11-02-26 | Visit Itch.io now to play The Secret of Dragonwelt. Yes folks, Peter Pan Comics is expanding its horizon beyond comics. We’ve made a videogame! A fantasy adventure filled with colourful characters and exciting challenges. It’s been quite a journey, which started way back in 2024. So what is The Secret of Dragonwelt all about? And how did we set about making the game? Read on, my friends!
THE STORY OF DRAGONWELT
Like so many ancient tales of magic and mysticism this one starts with a princess imprisoned in a dark and foreboding castle, guarded by a fierce dragon. Verdugo the Dragon rules the land with an iron fist, while Princess Wicca withers away in a dungeon deep within the bowls of the castle. All who attempt to rescue the princess meet with a bloody end. All except Prince Abel of Vasaria.
This stranger has taken it upon himself to rid Dragonwelt of Verdugo and the vile cultists that serve him. And so Prince Abel travels to every corner of the land to fight the cult of Verdugo and discover a way to release the princess from her shackles. Until the day he comes across Karl the bandit. For Karl is the only man in the land who knows of Prince Abel’s forbidden past … the secret of Dragonwelt.
DEVELOPING THE GAME
Prince Abel’s epic journey was originally conceived as a visual novel. Two years ago I had never heard of the format, until someone introduced me to the coding language know as Ren’Py. Visual novels are simple yet often stylish games which focus entirely on storytelling and character interaction. In Japan visual novels focussing on dating and romance are wildly popular, as are many indie horror titles.
These games are, in many ways, similar to vintage text based games from the 1980s, albeit far more sophisticated. The opportunity to write a digital Choose Your Own Adventure novel appealed to me, with stories traditionally branching off in different directions every couple of scenes. The artistic possibilities were endless! And so I started planning Prince Abel’s journey to fit this format.
I soon discovered the fatal flaw of visual novels. Say a player is given three options when encountering an enemy (such as fight, flee or talk), this means that I have to write three scene with three more options to choose from. That’s nine unique situations. And twenty seven for the next set of scenes. And so on and so on. This leaves the story without a sense of direction and purpose.
I therefore rewrote the adventure to be less about choice of events but more about choice of route and attitude. The story was now far more focussed. Players now had a clear goal, but could deviate from the path. They could be courageous heroes avoiding Verdugo the Dragon or weaklings facing him head-on. Still, the amount of writing that faced me was daunting to say the least.
And so it was back to the drawing board again for Dragonwelt V3. What if I took a classic point and click game approach imstead? Where you don’t progress from plot twist to plot twist, but navigate a fixed story looking for the castle. A text based labyrinth, if you will. Accompanied by still images of colourful villages and their exotic denizens. This made plotting and coding far more straightforward!
But this approach was to fail too. Having eliminated the element of choice there was not much point in creating a visual novel. And so it was on to version four, which never amounted to much. Trying to wrap my head around writing a Choose Your Own Adventure was the problem. What I discovered was that I, in all honesty, wanted to be fully in charge of the story, not leave it to the player.
I was going around in circles, wasting time I could spend on other projects. I decided, just to get some experience under my belt, to write a brief visual novel. While working on this compromised project I stumbled upon an idea. I figured I could cut costs by creating isometric assets of characters and surroundings, rather than unique images for each scene. While experimenting with this style I had my eureka moment.
Why not just make a classic adventure game?! Having figured out how to implement image buttons and brief animations I realised I could cheat Ren’Py. If a story can branch off into different directions, surly it can branch back too? If that story point were accompanied by a character animation I could have my hero enter a castle and subsequently leave it. Travel from A to B!
A CHAIN OF EVENTS
And just like that The Secret of Dragonwelt was born. With the help of programmer Sontse I created a small pilot, to see if my theory worked. We created a tiny world where the main character was tasked with finding and delivering objects. This chain of events would lead the hero of my game, Prince Abel, to Verdugo the Dragon and subsequently to Princess Wicca. Not only did it work … it was fun!
But then I knew it would be, since I grew up with these types of videogames. Al Lowe’s Torin’s Passage, for instance, held warm childhood memories. But bigger still was Yoda Stories, a game I was surprised to find is despised by most Star Wars fans. In classic Legend of Zelda style Luke Skywalker finds and delivers objects to defeat Darth Vader or Jabba the Hutt. It’s one of my all-time favourites.
I analysed the game again and again to see how creator Hal Barwood plotted his stories. For Dragonwelt I decided to take a similar approach but feature far less arbitrary characters. Every encounter was a chance to discover something new about Dragonwelt, Verdugo and Princess Wicca. Every conversation was a piece of a larger puzzle. The short but sweet style of writing suited me too.
Having experimented with the plot for nearly six months the final form was found pretty quickly. At first I tried to limit myself to twelve characters, fearing too many would make the game overly complicated for a first time game designer. But I also found that I kept oversimplifying my fantasy story. I therefor bit the bullet and decided on doing Dragonwelt justice with around thirty encounters.
THE CREATIVE TEAM
Where would I be without Ticiana Luna by my side! This brilliant Argentinian artist has been drawing for me since 2023 and she really delivered the goods for The Secret of Dragonwelt. I decided to do the programming myself and leave the visuals to Ticiana. As chance would have it she’s quite experienced when it comes to animation. She delivered some superb sprites for Prince Abel and the others.
But I quickly found that I was stretching my meagre programming skills to the limit. I was able to render the entire world in Ren’Py. And I managed to have characters walking around relatively freely, especially considering Ren’Py was not designed to support this type of worldbuilding. But when it came to implementing the finding and delivering of objects I struggled to the point of failure.
Enter Sontse! Having already helped me with a small pilot and some audio troubles I was having, Sontse proved quite willing to work on the game with me. This stretched my budget to its limits, but having come this far I could not abandon The Secret of Dragonwelt at this late stage. And so Sontse finished what I had started. Both of us severely underestimated the workload, but Sontse saved the day.
Sound and music were the final touch. Despite knowing quite a few legitimate musicians, I had to resort to stock music by the wonderful Jason Shaw. I’ve used his tracks many times for filmmaking jobs and his fantasy scores really added the final layer to the game. Ticiana’s great illustrations, Sontse’s great programming and Jason’s great music are what make my humble story shine. Thanks!
THE DRAGONWELT EXPERIENCE
And so I turned my attention to Itch.io, where I had originally intended to upload a simple visual novel (as if there is such a thing) but ended up invoking the games of my youth with a fully fledged adventure game. Yes, yes, I know. The Dragonwelt Experience is far from perfect. There are quite a few visual flaws and the gameplay does not compare with current mobile and online games.
But given the restraints I’m immensely proud of the results. The Secret of Dragonwelt was intended as a simple experiment. To see if I could pull off a digital storytelling exercise. The result is a fully rounded story with twist and turns set in a fully rounded world with new discoveries around every corner. What more could a fantasy gamer ask for? For a flawed game … it’s pretty good!
For the first time in my life I have created a ‘feature film’ of sorts. The story about a hero who fights a dragon to save a princess. A tale that is more than a cheap fantasy, but one that has ups and downs and a few surprises along the way. A humble imperfect first videogame from a humble imperfect first time videogame writer. The first of many, as far as I’m concerned. The adventure is just beginning …
Support me by playing The Secret of Dragonwelt for free at Itch.io. Thank you!