Kirby RPG! Stellar Saviors Devlog March 2025!

Okay, so I’ve been working on this game for about a year now. (At least in the engine I’m using now. I’ve been working on it in some form for multiple years!) Anyways, I’ve now decided to start a monthly devlog, releasing one on the last day of each month! In these devlogs, I will describe and summarize what I have accomplished that month! Since this is the first one, I’ll start by recapping my progress with the whole game!

So, I started this game in the Wolf RPG Editor engine in 2024, I think it was spring or summer when I started. I started by making the tileset for all of the basic terrains I would need, and I planned out the entire script! (The script has changed over time, but I had a finished version before I started programming) Then I made the sprite for Kirby, which took days to get right because I had to figure out what Wolf’s spritesheet format was through trial and error, so his animations would come out in the wrong order, and he would have edges cut off because he was too big. I managed to figure it out, though! Anyways, after that I started adding enemy encounters, which wasn’t too tough, since Wolf is an RPG engine, and has a battle system already implemented. Anyways, let’s hurry up with the summary here: I added the battle system and some towns, and then a boss fight, all of these things were not difficult to figure out. I also added some boulder-pushing puzzles, which were easy to program! I hope to come up with more creative puzzles later, but we start simple. Then at some point, I released a demo for the game, which is available now! There have been a few new versions, and one of the recent versions added Kirby’s iconic inhale mechanic! This is a feature where you will encounter some special enemies that have a unique ability, and if you survive their encounter for enough turns, you can inhale them and learn their abilities! This is how Kirby’s skill learning system will work, rather than learning new moves by leveling up. Anyways, I don’t need to go over everything I added to the game, I just wanted to go over the early process to make up for the lack of a devlog earlier on. Now let’s get into what I did this month!

So, I sort of took a hiatus in the last month and even a bit of January, but I got back into the swing of things this month! It took some re-coordinating to figure out where I was at in the development process, though. I didn’t add any new areas this month, but solely focused on balancing the stats, which is way more work than you would think! I had to adjust how much EXP it takes for each level-up, and how much stat-growth per level up. Then I had to play through the entire game, and replay the same areas while adjusting and testing the enemy difficulties. If the enemies are too hard, I restart that area and rebalance them, and see how balanced they are. Then I repeat that until I get everything just right! It’s a tedious effort, but it’s worth it to do that every now and then to make sure everything is good! If you finish the whole game, and the stats are all broken, it’s just gonna be an even bigger pain. So, I’m almost all the way through balancing what I have finished of the game so far! About 75% through, I would say. Anyways, that’s all for this first devlog! Hopefully I can begin working on more areas and events for the game next month! Thanks for reading! :D