Three months of laborious development later, I had identified a semblance of a prototype after a long pause on this project, and I had been racking my brains.

Starting from zero knowledge in video games, the progression was dazzling over the first two months before getting bogged down in infinite difficulties... The fact that I let go of the development of the mobile version unblocked many things, and that's good!

At this stage we are mainly focused on moving forward with the project. Accumulate the bricks to make the building go up. It's the fact of seeing it grow that creates a certain momentum, a certain envy that makes us overcome the obstacles! On the other hand, knowing how to build solid foundations for the future is just as important but less motivating. Taking a step back from work on the maintainability of your code, the perf or the coherence of the structure of the project by thinking on the long term, you have to draw on another kind of energy to work on it.

What has been added in the meantime? A lot of things and yet it's not very impressive on the screen... but how laborious it is to implement! All the mechanics of RPG first of all. Having a small tutorial part that allows the player to enter the game progressively. Introduce the mini games that will act as drawing mechanics for the player, separate the creation phases for the designer: finding ideas, drawing, and making products! Those have not been developed at all ^^'

I cut the prototype in three parts, the first one in the central hub of the game where we discover little by little the main activity of the player who embodies an artist, that is to say the creation in order to participate in a big festival. The second one is the exploration of the world to gather new skills or allies, you have to use your drawing powers to alter the course of things and unblock situations in the manner of an Okami. The third one, with its humorous tone, immerses the player in cinematic and improbable fights against unlikely rivals. 

This part of the code makes me a little more unhappy. I feel like I'm crashing on every step of the stairs, reinventing the wheel at every turn. The amount of microscopic tasks that are necessary to developr an enjoyable playing experience is discouraging! I would have hoped for the guidance of an expert hand, but failing that... you had to fight in the storm for every step forward, and that was the fate of the one who decided to trace it by himself. 
What are the links between the bricks that are placed here and there, what are the responsibilities of this one? What will the building that we build look like, what would we want, what are we capable of... oulala, the headache comes to me. That's why I always work in waves, to give me time to go and get some fresh air at times!

But the most complicated part was the setting up of scripted events, the cutscenes that must be able to be triggered at any time. At the end of a dialog, when you go through a door on a certain day in the game, when you retrieve an object, following a tutorial. What really got into my head was trying to manage the player's progress in the course of the game. How to elegantly track the fact that the player has spoken to this NPCwhile having passed this door. Trigger a cinematic in these conditions, or prevent him from going to this place until he has recovered such and such an object... The situations to be taken into account are numerous.

The core gameplay must also be imagined. You have to be able to put yourself in the player's shoes to guess what actions and decisions can make him feel fun. This phase is still very fuzzy at this stage of prototyping.
There are two points to keep in mind though: succeed in creating unique situations for each player with an addition of random events per game, as well as a drawing mechanism at the heart of the game to stand out from other projects.

Anyway, it's time to freeze the development a bit. I released the proto as is, always having the impression to push back the release date to the holy glin glin, indeed the more features are added, the more we feel obliged to grow the proto exponentially, the features are calling the bugs by pack of 10.