Category: Devlog

This is our monthly development diary, where you can read the latest updates on the project’s progress.

Last month we revealed the studio name and logo, so this month we should be revealing the project name itself, but unfortunately…

Just kidding, here is the game’s name.

Magical Girls Bureau

And the logotype..?

This month we’ve been focusing on creating our demo cast, defining their character sheets and backstories, and exploring their visual design.

We could go on for paragraphs about the process, but we’ll get straight to the point by showing you some images from the design process for Aurora, our protagonist, and Nova, our squad leader and the first magical girl we’ll meet.

Please note that this isn’t the final game’s artwork, and the designs may undergo slight changes in the future.

So that this post doesn’t go on forever – and as we know you’re dying to find out about the – we’ve decided to dedicate a whole post just to talk about them.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the game design, which has undergone the most changes this month, as we’ve decided to change the way the main mechanic is presented.

The premise has always been that you have a roster of magical girls, each with their own stats and abilities, whom you must assign to various incidents, each with their own challenges and requirements. The success or failure of these incidents depends on a calculation that determines how well-suited the magical girl is to the task.

That said, how can we make this interesting for the player? That was the question we’d been asking ourselves for some time. Having a list of incidents and assigning magical girls to them isn’t a bad idea, but we felt we could put a new spin on it.

After exploring various options, we came up with the idea of creating a planner in which we can schedule incidents throughout the week and assign a team of magical girls to them. Once everything is ready, the process will be carried out in sequence, and the result will be displayed.

On the one hand, we’ve prepared a small prototype in which we’re carrying out playability tests, and on the other, we’re developing a simplified interface to test the user experience.

We’ve shared a lot more content this month, and we still have more to tell you, so we must be making good progress!

So, what are our next steps?

Finish designing the characters and make progress on the playable prototype.

We’ll focus the rest of our efforts on the incident-related systems to validate how the agenda works.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the first images of the characters; we’d love to hear what you think of them in the Discord community.

That’s it for the October devlog, and remember,

A magical girl’s duty never ends.

This is our monthly development diary, where you can read the latest updates on the project’s progress.

We’ve been a bit absent this month because we’ve had to meet several times to make decisions.

There were many open questions that needed to be addressed, but the first one we want to share with you is the choice of the studio’s name and logo.

We are very happy with the result. We believe that it captures the essence and spirit of every team member.

Unfortunately, we still haven’t found a game’s name that feels completely right, so you’ll have to wait a little longer.

On the narrative side, with Rocío in charge, we kicked off the month by defining the main plot and the script for the demo. We are very proud of the process results, but as you can imagine, we can’t share it with you because it would be a spoiler.

Ana has been involved in every process, from the logo to the script creation. Her main task right now is writing the game design document (GDD); someone needs to create and document all the game mechanics.

Regarding the art, Luz has been heavily involved in the logo design, as well as in background experimentation.

She has also started with some character designs, although it’s still in a very early stage; we hope we can share this work with you throughout October.

Bea has been working primarily on production and management tasks, such as creating and moving sticky notes. She has made some progress on programming, but we do not consider the advances enough to showcase them.

To end with…

We’ll be attending the Barcelona Saga Game Fest as visitors!

Next weekend we will be attending the event. We don’t have a booth, but we’re really excited because the four of us will be meeting in person. And, let’s be honest, we’ll get to talk about the game to everyone.

So, what are our next steps?

To choose the game‘s name and create its logo.

It might sound like a joke, but not having it is blocking other tasks, such as creating the Steam and Kickstarter pages.

Rocío will begin writing dialogues, while Ana and Bea will handle design documentation, production and programming tasks.

The best part of the next month will be that we’ll start bringing our protagonist and our magical girls to life. We can’t wait to see Luz’s work, so we’ll share any progress as soon as it’s available!

We’ve reached the point where our tasks keep piling up, so that’s it for the September devlog, and remember,

A magical girl’s duty never ends.

Don’t forget to follow us on social media and join our Discord community to stay up to date with everything!

This is our monthly development diary, where you can read the latest updates on the project’s progress.

Last month we shared a preview of our search for a visual identity, discussed the stage of development we were at, and presented an (ugly) debug interface featuring the programming of incidents and heroines.

