It's been a challenging year working on Gunwale, in a good way. This old dog has been learning heaps of new tricks and things are progressing along nicely. I'm super keen to start introducing you to this cast over the next year. Which characters below intrigue you the most?

Here's a new character reveal: Rapier Whitt, a childhood friend of Greeley's who goes off to the capital to study.

The gates of Black Nest Castle.

Spooky night.

Dropping the layers for the new room I'm working on into the game to see what needs to change. After checking it out, I decided that the big boat needs more parallax. So that means splitting out the layers even more and filling in the missing bits.

Trust the process. Today I painted some rocks and tree layer elements, as well as coloring in the boat layers.

Took a break from the detailed background stuff today to take yet another crack at the interiors. Previous version was isometric and just felt very technical drawing vs the more cosy feel I was after. Experimenting with some simple 3D shapes and sprite stacks. I like the new feel, so far.

My weekend of Gunwale boating lineart.

WIP line art for a new room for Gunwale. I'm trying to make sure that each location has lots of detail for you to look at since that's a pretty major point of the game. I actually can't wait to color the layers and put them in the engine to see them in parallax. That's the best bit.

Here are a few more characters - this group hails from the Forlatt region of Astre.

Some new character bits I did last week.

Some of the residents of the Black Nest Castle in Gunwale. There are only really two that you'll interact with but I like to create whole worlds for them to live in, because that's heaps of fun to do - the best bit, even.

Some new character bits I did last week.

I'm experimenting with various layout designs for my dialogs. My current fave is this one which uses the cute little Greley head for the cursor. I'm thinking of having various heads to use as emojis to represent the text. It'll look super cute.

Experimenting with adding animation to Greeley at the tiller that responds to player controls.

Experimenting with adding animation to Greeley at the tiller that responds to player controls.

I'm experimenting with various layout designs for my dialogs. My current fave is this one which uses the cute little Greley head for the cursor. I'm thinking of having various heads to use as emojis to represent the text. It'll look super cute.

Been a little quiet here because I've had my head down the last few weeks working on some code for the dialog system. Took me a while to get into it, but I'm firing on all cylinders now and hope to get it finished in a few more weeks. In the meantime, here's some background Groats I forgot to post.

Just a slight change to Greeley's basic costume that's a little more summer-y.

Working on a farm down by the water today.

Pretty pleased with how Gunwale is looking at the moment.

I was looking back through the videos of Gunwale that I exported over the years since I first started playing around with the idea back in August 22. It's come a long way even though there's still a long way to go.

I wasn't super happy with the Gunwale universe version of Kit I designed a few months back, so I took another stab at it. Much happier with this variant.

Gunwale Critter of the Month Club: May 2025 A Doch.

You and some of the boaters you'll meet in the waterways of Kanali. Greeley Stonehammer (you) and the Gunwale Regis

I love designing casts of characters more than anything else, followed closely by mechs, critters, and tech. Here's a bunch of characters from Gunwale. I'm very happy that there's a unity of world, yet they're all very different shapes, sizes, and colors - you know, just like a real world.

Greeley cruising down the waterways of Kanali on a narrowboat with a lazy blue ball of fluff for a cat. Me: The anti-action animator. I just want super chill these days. Done in Photoshop, Spine, and After Effects. Also, it was originally meant to be a static drawing, but I got carried away :)

Here's a new angle view of the Regis in 3/4 top-down I'm doing for a video/cutscene. Top is the 3D model I built for reference. I set up the appropriate angle and render it out in Blender with Freestyle lines turned on. Below I draw over that and hand color it for the final version.

Here's a little poster with some of the main characters from Gunwale.

Greeley and Yato are on the drawing board today.

After a lot of hitting brick walls creatively I've finally gotten this to a point where I'm happy enough with it. There's enough in this prototype level to get the vibe right, so I'll leave it here for now and get started on some of the other demo levels.

First test level status: "Getting there"

It's not the Skiffyverse without a Kit.

Here's some progress on the test area. Still a long way to go but it's getting there.... slowly.

The tiny buggy, but in color! Seen here with Roob Ironvale and her brother, Brund Ironvale, the blacksmith. The buggy has been painted up to appear in the Ironvale background layer as seen in a previous post.

Here's the first room layout - Ironvale. This is mostly to get an idea of the scales of items and position. Next, I'll break it down into elements so that I can build the level with multiple layers to get some nice parallax as you move through the area in the Regis.

You might like to have a free read of the comic that's the basis of Gunwale...

Tiny Buggy.

Another, smaller, space buggy for Gunwale. I was originally going to go more fantasy but I figured I'd keep it more sci-fantasy instead. Just like some of the cool 80s and 90s anime OAVs which inspired me. And of course, stuff like Nausicaa.

wanted to design a cute little bunny/rat critter for Gunwale and I ended up coming with this, a Grampaw. I guess they got their name from looking like an old gentleman. It's a capybara, rat, rabbit, terrier mash-up I guess. Whatever it is I like it.

Worldbuilding requires a good amount of cartographic work.

Worldbuilding requires a good amount of cartographic work.

Suprise early artbook delivery on a public holiday. Lots of lovely reference inspirations for Gunwale.

A Monday morning warm-up doodle of a background vehicle for Gunwale.

Here's one of the last few characters on my list of Gunwale characters to design. Jummi Orkanridge, a traveller from a mysterious faraway land.

I reworked a lot of the code and tweaked values to make it feel nicer moving about. I also made it check to see if you're in a safe area when you move about. The game uses this mechanic for objects in a few places so I guess I need to get it right. #gunwaleregis

Some very early days of placeholder art and experimenting with ideas for the inventory system. Not really happy with the cursor movement tile-based, it feels too clunky. Plenty of time to iterate on it until it feels nice but you gotta start somewhere. #gunwaleregis

Critter time! In the world of Gunwale a dog by any other name is a Tanook. The black and white one is strangely reminiscent of my Border Collie, Mickey. Coincidences eh?

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to get some code working to help me test out how mockups look onscreen. Almost gave up multiple times but Stuck with it and found some code that works. Not super exciting but a small win is still a win 😊

@spacecaptsteve.bsky.social here! Today I'm officially starting work on my new game project "Gunwale" - (It's pronounced gunnel, rhymes with funnel) I've actually been working on it in the background for a few years now on and off. But as of today, it's my focus.