Project Intro
How it started
I’ve always wanted to make a film or game that’s set on a train. This idea started a long time ago, back in 2024, when it was written for an experiment for a unique kind of gameplay with another game designer. Eventually, we didn’t start making that demo, and the project was left with a Figma board of stories.
I picked everything up at around the start of 2025 and have been rewriting the story and characters throughout the year. On July 22nd of 2025, I cleaned up the overall storyline, and in October, I started my one-man Discord server to gather up all my ideas and keep track of my brainstorms and other things for production.
At the beginning of 2026, I started putting the entire story into Articy Draft X thanks to the Disco Elysium Documentary by NoClip. I never knew this software before but I’m glad that I don’t need to cramb everything up in Google Docs.
Goals
To tell a romantic story that can only be told in the medium of a video game. I’ve been making animated short films for a while, and was trained with different ways of narrative designs but mainly depending on how to utilize timelines to tell a story. Even with non-linear films, you can never get out of the box of being in a linear setting. My goal for this project is to experiment with something that’s interactive, and the stories could be told using environments, mechanics, and “time” in video games. In films, the story keeps playing without your input. But in video games, nothing will start, nothing will continue if you don’t click or interact with them.
One of the goals is also to create interesting characters and tell their stories. There are parts of the stories that were highly influenced by how I wanted to design certain characters, and there are parts that’s opposite. For me, it’s really about enjoying this narrative design journey with a project that I’m passionate about and unique enough.
The game will be written in Chinese and translated into English by me. But I’m developing in a bilingual mode as I can’t be in a single language mode anymore. QAQ
Godot Engine
At least for now, I’m developing the demo of the game on Godot. I wanted something light to create a 2D game, but I’m still not sure if this would be the direction to go forward. I’m still in search of the art direction/art style for this game.
My friend Kaka, and my ex-coworker back at Turn 10, Game Designer Harry, both recommended Godot to me. As someone who used to work with Unreal Engine a lot, I wanted to explore different engines that could handle simpler art styles but have a good backbone for stuffs like platformers and visual novels. Godot is interesting to learn, and for now, I’m sure that the demo of the project will be created on Godot. Still not sure if I would switch to Unity when it comes to the actual game, as I’m interested in utilizing U3D plus U2D, and that’s something that Godot would be a little bit weak about.
Timeline, or release date
-Jan 25th, 2026- I’m currently still directing an anime-style, 2D animated music video project that’s expected to finish around the end of March, so I’ve only been cruising with some light tasks with Project Spanish Sahara. The narrative journey has been crafted, at least in their V1 or V2, and I’m currently filling up the character sheets, creative background arts for the demo, and writing some dialogues when I have some free time.
Depending on how my current job turns out, my only expectation is to finish the Demo by the end of Q3 2026. But I’m sure that my next step in life, depending on how my current job goes, will be starting a full-time development phase in 2026-2027. Eventually, I would take a career break and explore what I truly want in life.
Crew/Team
Right now, I’m not aiming to scale this project beyond a single developer, maybe plus a music composer. But things might change after the demo is done. We will see.
Other stuffs
Currently, I’m planning to release the demo on itch.io. The game will be developed for PC platform only and looking to go live on Steam. I’ll try my best to keep writing devlogs here on my website, mainly for my own sanity and records. Feel free to reach me on beaqian09@gmail.com regarding anything Project Spanish Sahara related.
