Weekly devlog #11 - Item descriptions & Social Media

Wake up everyone, new devlog just dropped!

Since PIEMEN is hard at work catching bugs and writing codes (or whatever, I don't fully understand what he does), it's up to me, ANUBIS, to deliver some development insights this week. Today we will talk about my two main tasks in Crytal Realms: Item descriptions and the game's social media.

Item descriptions

Every item in the game has a short description accessible when clicking on it. Some are useful to understand the item's use and some are the most horrible puns you have ever heard. Let's talk about how we write them:

- Descriptions about use or behavior

You will find these in most tools, interactable items, and some blocks with special characteristics. We thought giving players context about what these items do was important, sometimes explained literally and sometimes hinting at how the item works. They sometimes have a little flavor text too!



- Reference descriptions

Maybe they come from a movie, a book, a funny video, ancient history, or even an inside joke between Piemen and me. These descriptions make the game feel fresh and interesting while creating a feeling of complicity between us and the players. 

- Descriptions that are just a joke or pun

Well. Yeah. They're bad jokes mostly. But it's kind of funny right? These descriptions are a way to keep the game kind of unserious and light. Hope you have a good laugh!



- Flavor text descriptions:

Just nice and fun things to say, adding a bit of flair. Maybe it's not super funny or useful, but it will give a special feeling to that item. Mostly, it's just cool writing about the item without actually indicating any characteristics. Also, all items have descriptions and I'm not funny enough to make 300+ jokes. 

We are also experimenting with other description types, like lore-related descriptions. Maybe I'll say more about these in a future devlog :)

OBVIOUSLY, some fall in more than one category (or none of them). To be fair, the first batch of descriptions was kind of improvised, so a few of them have been rewritten in later updates. Look forward to about 20 to 30 of them being new in update 1.8!

The game's social media

So... yeah it's kind of silent lately. I was graduating and moving countries, Piemen had two jobs + the game, ... There hasn't been much time for social media. Please let me use this devlog to remind everyone that Crystal Realms has TikTok, X, and Reddit (with Instagram and YouTube being quite possible in a near future)

We are okay with this tho. We like this nice relatively small and slow-growing community for the pre-alpha, it makes for a very good test group for the game.

That said: YES. Marketing and social media will be better. YES. We have plans for it. YES. Piemen and I have very exciting ideas for the game and the community.

Thanks for supporting this little fun (and sometimes silly) game! I hope you're ready for 1.8 next week. See you in the realms!

Lots of love, Anubis <3