#and a bunch on itch.io too
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i'm curious, how many games do y'all have on your steam wishlist? cus i currently have 124 and i wanna know if that's like. a normal number flkdsjfdls
#and i still have a whole bunch of unplayed games in my library as well rip#not to mention the itch.io bundle i got ages ago that ive only played about 3 games from x'D#too many games too little time.....#lay rambles#video games#my game recs list is bigger than that but i do use my wishlist as bookmarks in a way lol
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The Eureka Kickstarter Pamphlet
It’s not much of a secret that my career and future financial stability is riding on the upcoming Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy Kickstarter (April 10th-May 10th) being successful and hitting as many stretch goals as possible.
If you would like to help a disabled person have a viable career, and see more work from myself and A.N.I.M. in the future—well, first of all, back the Kickstarter on April 10th, but secondarily, spread the word so that others can at least know about it and may back it themselves.
Besides just telling people about us and reblogging our posts, a really helpful way for you to spread the word would be to go to this link here (it’s the same link as the one for downloading the free demo) and download the EurekaPaphlet3pg-1 PDF. It’s a foldable pamphlet you can print out and give to anyone who has an interest in TTRPGs at school, at work, at a con, etc. You can even print out a bunch of them and leave them at your local card&hobby store. These pamphlets even include QR code that will give anyone scanning them access to the free Eureka demo. Also, since it’s a PDF, you could also just send it to people online without actually having to print it out.
(Make sure when you do print it out, that you print it out double-sided!)
It’s a nice pamphlet with some of our best art on it, and does a good job of getting right to the point of what Eureka is.
If any of y’all could hand this out and/or show it to people, it could mean a world of difference for making Eureka and A.N.I.M. a viable career path for someone who struggles to hold down any “normal” job.
Set a reminder for the Kickstarter launch here.
See a preview of the Kickstarter campaign here.
Join our Patreon for just $5 and get perpetual updates on the in-progress prerelease version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and several adventure modules.
Visit our website or go to our itch.io page (follow us there too so you'll get notified when the game fully launches) for more information and a free demo! Also, in case anyone didn't know, the free demo isn't just a small chunk of the game anymore, it's almost the full game. Like, everything. If you previously downloaded the demo that kept most of the game hidden, go download it again to get access to all of that hidden stuff and more!
Interested in actually playing this game, and many others, with the developers? Check out A.N.I.M.'s TTRPG Book Club, a club of nearly 100 members at the time of writing this where we regularly nominate, vote on, and then play indie TTRPGs! At the time of writing this, we are playing Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, and sign-ups are closed for actually playing it, but you can still join in to pick up a PDF club copy of the rulebook to read and follow along with discussion, and sit in on and observe sessions! There is no schedule obligation for joining this club, as we keep things very flexible by assigning multiple GMs with different timeslots each round, to try and accomodate everyone! This round, we had over thirty people sign up, and were able to fit in all but one! Here is the invite link! See you there!
#eureka: investigative urban fantasy#ttrpg#rpg#eureka#roleplaying#monsters#tabletop#coc#tag#kickstarter#crowdfunding#campaign#pamphlet#disability#disablity aid#help#werewolves#werewolf#vampiress#vampcore#vampire#vampyr#fangs#vampires#lovecraft#lovecraftian#lovecraftian horror#cosmic horror#cthulhu mythos#hp lovecraft
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Hey there! I'm Alexis Royce, and I make-
Visual Novels
A Theologically Spicy 18+ Horror Romance about loving the artistic process a little bit too literally.
[itch.io]
Interrogate suspects to solve a semi-supernatural murder in an Edwardian watercolor mansion where inner demons manifest!
[Steam] [itch.io]
Follow the correspondence of two professors, in the months before one of them makes a decision he'll never be able to take back.
[Steam] [itch.io]
[And several more, all available on itch.io!]
Watercolors
[Commission Info Over Here] [Print Shop Over Here]
And some fanfics and comics that tend to evoke a bunch of this:
You can read them here.
#new pinned#artists on tumblr#indie games#watercolors#ao3#fanfic#fanart#visual novel#names of commentators withheld to protect the innocent#birdy’s never been innocent a day in their life though so GET NAMED SON
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Advice for a young and hopeful gamedev?
Here's some advice that I heard when I was an optimistic gamer teen and ignored because I misunderstood why it was being given to me - I'll try not to let my boiling cloud of cynicism taint it too much:
When people say "make your first game as small as possible" they're not saying it because they don't think you're capable of making something complex - they're saying it because having a bunch of very small things released will let you practice the harder part of gamedev (actually releasing the thing) while also hopefully giving you a financially buoyant cluster of things for your resume.
