It's a Long Story.

In the very begining , i bought a Looking Glass Portrait, an affordable naked eye hologram display that be standalone but also can be plugged to computer. As a programmer, i have a feeling to develop something to test its potential. Hence, i started a personal game jam and make a simple shoot-em up game Song of Morus about a Taoist priest girl fighting a Chinese hopping vampire. It's a classic vertically scrolling shooter game but with height layer, that both the characters can float in the air dodging bullets and obstacles. The result is impressive... on Looking Glass only. It turns out this mechanic has a strong requirement on stereopsis. A 2D screen simply can't indiciate the height position of each  objects and make the game unplayable, not even with camera shaking trick. In conculsion, the game ends up Looking Glass Portrait exclusive.

That project was done. But the characters, world setting and height layer combat mechanic interested me.

And then i found Magical Girl Game Jam. You probably can't believe it. When i was designing the protagonist Song, I didn't instantly start from a taoist priest. The original idea is "Magical girl in Hong Kong". As in the first project is hugely limited by the develop time limit plus the hardware limit, this idea is quickly twisted to "Taoist priest girl". It's unique, more stylised, and mostly importantly, it's easier for me to make it good. Therefore, I bring this "not-so-magical-girl" to that game jam. It's not a big game jam. But a smaller game jam usually has community that more likely to give constructive feedbacks to each other. 

During the development, i sent a lot of time to try understand myself. And I find out that when i try games with bullet hell, i easily give up when stuck in a classic scrolling shooter game with solidly scheduled enemies. But if it's a procedural generated roguelike game, I may send insane amount of time to replay it even if i beat the boss and unlocked content. So i follow my taste of video game, and change the original vertically scrolling shooter concept to isometric shooter roguelike concept. After one month of hard work, I finished Song of Morus: Soulful Scarlet. For me, the result is impressive:

So after this game jam, i have a decision that there will more development for this. It will be a long term project. I will send more time on Song of Morus until the resources is big enough to be a full game. And that's why I join the Devtober 2021. I plan to polish the fight system, enrich the 3d environment, and probably add some level to extend the story. 

If you like this game (or the concept in it). Please follow my account.