Leonard Somero's Magical Arcade!

[verysoftwares]

Leonard Somero's Magical Arcade! is a compilation of 20 hand-picked verysoftwares games made with LÖVE and TIC-80.

The games are presented in a 3D hub world that is modeled after the creator's apartment. There you can search for diskettes, log in on the apartment's computer, and install/play the games.

The games have shared Magic Points (MP). You get MP by playing the games and completing certain achievements in them. MP allows you to unlock new games, as the diskettes that you find have installation costs.

There is also an overarching plot that revolves around the characters Leonard, Maitreya, and Tuomas. More on those later.

Timeline

May 2023: Original concept by Casey Al-Kaisy at the Nordic Game conference in Malmö, Sweden
June 2023: First prototype demonstrated at the Vectorama event in Oulu, Finland
January/February 2024: Work on the 3D engine in LÖVE
December 2024: Locking in on the game's story
6th January 2025: End of pre-production and start of full-time production
Late 2025: Early access
Early to mid 2026: Full release

The game will be available on Steam for 20 euros. The Steam page is coming soon, it's just currently stuck in the gears of bureaucracy.

[verysoftwares]

January 6th has passed, we need to move Scylla.(*)



(*) Scylla can not be explained at this time.

[verysoftwares]

Results of today's tinkering. Featuring footage from all 5 games available in Season 1, as well as the title screen theme (milkyheart - lennu levitates).

Facts about this game

• The game's larger narrative is split into 4 seasons. The early access build will end at the cliffhanger ending of Season 3.

• Season 1 starts with 5 games to unlock: Slick Slices, Multiple Maze, Bug Castle, psy-ball, and Momentum. Season 2 adds a whopping 10 more games, and Season 3 further adds 5.

• Music is made by https://milkyhe.art/

[verysoftwares]

Current status: can display arbitrary textures on the computer screen. Now it's possible to play a game and have it show up at the apartment's computer! It's exciting.

So now I have to port the games to this method of rendering. I already have 7 out of 20 games that were successfully rendered inside a 2D hub world back when this game didn't have a 3D engine yet. It takes a bit of time, I have to sort through old codebases and fix global variables clashing and old versions of the LÖVE API being used and whatnot. It's not an impossible feat to have 20 games in one, but it does take some careful planning and proper execution.

[verysoftwares]

First look at character UI! Makes this game look more like an RPG dontcha think?

Leonard and Maitreya are the two characters you start with.

Leonard is a physicist who speaks in English. He is very matter-of-fact in his conduct, and prefers to make observations rather than participate in activities. But he'll gladly play whatever game you feed him, I think he's just plain addicted to video games.

Maitreya is a 'nihilistic Buddhist', whatever that means. They're kind of a mentor figure to Leonard. The two have this weird way of communicating where Maitreya speaks in Finnish and Leonard responds in English. Maitreya is seen in FMV cutscenes at the real-world apartment.

Tuomas is a character introduced in Season 2, he's very skilled at both MP farming and chess. Tuomas and Maitreya have a thing for each other, oh yeah this game is gonna get rather gay. Tuomas is also seen in FMVs and he's acted by my real-life boyfriend Antti.

[verysoftwares]

This isn't strictly speaking progress, but I went back to the roots of the 3D engine I made for this project. Hi-res images available on my Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/leonard-somero ... 6yjn6fyc25

[verysoftwares]

My business partner's Steamworks account has finally completed the verification process, so we can now start working on a Steam page. This is a major push forward for us, as Steam wishlists form the backbone of marketing a commercial game.

So I've been filling up the necessary forms, nothing exciting to show, except for the results of Steamworks' "Tag Wizard" which seem to give an existential justification for the game:

[verysoftwares]

A big bulk of the work on this game is writing reactive scripts that activate once you hit certain triggers in the games you play. It's kind of like scripting an interactive Let's Play and feels exciting and new, my interest is certainly piqued by the large possibility space.

There's gonna be a whole load of sweet content, so much so that I worry about file sizes. .ogg and .ogv format files aren't all that cheap to store when you have thousands of them. But I sure am glad I'm using LÖVE, where the actual problem of playing those files in-game has been solved for me!

[verysoftwares]

Week 12 of 2025 begins today, I'm switching up gears for this project. On Week 12, I'll be implementing a scene switcher (internally called 'demomode' which is a fun syllable palindrome kinda word).

And on Week 13, I'll film some of the FMVs I've scripted. Since that doesn't take up all week, I'll also take a look at making a (mini-)trailer for the game's Steam page... I gotta consider what footage I can use as promotional material all the way through development.