Dobuki's Epic Journey

Embark on Dobuki's EPIC JOURNEY, an unconventional fusion of point-and-click adventure and RPG, guiding the lovable protagonist through three vibrant planets. Save the galaxy from Emperor Lik Wang's clutches alongside the sassy singer, Yookim. With a cartoony, Flash vector art style and whimsical humor, explore diverse locations, solve puzzles, and engage in non-linear gameplay. Experience a delightful mix of skill progression, unexpected encounters, and a captivating storyline. Prepare for a truly memorable quest where laughter and adventure await.

Developer's Notes: After years of development, I proudly present this whimsical game. Inspired by beloved adventure and RPG classics, it takes you on Dobuki's extraordinary journey across vibrant planets. With a spontaneous approach, the world grew with weird and outlandish elements, creating a unique escape. As the game expanded, challenges emerged, leading to unexpected character development and complexities. Despite doubts, I persevered, adding closure to this quirky creation. Join Dobuki's adventure, solve puzzles, and encounter dark humor in a game that defies expectations.

The beginning

This game grew out of my deep desire to produce a game that mimics some of my most beloved game genre: adventure and RPG. In particular, I would name games like Monkey Island and Phantasy Star as the main inspiration for starting this project. Previously, I have never made a game with a real storyline, so this was a first.

The story starts with Dobuki, and he lives in the countryside. Presumably, he just moved there. We don’t know anything really about Dobuki, but we know he has a bunch of friends, and there’s an old man on the hill who mentors him. As the story progresses, Dobuki explores his world and even goes on other planets.

I actually didn’t write a story, and I didn’t really have the mindset of writing one. The idea was just: Let’s create a world, in space, with weird creatures. Let’s create this wonderful world and just add any random idea I have as I go along.

This went well in the beginning. I wasn’t really sure where it was going to go, but the game grew somehow pretty big in my imagination. It was my escape at that time, and it wasn’t even done yet!

So yeah, there was no planning, no thinking ahead, just random things added on the spur of the moment.

Developing the world

I was pretty excited about creating a world. It didn’t have to have a great story, but as long as it was as weird as outlandish as possible, I was happy. I looked for some nice music for it, and that also affected how the world develop.

Now the idea became a bit more developed, but the code wasn’t very well thought out. It worked at that time, but it wasn’t meant to scale. I programmed the game the same way I was adding content: Adding random things as I thought about them.

For instance, I suddenly decided to add 3d crawling caves, so I made that. Then I thought about space travel, and just added that. This felt like the right approach, but soon it was getting more and more difficult to add things.

First of all, the compilation time grew as more things were added. Second, it became more and more difficult to look for the elements I wanted, as the number of scenes became 20, then 30, then 40…!

I was adding stuff to expand the world, but it didn’t seem that meaningful to me. Then for some reason, I decided to add some character development. I added a love interest for the main hero.

Growing in Complexity

I started to understand the idea of feature creep, and the addition of a new protagonist made it very clear. Suddenly, I couldn’t add random things anymore, because every new elements raised new questions in respect to the characters in the game.

I imagined stories around the character but at that point, adding even simple interactions became really painful.

It was pretty clear to me that I wouldn’t be able to finish this game. The game itself actually seemed to become rather silly to me, and I wondered if it would sound ridiculous to know I spent so much time building something that turns out to have so little production value.

But time passed, and I still thought about the game. I decided it needed closure, and unfortunately, you can’t just finish a game like this so easily. I had a lot of negative space to close. In an adventure game, if a player makes effort to get a particular item, then that item must be useful for something in the game.

At that point, the process of finishing the game was to list out all the item that I’ve randomly given to the player, and come up with some use for it, like a character that wanted it or some other random thing.

The Conclusion

Eventually, I had enough content to finally close the game, with a very half-ass closure. But hey, at least I had something I was satisfied to let out into the world.