Make games that last five minutes - even if only four people ever download them - find the rhythm of ideation->excitement->refinement->labor->troubleshooting in the smallest places possible. The final two steps are sometimes horrible, but if the scale is small you can experience firsthand how worth it is to have a finished THING afterwards.
If you don't know how to even picture a game that small, play Warioware, browse Itch.io and look at the many wonderful games that you can play in 5 minutes in your browser, free yourself of the IGN-Headline chasing developer in your head that says you should make a "Stardew Valley Inspired Worldsim with Parry-Based Combat and Multiple Endings".
The vision of the auteur figures we elevate in indie space is not real. You're a human being with a heart and soul and nothing you make will be perfect or wholly your own. Just make.
---
P.S. The indie game scene as we know it has been extremely reliant on social media for the past 15 years or so, and that landscape is in the process of some massive destructive change. Advice about metrics that could have been useful three years ago isn't worth taking as gospel. Everything I know about building visibility right now is rickety at best, so just try to focus on building up your own self worth as best you can until the dust settles - if it does.
Good luck, and be kind to yourself.
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Your favorite yandere visual novels? PS:can you reccomend some for me?
Hmmm, good question. I think most of the yandere visual novels I like tend to be ones that are less well known since I've played so many (as a person who has to feed my blog), I tend to like more unique yandere games instead of those which are more popular. And also anything that has a sub yandere (personality or otherwise) tends to have my heart as well. That being said, there are some more popular yanderes on here too just because I do like some of those ones as well.
Cemetery Mary - I'm procrastinating on doing a recommendation on this one because I want to also play Blackout Hospital since it goes a bit more into the yandere, but I really like how this story is and how is shows the reveal of the yandere. Mary is also very cute and a very interesting and fun main character.
The Snake's Taken a Spouse - this one is r18 and plays more like Degrees of Lewdity, and the artwork isn't that good, but Shimil is... charming. I like him and I feel bad for everything that he has to go through. It's cool seeing how he tries his best for you.
Sweetest Valentine/Where Two Flowers Meet - I'm lumping these two together mostly because I just like the way that Syllphan writes stories. They both are very different from each other but have pretty interesting takes on yanderes. I need to double check if For Amerta has one, but even if it doesn't I'll probably still love the game.
Karamu - Karamu... is just really well done. I really like stylized games and Karamu does it wonderfully with it's blue color scheme and comic book like aesthetic. Plus we get to slowly unveil the mystery the main character has gotten herself into.
Stuck in a Yandere Visual Novel.... Help!! - from what I played in the first demo, I really like the comedy in this one. It knows the yandere trope pretty well so I like how they play around with it. Everything is kind of in a cutesy pink aesthetic, which is also a fun thing. I really need to get around to finishing the game.
ITYH: Horror Otome/Saccharine - Saccharine is less of a visual novel, but like with Syllhan, I really like Amiralo's writing style. Most of their stories are bittersweet with not so happy endings in a lot of them, and very interesting yanderes overall.
Mushroom Oasis - I'm pretty guilty of trying to get a bunch of people to play the game but listen, Mycheal is very cute and I really like his design. The creator is still working on it and it has become one of the most popular yandere games under the yandere tag on itch.io, so that's probably a good sign right?
Froot Basket Valentine / Froot Basket Dark Chocolate - Dark Chocolate is a prequel to Valentine, but they are both fun to play through. Valentine is a bit more goofy since you see everyone's heads as fruits for the most part while Dark Chocolate is far darker. But it is cool seeing how the yandere progresses in each of these stories.
Heart Fragment - very well made game, though Kay is kind of a light but clingy yandere. And boy do I love my clingy yanderes. Still this is probably one of those games that we play more for the story rather than the yandere. Still would totally recommend it because it is very, VERY well made.
The Science of Staying Awake - big fan of the concept of someone- Something that so desperately wants to hold you but also drives you insane if you do? That's very cool and the horror on that is really creepy if you think about it and also a bit sad.
Kimbark Street - I like seeing the point of view of yanderes, or just any character that is on the more evil side. You can really see how their obsession drives them and what they will do to get what they want, whether the person they love knows it or not.
You can probably see I don't have as many dark yandere games on this list, which is mostly because while I do enjoy darker yandere content (in terms of murder sims and whatnot) I also am not the target audience for them since I love to torture my yanderes, not be tortured by them. Still, I can admit that they are fun to play through. I have a lot more that I like, but here is hopefully a good list of games that you too might enjoy.
