Thread by @itsCruiseElroy

Five years ago today marks the release of the very first version of Annalynn, or Annalynn '16, as I like to call it! Now, with the release of the remake, I'd like to take a look back on how this character of mine has grown over the years. A thread.

For those short on time, the TL;DR version is that Annalynn's first game is the first completely independent game I ever finished, and without it, I don't know where I would be with my programming, my art, or...well, anything else!

In 2016, I was a part of the MFGG community. Plenty of people came there to make fan games of the mustachioed red plumber, and I was one of 'em.

Making games is something that's been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember, and I started programming when I was 12 and obtained a copy of GameMaker 6. I lost all of my old prototypes on my oldest computer, but needless to say what I made wasn't all that great.

Me joining MFGG marked the first time I would actually release my games, with my very first public project being a short Plants vs. Zombies clone: Toads vs. Koopas. There was only one level and it's lacking in polish, but it was still a huge step forward from what I had before.

I made a couple more fan games afterwards, but I still hadn't done anything with independent game development. Making fan games is cool, but making something that's entirely your own is something that I feel is even cooler. And on January 28th, 2016, I started doing just that.

MFGG would occasionally host game-making contests, and a new competition thread went up on that day. This type of competition required you to, at minimum, create a new engine, two new sprites, and a new music track specifically for the game to be made within 3 weeks.

Ordinarily, I would have likely made another fan game, but considering the competition already asked for so many new assets to be made, I figured I'd go all out and make something completely original for a change. With that, project "minecade" was underway.

It was around this time I regained an appreciation for arcade games from the 80's. The gameplay lives on to an extent, sure, but the audio and visual style is something that I don't see a lot of nowadays; NES-inspired indie games are far more common for 8-bit retro throughbacks.

I tried making another arcade-styled mining platformer game before in a different game-making tool, so I thought I'd try to revitalize that idea. I had the aesthetic, genre, and themes in mind, but now I needed to give it some characters.

Of all my old game concepts, I think cave games were the most common. I'm not sure what it was with mining that interested me, but the idea of an entire world below ours rich with materials seemed so damn cool to me. I have Minecraft and Spelunky to thank for getting me hooked.

As for the characters of these games...well, they're nothing special. They're all either generic overalled miners with headlamps or generic Indiana Jones-esque clones with headlamps. The only one that even had a NAME to work with was the last guy, Eric.

I started by making yet another generic miner guy for the game, but this time I stopped and thought about ways I could make him stand out more. All my previous mining characters were too bland, and I knew that this one was no different.

Inspired by Ms. Pac-Man, the first major female character in games, I decided to make the miner a girl, slim out her proportions, and give her a long ponytail to create a more interesting silhouette. And thus, after a name search, Annalynn was born!

Of course, an old arcade game isn't much without some baddies! My first thought was to make the enemies molemen, but I didn't think they fit the simplicity of the arcade aesthetic well enough, so I decided to make them snakes, instead: Randy, Handy, Candy, and Mike.

I had all of the essentials done in a week, and on February 12th, 2016, Annalynn '16 was released. It even went on to take first place in the contest! It wasn't at all a "popular" game, but I'd still call my first indie release a success.

Before this point, I went through far too many indie concepts for me to keep track of. I would follow a pattern of "design a character, form ideas about the game they'd be in, get bored of doing actual work on it, and repeat." I had ideas, yes, but they never grew or progressed.

The closest I ever got to finishing an indie game besides Annalynn was with a demo for a game called Super Scuba Force, but this was far too ambitious for me to finish. I'm glad I at least made a demo, but it was yet another idea that ultimately went nowhere.

Some game ideas never had any characters to go with them, but most did. Back then, if I didn't complete something with the character, that was it. I'd discard them and move on to the next thing. Most characters are lost to time, and I regret not holding on to them.

I think this is why Annalynn has such a special value to me. She's the first completely original character I made and actually FINISHED something with. While not everything planned for her afterwards was completed, this game motivated me to keep using her, and I'm glad I did.

This is also around the time I started taking art more seriously. I'd always been drawing my entire life, but this is when I wanted to see some actual improvement in what I drew. She stuck around as my comfort character, and it's quite interesting to see how I improved with her!

There's a couple things I might like to tweak here and there in the future, but for the most part I'm pretty happy with where I landed. I can't see myself tweaking too much more about her design at this point.

You might've also noticed I usually draw her differently than how she appears in the game! I figured tweaking her design a bit for the game would ultimately fit the arcade aesthetic better, but going forward I think I'd like to at least start working towards her "normal" design.

Also, I'm being forced by @/spark_bag to make a post about how he improved her boots. Those boots have, indeed, improved.

As for the Steam release, remaking the original game is something that's been on my mind since 2016, and with her 5th anniversary coming up, I figured it'd be a good opportunity. The game you can play now is pretty much what I wanted the original game to be from the start.

Of course, why stop with what I have for her now? I'm really looking forward to getting more updates out for this game, and there's a lot of ideas I have for what I could add. Perhaps some extra levels one day, even?

That's not to say this is the end of my plans for her as far as new games go! I'll use her again in a different project some day, but for now, I'm going to celebrate what I have and maybe take a bit of a break.

She's not my only character I have plans for, either! Though I don't have much to show for it at the minute, I'm currently drafting up game ideas for some of my other characters. Which one I start first remains to be seen, but stay tuned for more info!

As for closing thoughts, I want to sincerely thank all my friends and followers who have ever liked anything I've made with her or have ever shown genuine interest in the project. It's been one of my biggest factors in personal motivation, and it really means the world to me.

Anyways, that's enough rambling from me for now. Thank you all so much for reading through this, and I hope you look forward to what I have in store for the future! Happy Anna-versary, Annalynn!