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Sally

Created by Lucid Tales

Craft, cook, farm, build and explore to your heart's content in this magical journey of self-discovery aboard a giant flying ship, available on PC and Nintendo Switch. Pre-order store is now open! Get a discount on the game before its release, and for a limited-time, access to some rewards from the successful Kickstarter campaign.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Dev Update #9
over 2 years ago – Sat, Sep 09, 2023 at 07:39:01 AM

Hello travelers,

Can you all smell the faint aroma of pumpkin spice in the distance? September is here, and so is your new Sally dev update!

Time for layers

With autumn right around the corner, it’s time for some good old layering. But in game development, we’re not exactly talking plaid shirts and scarves - although they’re always welcome. We mean animation layering.

For characters to feel lifelike, they need multiple animations. First of all, the basics, which are breathing and blinking. Then, the non-playable character’s (NPC) current activity: walking somewhere, talking to someone, etc. On top of that, they need to react to their surroundings in a way that feels natural. Their head might follow the movement of someone walking by, for example.

But wait, there’s more! Relationships are at the core of Sally’s experience, and thus, NPCs play a very important role. Emotions, personality and mood are all going to affect a character’s reaction the players’ actions… And since they’ll always be different, thanks to unique crewmates in every game and players’ in-game decisions, there’s no scripting those reactions in advance.

A Sally character is being offered a carrot cake by another character in a pink top. They look uncertain: their eyes are shifting from the cake to the gift-bearer, not sure of what to think of this gift.
Here, the playable character is giving a carrot cake to Max. Max usually enjoys sweets, but because of the playable character’s past behavior, they’re not exactly sure of their intention… Meaning that Max’s reaction is more dubious than positive.

This leaves us with a plethora of animations, which may need to happen simultaneously. If a character stops blinking when they breathe, stops breathing when they walk, and stops walking when they smile, they’ll feel very robotic. 

Introducing: layering.

Layering is a process that will allow our animation team to play all the relevant animations of a single character on top of each other, so they act naturally in game. These past weeks, our animation team has been creating basic animations and beginning to test their layering. Our objective: NPCs that feel human and natural, whilst having a game that runs smoothly.

Routine bug fixing

Speaking of running smoothly, we’ve been fixing some bugs and improving some of our basic mechanics. Nothing to be alarmed of, of course. As we add new features to Sally, they’re bound to be a tad clunky before they are fully polished. Some are funnier than others, so as a treat, have a look at our latest fix: the legs inverse kinematics. We wanted our character to go up a staircase like a human would, placing their legs correctly on every step to push their body up the stairs. Let’s just say that in doing that, it got a bit worse before it got better.

A Sally character is attempting to go up wooden stairs, but their feet and their left knee are bent in reverse, resulting in a very unnatural, broken-looking stance.
Ah, yes. Going up stairs the normal way.

Thankfully, the legs’ kinematics are now fixed!

A Sally character is standing on stone stairs, looking relaxed. Their left foot resting on a higher step than their right foot.
A victory stance.

Other bug fixes include keyboard and controller controls, the addition of invisible walls, polishing the cooking pot system, fine tuning the camera during dialogues, and more.   

New assets

New assets are periodically appearing in Sally, some of them serving our latest developed mechanics. This month, we have a cool new addition: an icebox! (Get it?) This old school refrigerator will keep ingredients and dishes cold, so they don’t spoil in the warm kitchen heat. Neat!

A Sally character is standing in a kitchen. They’re facing a big, white icebox with brass handles and hinges. A glass door on the bottom of the icebox reveals large ice cubes inside. In the kitchen are also terracotta pots, wooden barrels, and a recipe book on a book stand.

This new asset is fully rigged and interactive. The player can open the icebox doors, and select items inside to add to their inventory.

That’s it for now, travelers! Stay tuned for next month’s update, where we’ll have some very exciting news to share. Until then, take care and safe travels! 

Your devoted Sally team, 

Lucid Tales

Dev Update #8
over 2 years ago – Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 10:44:17 AM

Hello, Travelers!

Summer is going by quite fast, and for us in Montréal, it has been a very warm one. Maybe that’s what inspired the first item in this August dev update…

A New Fountain!

Last time, we showed you the Sally’s grand hall, complete with columns, tables and chandeliers. A new amenity has now appeared in this spacious area: a well-needed fountain! This asset comes to life with the addition of water special effects (VFX). The frog fountain is now ready to be used by crewmates to carry buckets of water whenever needed.

