Bel’s Fanfare Summer Gamedev Recap Update
We’re back—but not exactly from vacation! It’s been a very productive summer, and we want to share with you an update of the development of Bel’s Fanfare.
Bel’s Fanfare is a game packed with details and references, and we know that many of you will appreciate everything we’re about to show you.
Keep in mind all you are going to see in this update is work in progress and placeholders, and there might be changes in the future!
June - Dialogues in Bel’s Fanfare
Despite its passive nature, dialogue constitutes a very important part of gameplay. This is even more true in Bel’s Fanfare, where every piece of story is told through its characters.
Lately, we have been implementing the first lines of dialogue in the game. The team did an outstanding job creating a dialogue system that is powerful enough to cover all the range of emotions and cinematic expression of the game. As you will see, a handful of its features are inspired by the Zelda 3D classics.
A 120 character limit per line: as an exercise of restraint, dialogue lines have to be evocative, natural, and synthesize important information. The lore of Bel’s Fanfare is quite dense and nuanced, and it’s easy to overexplain if you have the means! Therefore, we have to be very precise on what’s being said and leave to the player’s imagination what’s being left out.
Camera following the characters animations: one neat thing we observed from Majora’s Mask is that the camera sometimes follows an articulation of the character, typically the head. In our opinion, this attunes you to the energy of the character. If someone has a more energetic personality, it will be reflected on the camera movements.
Total cinematic control: any film fan will know that camera shots are incredibly powerful at conveying emotions and ideas. We also worked very, very hard on character animations and environments, so dialogues are a good oportunities to show interesting angles or details that would be otherwise easy to miss out.
These are just tiny things that are part of our dialogue system. There are many, many more details and cool features added, but it would take a lifetime to explain it!
July - Aura Encounters
Aura really doesn’t want to be cleaned.
If it becomes powerful enough, it will turn hostile at the sound of the Ukobach gong and swallow you into a realm of its own. Uh-oh, you got yourself into an Aura Encounter!
The goal of an Aura Encounter is to gather resonance. Resonance is gained by blocking resonant bullets with your shield. These have a distinct color and appearance.
As resonant bullets impact the Ukobach shield, its vibrations will disturb and destroy the Aura’s realm. Each encounter requires a different amount of resonance.
Our philosophy for Aura Encounters is to present you with a wide range of different challenges that are sweet, short, and make the most of Bel’s moveset simplicity. Like pulling blindly from a box of chocolates, there are many different flavors, and you will never know what you are going to get.
Some encounters lean more toward classic bullet hell patterns, some have a puzzle component to them, some are just… odd…
Here are some of the recent ones we have been working on.
Boomerang: A classic pattern in which bullets charge against Bel and become resonant as the move back! A beginner friendly pattern for what’s to come!
CandyLump: Reduce this giant ball to smithereens by bashing into it repeatedly. It is surprisingly satisfying to kick!
ShootingStar: Hey, we are 3D, so can use verticality. Can you survive the sky falling from above?
PulseRing: In this pattern, you can control the ring hazard coming towards Bel by banging your gong!
Spotlight: Use the spotlight following Bel to make bullets resonant and bash against them before they switch off!
So far, we have developed over 60 patterns for Bel’s Fanfare, but there are many more to come. We try to make each one with a mixture of love, surprise and tension. We hope you enjoyed this sneak peek about encounters!
August - Character Reveal: Children of the Comet
The Children of the Comet are a brand new faction joining the Chibig universe. As you already know, the lore of our games runs deep, and as new titles are released, new groups and characters keep joining the roster.
The Children of the Comet are an emergent family of mages who have only recently appeared in the Sea of Mara. Led by Barbara, they profess a peculiar kind of magic never seen before in history: Cosmic Divination.
Boastful, noisy and proud, these mages are bound to fulfill a single common objective: to protect the Cosmic Princess from the Long-Haired Comet.
None of this truly makes sense to rest of the mage families, who label the group as a cult, their magic as a hoax, and their leader as a fraud.
Now introduced, here we present Barbara’s followers: the Reptilian-folks!
These cosmic beings have more than enough confidence in themselves to put their faith in Cosmic Divination. They’re loud, outgoing, disruptive… but surprisingly friendly. Charming and transparent, they are the kind of people who are always loyal and determined.
Perhaps their biggest weakness is precisely that they are more focused on enjoying life and maintaining their physique rather than exercising their psychic mind, so… they are not exactly the most skilled magicians you will meet.
Regarding their design, we wanted them to be really charismatic and attention-grabbing in every sense: shiny holographic outfits, golden circlets with tiny glowing planets, wide smiles with pointed teeth, and very expressive faces that immediately show just how confident and cocky they are.
The Reptilian outfits are heavily inspired by the aesthetics of the 60s and 70s, particularly Barbarella, while their hairstyles take more inspiration from the futuristic vision of the 60s.
We wanted to portray a colourful, vibrant vision of the future, far from the usual sci-fi aesthetic where everything tends to revolve around whites, blacks, and grays.
We also wanted to give them a comical look. They’re a mix between humans and lizards, as a nod to the classic conspiracy about alien lizards living among us.
There has definitely been a lot of progress on Bel’s Fanfare this summer, and we hope this compilation helps make the wait until launch a little more bearable!
We’ll also be posting an update soon with the latest news on the development of Elusive, which is also moving forward in parallel.
Oh! Late Pledges are still available for those who want to support Bel’s Fanfare and get limited, exclusive items.
Our community is also growing every day as we share our passion and hobby in this space we’ve created on Discord, so don’t hesitate to join the fun!
If you’d like to support the game even more, you can add it to your Steam wishlist and subscribe to the Chibig newsletter so you don’t miss any important announcements, gain access to exclusive content, and enjoy a few other surprises.
What do you think of the new content? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!