Our goals for August were to conclude the visual style study and finish most of the core programming, and we’re delighted to share that we’ve more than achieved them.

To reveal the new images, what better way than to use the words Luz wrote to us when she sent them?

And now, a burst of different kinds of sparkles

To which the immediate response was:

All the sparkles are fully approved

This is a selection from one of the tests we’ve been working on to define our visual identity. We’ll move on to backgrounds and other visual elements next to decide which ones work best together.

On her side, Bea has been focusing on the programming to get all the systems up and running. In the previous post, we mentioned that the narrative flow system had been implemented, but we weren’t able to show it because the necessary user interfaces (UI) hadn’t been programmed at that time.

Interfaces are now ready to be functional (though not pretty; they’re still rather ugly), allowing the game’s main loop to run from the main menu right through to the end of the game.

In addition, we’ve implemented an initial bond system where heroines unlock conversations between them using a rank system.

Before sharing with you some videos, a quick reminder:

DISCLAIMER: Neither the text, nor the backgrounds, nor the textures seen in the videos are part of the final product.

We’re sorry that the videos are in Spanish, as we are currently using the interfaces for testing. We will translate the videos into English when we release more definitive ones in the future.

So, what are our next steps?

With Rocío and Ana joining the team, it’s time to dedicate a whole month to pre-production tasks, objective definition, and production planning.

What does this mean? September will be packed with meetings aimed at answering any remaining questions about the prototype design that we want to offer you before the Kickstarter campaign.

Regarding the art, as we’ve mentioned, we need to work on the backgrounds and the consistency of all the visual elements.

In terms of the narrative, we need to delve deeper into the world-building in order to define various story elements that will be needed for the initial writing, and even needed for designing some of the gameplay mechanics.

Finally, there are several programming systems that need to know the final game design in order to be considered complete.

There’s still a lot of work to be done, so that’s it for the August devlog, and remember,

A magical girl’s duty never ends.

Don’t forget to follow us on social media and join our Discord community to stay up to date with everything!

This is our first monthly report, where you can learn about the game’s development progress in July.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we inaugurated the blog with a brief introduction marking the birth of our videogame.

In that post, we didn’t write about the current stage of the project’s development, so first we’ll provide some context on what has happened so far, and then we’ll share the latest updates.

Before July, only Bea, our programmer and game director, was actively working on the project, preparing an elevator pitch (a simple, compelling and quick speech) and a proof of concept.

She wanted to check with others whether the project made sense and, if so, recruit other developers to cover the areas she wasn’t an expert in (let’s hope you never see Bea draw).

On a friend’s referral, she got in touch with Luz, who agreed to join the project and became our lead artist.

Su trabajo durante este mes se ha centrado en buscar la identidad visual del proyecto, y aquí podéis ver algunas de las primeras pruebas. Queremos hacer justicia a la estética de las magical girls, pero dándoles un toque fresco que se aleje del anime tradicional y encaje en un juego narrativo.

In this image, we can look at various tests featuring her original character (OC) Alma. Disclaimer: this is not a character from the final game.

Some styles have been tested on a character from an existing franchise, so we’re only showing you a few glimpses of those illustrations.

Bea has been involved in a wide range of tasks, but has mainly focused on less tangible aspects such as production, finances, planning, marketing calendar…

She has also finished programming the heroines and incidents systems. At the moment, it’s in a rather ugly debug interface, designed primarily to allow the rest of the team to work on it.

ONCE AGAIN: Ugly debug UI

Bea loves naming all the systems she builds, but to be clear, what we’re looking at here is that the functionality of dispatching magical girls to assignments is fully operational.

She’s also implemented the save and load system and the sequential narrative flow system. But as these aren’t visible, we’re going to ignore them.

So, what are our next steps?

Throughout August, we’ll stick to the plan we’ve already set out, concluding the visual style study and making progress with the system programming.

In September, some changes are on the horizon, as Rocío will be joining us as our narrative profile and Ana as our all-rounder. We can’t wait to start working together and sharing our progress with you.

We expect to be able to publish these updates every two weeks, and to have even more news once the team is complete.

That’s it for July’s devlog, and remember,

A magical girl’s duty never ends.

Don’t forget to follow us on social media and join our Discord community to stay up to date with everything!