A stone fountain sits before a kitchen. A frog shaped face seemingly made of bronze spurts out water that ends up in a stone basin, then waterfalls to a small pool. The fountain’s water moves with the waves created from the waterfall. On the fountain is a potted plant and a bucket; inside the fountain is a another bucket laying on its side. In the background, steam comes out of a cooking pot sitting on a fire.

 Some of you may have noticed the bubbling cooking pot in the background. During these past weeks, other VFX have been either added or updated in-game. The day you will be able to watch a stew simmer over a warm fire is getting closer, friends.

For now, would you like to hear what that sounds like? Here’s an audio segment of the cooking pot bubbling with delicious ingredients.

UI Sounds

When we think of video game sounds, UI (user interface) sounds are not usually what springs to mind. We’re most likely to remember the sweet purrs of a Chibison over the sound cue we hear when a cursor moves in the inventory. And that’s okay! UI sounds are meant to gently guide players whilst staying subtle enough that they’re not overwhelming. Finding the right balance isn’t always easy, and that’s why these past weeks, we’ve started experimenting for the first UI sounds for Sally.

A non-extensive list of UI sounds include: moving the cursor, selecting, and moving an item in inventory; picking up an item in-world; dialogue pop-ups; receiving XP; using XP; notification pop-ups… A lot of small cues are in need of a satisfying sound effect, and we’re on the case!

Weeping Willows

No worries, that’s not the nickname of a sad crewmate. It’s Sally’s latest tree asset! Three new models of weeping willows have appeared in-game, ready to embellish multiple floating islands.

Three weeping willows of different sizes. Their dark brown bark and torturous branches hold beautiful tuffs of light green leaves. The trees are surrounded by grass and wild flowers. In the background is the rocky side of a mountain, a waterfall and a beautiful pond full of lily pads.

Each of these trees exist in four different versions; you’ll get to see them in spring, summer, fall and winter biomes. Weeping willows aren’t the only additions to our North American inspired vegetation roster. Pine trees and oak trees have also been modelized these past weeks, and are ready to appear on floating islands!

If you’d like to read more on Sally’s development, you can join our Discord server, where we publish an extra update every month. You’re also welcome to participate in server activities, like weighing in on some specific assets you’d like to see in-game during our questions of the week.

Either way, we will be back next month with more Sally content. Happy August to everyone! 

Your devoted Sally team, 

Lucid Tales

Dev Update #7
over 2 years ago – Thu, Jul 06, 2023 at 12:42:02 PM

Hello Travelers,   

July is here, and if you’re familiar with the province of Québec, you know what that means: moving season. This year and for the first time in its history, Lucid Tales is taking part in the change of scenery!

A needle-felted flame is smiling, posing on top of miniature moving boxes sealed with washi tape. On every box is a green tag with a nickname. From left to right: Fox, Blobfish and Honey Badger. In the blank space over the boxes, we can read “Lucid Tales is moving!”
Lucid Tales’ mascot, Lucie, poses with some tiny moving boxes labelled with some of our team members’ Discord nicknames.

Our studio was created in 2019, and has been a virtual game development working environment for all members ever since. We’re quite excited to now have our very first offices! This physical space will facilitate collaborative work between some of our departments. Discord has been a very valuable asset and will continue to be so, but sometimes, designers want a good old whiteboard to brainstorm game mechanics.

Lucid Tales is always dedicated to the wellbeing of its members, and will therefore remain a hybrid working space. Every team member assess their personal needs and chooses the environment that best lets them work their magic.

As you can imagine, we’ve been quite busy with this next step in our studio's history. But fear not, we still have some new images we can share with you whilst the Sally is…

Under construction

The Sally is a very big vessel, and one you won’t be able to explore in its entirety once first boarded. Some signs have started appearing around the ship to keep curious crewmates out of the affected areas.

Three screenshots from Sally. 1- An outside scene with a mossy stone wall, sunflowers, and a telescope near a round table. A wooden sign picturing a carved hammer and wrench is hanging on a thick rope, blocking off a flight of stairs. 2- A liminal space full of boxes and pots, where a wooden space is closed-off by the hammer and wrench sign. On the left, another wooden sign picturing a fork and knife points to a flight of stairs going up. 3- A corridor of big wooden columns in a room of stone walls. A blue rug leads to a barricaded wooden door, closed off by the hammer and wrench sign.

