I know it takes a tremendous amount of work to produce a game so tell us about yours.  

Trinkette’s Enchanted Journey is about an elf, Trinkette, making it on her own in places frequented by fairies, dragons, elves, and other folk. In Episode 1, the characters are mostly elves.

It’s a hybrid game. Trinkette, forages for items (hidden object), uses them to make goods (puzzle games) and then sells them to passersby (time management). Players are given a forecast and must choose what to make and adjust the prices. These choices affect the awards players get (gold, silver or pass).

What’s unique about the game?

Unlike other time-management games where stores have unlimited goods, Trinkette can only sell what she’s already made. If she sells out, she moves to the next task. If she doesn’t sell out, the remaining stock is carried forward to the next day.

In the first two scenes, Trinkette offers her goods to passersby on a magic leaf. Passersby like different goods, pay different prices and won’t always buy. On these levels, getting gold requires strategy, not speed.

In the third scene customers automatically appear at Trinkette’s stall and will buy her goods and berries. But the number of customers coming to the stall are based on players’ earlier choices.

What made you decide on doing it in 2D?

I developed the game for mobile and PC. For the mobile market, 2D is more practical because it can work on most cell phones and tablets. Games with 3D graphics can cause a lag or crash on older mobile devices.

It was also easier to create graphics for a 2D game because I could use Poser. It would have been much more expensive and time-consuming to create everything in 3D.

How did Poser help you develop the game?

I couldn’t have developed this game without Poser!

Initially I had tried to get funding to hire programmers and graphic artists but failed. I faced the obstacle of being excluded from sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo because I’m South African, and my country is unsupported (you need a bank account in a supported country).

I decided to develop the game and do everything myself which included, writing the story, programming the game, and creating graphics.

For the graphics Poser really speeded up my workflow:  I used ready-made content (mostly bought at Renderosity) and customized the content to make my game unique.

With 2D characters you must redraw the character if you want a different angle. Using a 3D character, I could setup a walk sequence once and just turn the character before rendering the animation. The walking animations included in Poser, also sped up the process. I could apply them, and tweak the animations as needed.

In Unity (game development software), I imported the .png images and dragged them into a scene – Unity automatically created an animation.

I also made and rendered other 3D objects in Poser, to give the game a coherent look. I loved the detail I got with Superfly renders. It helped me create an authenticate handmade look (it’s after all a young elf making the goods), but still have the game look polished.

Why have you only released the game at Amazon stores?

Amazon is an easy store to do business with and they have good systems, like DRM.

In addition, Amazon and Microsoft developed technology to let players play Android games on Windows 11 PCs. This meant I only needed to package the game once and people could play it on either their Android devices or Windows 11 PCs. (Unfortunately, Microsoft has decided to stop supporting this feature from next year.)

I might release the game in other stores in the future.

What are you working on now?

I envisaged Trinkette’s Enchanted Journey being a series, but that will depend on the success of Episode 1. In future episodes, Trinkette will continue looking for a place to call home, while encountering strange new fantasy worlds and characters. The game elements will also change in each episode with new sale, puzzle, and hidden-object games.

In the meantime, I’m creating more 3D content.