blur_5
TMF Novice
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2006
- Messages
- 60
- Points
- 18
Long story short, in 2008, when only cool people used the internet, I started making a Flash game called Julie The Tickler. It took me two years to finish and publish it. It got some fans back in the day. One of the walkthrough videos got almost 2M views, so that's cool.
For a few years, I was torn between adding more levels to the game, giving the characters different outfits, adding voices to them, or just making a second game. When I started planning the second game, it was announced that Flash would be discontinued and HTML5 would replace it. But HTML5 wasn't even close to what Flash could do. I attempted to translate the game to HTML5, but it would take a lot of time, and the tools weren't yet ready to provide the same experience.
So I let that rest for a few years until technology caught up. When it did, it was a matter of making time and budget. Then AI came. I know, everybody has an opinion about AI-generated art and code. I know, I've been working with AI since 2019 and full-time since 2022. I know it's controversial. But now that I'm close to my 50s, my mind isn't as sharp as it used to be for coding, and my hands aren't as good at drawing, so AI has been helpful to me with several everyday tasks at work and in life in general. At the beginning of 2025, I felt that I had what I needed to revisit the idea of making another game.
If you have seen some of the previews you will notice that the style of the art has been evolving, the first iterations were closer to the original art (I even trained a model with my 18 year old assets), and now I'm really close to what I want to see.
For a time, I wasn't sure about the gameplay and the rendering. Would it be 3D, pre-rendered 3D, 2D armature, or 2D sequence? I did several tests.
You can see some of the tests compiled in this video clip.
So, I settled for pre-rendered 2D sequences, with 3D-like rendered cinematics.
This is a demo of how the gameplay will look.
And this is the draft of the trailer.
The logo is still a WIP as well (everything is WIP) but the name is JULIE 2: THE MANSION OF SECRETS
There is still a lot of work to do, but I trust that I'll have it out this year.
For a few years, I was torn between adding more levels to the game, giving the characters different outfits, adding voices to them, or just making a second game. When I started planning the second game, it was announced that Flash would be discontinued and HTML5 would replace it. But HTML5 wasn't even close to what Flash could do. I attempted to translate the game to HTML5, but it would take a lot of time, and the tools weren't yet ready to provide the same experience.
So I let that rest for a few years until technology caught up. When it did, it was a matter of making time and budget. Then AI came. I know, everybody has an opinion about AI-generated art and code. I know, I've been working with AI since 2019 and full-time since 2022. I know it's controversial. But now that I'm close to my 50s, my mind isn't as sharp as it used to be for coding, and my hands aren't as good at drawing, so AI has been helpful to me with several everyday tasks at work and in life in general. At the beginning of 2025, I felt that I had what I needed to revisit the idea of making another game.
If you have seen some of the previews you will notice that the style of the art has been evolving, the first iterations were closer to the original art (I even trained a model with my 18 year old assets), and now I'm really close to what I want to see.
For a time, I wasn't sure about the gameplay and the rendering. Would it be 3D, pre-rendered 3D, 2D armature, or 2D sequence? I did several tests.
You can see some of the tests compiled in this video clip.
So, I settled for pre-rendered 2D sequences, with 3D-like rendered cinematics.
This is a demo of how the gameplay will look.
And this is the draft of the trailer.
The logo is still a WIP as well (everything is WIP) but the name is JULIE 2: THE MANSION OF SECRETS
There is still a lot of work to do, but I trust that I'll have it out this year.