So far, we’re using them to delimitate parts of the ship that are not yet modelized or furnished. There is still lots of work to be done to make the Sally the giant flying home it is meant to be! Every week, 3d asset by 3d asset, we’re slowly but surely getting closer to that goal.

In the game, these signs will be used to limit access to certain spaces that need to be unlocked. Everyone who has preordered the alpha access will definitely see them around once that early prototype is ready to be played!

Meanwhile, a new grand hall has appeared! Columns, lamps, chandeliers, flooring, pennants - this space is getting ready to welcome so many different versions of the Sally crew!

Screenshot of the Sally grand hall. This big open space has a brick ceiling adorned with red pennants and golden chandeliers, wooden columns with golden accents, planters filled with blue flowers and round tables and chairs sitting on a variety of rugs. In the distance are gigantic doors and a blue-tiled kitchen with some potted plants.

Dialogues is French for dialogues  

Since Sally now has a dialogue system, we’ve been testing it out with its first-ever conversations. This helps us notice the new features that we need to develop and add to our system.

A beige speech bubble pointing left reads “Bonjour”, and a blue speech bubble pointing right answers “Hi!”

As you may recall from the Kickstarter page, Sally will include both English and French. We’re therefore trying out the dialogue system with conversations in both languages. Different languages may present us with unique challenges because of how they work. They might need different features.

Taking English and French in consideration whilst we’re building the dialogue system allows us to build these features early in the game development process. This limits the amount of localization-based road blocks we can encounter down the line. It’s definitely worth the extra effort!

Travelers, thank you for being part of this fun adventure with us. We’ll be back next month with more development updates. 

Your devoted Sally team, 

Lucid Tales

Dev Update #6
almost 3 years ago – Tue, Jun 06, 2023 at 12:06:13 PM

Hello Travelers,

June is here, and here’s what our team has been up to in the past weeks! As per usual, proceed with caution if you want your future Sally experience to be completely spoiler-free, and please note that all images are work in progress that may not reflect the final in-game product.

Right tools for the job

There will be lots of activities to partake in both aboard the ship and on floating islands. Ship maintenance, building, crafting, cooking, mining, exploring… The crew will be a busy one! Therefore, they need the right equipment. Good news, new tools have been designed, modelized and added-in game.

A row of 6 tool assets. From left to right: a chisel, a hammer, a knife, a pickaxe, a spyglass and a wrench

No worries: no crewmates have been harmed in the making of those sharp objects. In fact, we’re adding some protective devices to stations using dangerous tools. Direct order from grandmas Alice and Beatrix!

Next stop: adventure!

Sally now has a map! Exploration is an important part of the game, and the map will be a very useful asset. It will of course let you know the current trajectory of the ship, but also useful information about the floating islands to visit. What types of resources are on that specific island? What’s the biome like? The map is fully integrated in-game, with a variety of features: zooming-in, looking-up islands and selecting destinations.

A dark-blue and sepia map on which grey icons of floating islands with a question mark are scattered. Other grey floating island icons are more detailed - these are linked by a dashed line. On that dashed line is the Sally in full color, facing a colored island down the dashed line. On the right side of the map is that same island icon overlaying an informative box. It includes a screenshot of the island, a sun icon, the words “Island name” and the resources that can be found there, with an associated image: Ruby, Iron, Trillium, Violet. On the bottom of the box is an embellished button with the word “Sail”.
Here, the Sally is traveling to a summery island where ruby, iron, trilliums and violets can be found.

You’ll feel the movement aboard the Sally, too! When the ship changes trajectories, you’ll notice the landscape moving in a different direction.

Been there, done that

Exploring the skies will be an important element of Sally, but it should stay what it is: fun. Design-wise, we want to reduce frustrations linked with traveling. Going back to the same island 20 times because that one crewmate is a big fan of violets loses novelty fast. Not to mention that the Sally might not be available to travel at all; you’re not alone on that ship, crewmate!

Introducing: portals.

An in-game screenshot of a stone arch on top of a row of stone stairs. Vine plants are growing on the arch. A colorful, broken piece of wood sits on the left side of the stairs. The arch and stairs are surrounded by trees, flowers and bushes and seem to be on a mountain-like terrain.

Portals can be linked from the ship to a specific island you want to revisit. It’s a magic door: enter the portal from the Sally, exit to a floating island. Magic does come in handy, doesn’t it?

This is the island gate. The door situated on the Sally will have a different look - one we’re not going to reveal just yet.

