to a different platform.
I went back and edited the original project in 2016, finally adding Watch's new design.
Released: December 2013
For the first time, I went off of Scratch to create a special comic for The Evolving World!
I was able to tell a longer story in comic form, and was able to add some depth to the world a little more. This resulted in two other comics, and originally I planned to tell other prequel stories in comic form as well.
Released: January 2014
It might seem like 2013 was a little sparse, but actually, there were no new games or animations in 2013, just revisions to Generation Quest and The Evolving World. I also worked on TEWP4 and setting up my YouTube page. Of course, this was back when my updates used to be much more frequent, so those took time out of my schedule too.
Pageturner was my best looking game to date, and had a cool mystery element that added a touch of atmosphere that my other projects lacked.
Released: March 2015
Back in 2014, not only did I have a ton of side projects, but TEWP4 and GQ2.0 took up a lot of time.
Finally I released something in 2015: Another issue of the TEW comic, to help people deal with the fact that TEWP4 wasn't out yet.
The issue showed more organizations, and introduced new characters. I also released Nihility's origin story as a bonus at the same exact time.
Released: September 2015
My longest game yet, Pageturner 2 took place in a mansion and had a more complex plot than the first game. It was very well received, (despite some confusion over the puzzles), and I'm proud of how it turned out.
It had a more sophisticated story, more puzzles, and a lot more characters, and was a pretty big step forward in terms of quality.
Released: April 2016
After three long, intense months of grueling effort to finally complete it, I released The Evolving World Part 4. Mostly, I was just glad to be done with it. The project had taken much longer than I'd thought, and I'd split it into two. My intention was to wrap up the story, but unfortunately I didn't quite pull it off and the result was ambitious, and interesting, but it didn't live up to what it could have been.
Released: September 2016
I spent all of August locked away, completing the final entry in the Pageturner series... A comic called Something Other.
The comic had a unique gimmick, with two stories packed into the same volume, except that one was upside-down, on the "back" of the first story.
Released: September 2016
The long-awaited update to Generation Quest, that had been in the works for a full year and a half!
Updating every single sprite with new vector graphics, gameplay, music, sound effects and cutscenes was a lot of work, but the game was finally what I'd wanted it to be five years earlier, when I first released it on Scratch.
I'm glad I took the time to complete 2.0, it gives me a very nostalgic feeling.
Released: November 2017
More than a full year later, I released my quirky visual novel Broken Minds. Broken Minds was the first game of mine that was intended for older audiences.
The game took two years to develop. I started production on September 30th, 2015.
It was the first game of mine that is not free to play, though it does have a free demo version.
I think Broken Minds represents a big shift in tone and direction. I was able to embrace the parts of my artistic sensibilities that leaned more towards the weird and dark. That was established further in the two accompanying light novels.
Released: December 2018
Initially planned as a special project for Halloween, Little Yaga was released on Solstice instead. The project took three months to create, despite being a fairly short game, due to the amount of coding involved in creating the puzzles.
It took a little while to catch on, but after being featured, it got a lot of attention.
Released: March 2019
Finished in 13 days, Prison of Lies was created for NaNoRenO, a marathon where you make a visual novel using the game engine Ren'Py in under a month. Once I came up with the premise, it formed very quickly. The project was designed to take as little time as possible to put together — only five characters and one location.
I hadn't completed a project that quickly since my first year of creating LockedOn projects.
Released: April 2020
Finished in ten months, Methods seemed to come out of nowhere — but the project had been around since 2014, just as a novel I was writing and not a visual novel.
Methods was a long, very ambitious project, but broken down into achievable goals. It was the first time I committed to releasing weekly builds of a game, which helped motivate me.
Released: November 2020
Pageturner 3 was finally released three years after it was announced, after about five months of work. It's the last game I'll release on Scratch. The game upped the quality to the highest levels I could manage with Scratch.
Each background was specially prepared so that it wouldn't get pixelated when in fullscreen, allowing all the details to be shown.
The character sprites were more detailed, the UI more complex, with a unique brush stroke look, and it was full of little animated touches. And there was finally a save feature, so people didn't have to replay the full game.
Released: December 2021
Announced all the way back in 2015, after ten months of development in 2021, Catalyst Wake was released. It finally concludes the story of The Evolving World.
It was the most complex visual novel I'd made, with over 1200+ CGs, full voice acting, and dynamic music to complement the scenes. Each scene took a very long time to create, but the end result was worth the effort!
Released: July 2023
A short visual novel puzzle/mystery game I created for a game jam. I was only allowed to use one sprite, one background and 1000 words. The tight constraints helped me finish it in time, and it was fun to take a short break from my other projects.
The next slate of projects I'll be working towards completing are Methods: The Canada Files, and Broken Spirits.