Two side-by-side images of a greyed out, simpler version of the stone arch and stairs on a dark grey background. On the left is the arch without any textures; on the right is the arch with less details, made out of rough shapes.
Left: The portal’s 3D mesh, without textures applied. Right: The portal’s collision mesh; a simpler version of the model that indicates which part of the object a character can’t go through.

Portals will facilitate movements between ship and visited islands. Your fellow crewmates can use them, too, and set their favorite island as a teleportation destination. Getting to know the biomes they enjoy the most will give you useful insight on their personalities and tastes!

What’s that sound?

It’s the sweet sound of carrots being cut on a cutting board, of course. Yes, more sound effects are being added to Sally. Sound design is important, as it adds a layer of depth to the gameplay. It helps to set a scene, a mood, and it’s one of many useful tools that can guide players through the adventure.

It’s important for our team to create an immersive, cohesive experience. There’s a lot of work to be done to determine exactly what the Sally experience sounds like, but our team is on the case!

That’s a wrap for our June update. Hope you’re as excited for what’s to come as we are! 

Your devoted Sally team, 

Lucid Tales

Dev Update #5
almost 3 years ago – Fri, May 05, 2023 at 10:51:29 AM

Hello travelers,  

The time for your May dev update has come! Here’s what the Sally team has been working on this past month. Do proceed with caution if you want your future Sally experience to be completely spoiler-free, and please note that all images shared in the current update are work in progress and may not reflect the final in-game product.  

Fresh haircuts

We’ve been conducting research on specific hairstyles we’ve wanted to add to the game - something you might already know if you’re part of the Sally crew on our Discord server.

Four character heads are displayed with haircuts seen both from the front and from the back. In order: an afro, cornrows, a fade with short afro coils, and a fade with dreadlocks on top.

Hair is perhaps more complex than what meets the eye. In game development, there has to be careful consideration on how specific hairstyles are animated, so they can move in a way that mimics reality. Texture is also a careful balance to keep - hairstyles need enough details and texture to look good, whilst not carrying too much information that could overburden and ultimately slow down the game, especially on lower performing systems.

Keeping that in mind, we’ve been giving some of our haircuts a proper makeover, whilst also adding new styles to the roster!

Two rows of character pictures. On the top row, three characters wearing animal jumpers are sporting different haircuts: a fade with dreadlocks on top, an afro, and long locks. On the bottom, three character in dresses have their hair up in different kind of buns, all with baby hair.

Is someone cutting onions?

Or maybe that’s just us getting a little emotional. We’re all so excited to bring the cooking aspect of Sally to life! These past weeks, we’ve been focussing on all things cooking: how to prep ingredients, store them, access recipes, and cook dishes. As a Ghibli-inspired game, it is paramount that Sally’s cooking mini-game feels good, and we’re putting extra care in designing a mechanic you will enjoy. It’s a work in progress, but we are quite enthusiastic with the progress that has been made so far.

Let’s talk quests

Before we begin the grand task of giving our characters, well, character, we have to work on the dialogue system. Optimizing this system will make our future job of scripting dialogues much more efficient. Our dialogue system has therefore been updated with fun knickknacks that will make conversations flow more easily.

That also includes the first implementation of a quest system, which allows characters to accept or decline quests, complete them, and get rewards: whether it’s words of praise, experience points, or a fancy new bag of carrot seeds.

Speaking of quests, the Sally now has a task board! This board will allow crewmates to pick unassigned quests (or “tasks”) that they want to work on. That will be a useful reference to know which crewmate is working on which task aboard the ship, and which tasks have been completed.

A UI with a dark background that reads “Make a tofu stew in the kitchen”. “Tofu stew” is highlighted in blue, “kitchen” in yellow, and there’s an image of a stew on the right. Just below the stew is a yellow tag with “Rodriguez” written on it, followed by a a little circle showing Rodriguez’s face.

Here, Rodriguez has chosen to tackle the task of making a tofu stew in the kitchen. When it comes to cooking, most quests will let you decide what kind of meal you want to prepare for your crew. That way, you can cater to your crewmates’ favorite ingredients, or account for the 21 carrots you harvested earlier that day.

Since everyone will be able to pick tasks for themselves, this board will also be a fun insight on what your fellow crewmates enjoy doing aboard the Sally!

On that note, we shall return to our very own daily tasks: developing a game you will love to explore. See you next month, travelers! 

Your devoted Sally team, 

Lucid Tales