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Women of Xal - %15 off
It’s time for some gay alien politics.
[steam] [itch.io]
Seen this CG yet? No? You should! That’s right, year two of the game being out means it’s time for our second Steam Summer Sale, let’s gooooooo!
Guide Xjena up the political ladder to the coveted position of Matriarch. Or guide her into a knife repeatedly! That’s fine too! In an alien society where lying is impossible, make sure you utilize your powers to rewind time as you choose the best path forward.
A visual novel with many significant choices and four major endings: two bad, one neutral, and one good. Plus a bunch of ways to accidentally end things early.
12 character arcs with options for romance and/or friend routes! 7 women and 8 men.
Aro/Ace and Poly runs! One player in our Discord mapped out the maximum number of dates they could go on in one run. 10/10 speed dating strats. (How do you get the Discord link? Well, that happens to be in game.
Plus!!
Many, many bugs have been either squashed or gently relocated outside since launch. Some still haunt us, but we’re working on it.
Steam Achievements very soon??? We figured out how, we just gotta... do it. lol
Want to get to the gay faster? You’re in luck! We’ve added a whole new mode to the game: Steamer Mode. If you want to skip the exposition at the start and get right to the interesting stuff, this mode offers you a streamlined early game - at the cost of missing a few clues along the way, of course.
Curious what our team has been up to since Women of Xal’s release? Well.... mostly recovering from moving, if I’m honest. We’ve keeping our heads down and working at our boring day jobs while tossing around ideas for future games and stories in the background. We plan to have the script for Women of Xal’s sequel completely written before launching the Kickstarter, but we’re also looking at things like art books, novels, a 15 minute horror game, Patreon.... maybe even a silly little mobile game for collecting ploofs. Or snakes. One of our founders really likes danger noodles.
Until then we’ll just wait.
[steam] [itch.io]
(I had a big work meeting today and I’m loopy lmao ~Shald)
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Slasher U 1-Year State of the Union / Unholy Census!
Holy fucking shit we're coming along towards the 1-year anniversary of the release of the Slasher U Act 1 alpha!! We've come SO FUCKING FAR. Sawyer wasn't even a romanceable option back in the day! As of April 27th, it'll be Slasher U's first ever anniversary!
Mostly, I am SO FUCKING GRATEFUL that you all came along on the adventure to make my weird horny dating RPG a smash fucking hit!! Taking narrative seriously in dating/adult games was kind of my entire M.O (is?? mods??) and I am SO GRATEFUL Y'ALL UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO HERE lmao
THE BIG NUMBERS
As of 11:21 AM EST on 3/23/24, Slasher U: Act 1 has sold 6,100 copies across Steam & itch.io (Not including the copies sold as part of Games for Gaza that weren't redeemed/downloaded, so this only counts people who actually downloaded or bought the game!). This is obviously BEYOND MY WILDEST FUCKING DREAMS AND I CANNOT THANK YOU ENOUGH HOLY SHIT. I didn't even realize it until I added it all together. (On top of this, we sold several fucking tens of thousands of games for Games for Gaza!! Hell yeah!)
For my fellow solo devs out there, this comes to Slasher U making a total of about $6,000 + $2,000 net USD through sales (the former) and crowdfunding (the latter, for Slasher U: Act 2) over the last 11ish months!! The game started off being free for the first 6ish months, then went to $6.69 for the Beta (with dong! whoa!!), and now at its full size, stands at a good ol' $14.99 for 15 hours of primo datin' sim!
This is objectively the most money I've ever made off of anything I've developed in my entire life, and paid my whole ass rent for the entire year, so THANK YOU HOLY SHIT. According to Steam, most indie games barely break $1k in total, so I am AGOG. FUCKING AGOG. THANK YOU FOR LIKING MY GAME AND LETTING ME MAKE MORE VIA NOT DYING FROM CAPITALISM
The average review score, across 89 reviews on itch.io, remains 4.9 out of 5 stars, and we're rocking a 93% Positive on Steam!!
THE UNHOLY CENSUS
The best part of Slasher U is, as I always say, THE STUDENT DISEMBODY!! Slasher U will always be a place where everything is gay and trans as fuck (although I'm also proud of writing my cishet storylines too :V /lh)! I knew y'all were gay (hello fellow gays) but I did not realize the QUEER FUCKING FORCE THE STUDENT DISEMBODY IS
Here's the demographics of Slasher U players as taken from Tumblr polls (that's a skewed sample size of about 280, so grain of salt here for the homo website for queers):
92.6% of you ID as queer (see below for the breakdown!) | 7.4% of you ID as straight
This fictional horror movie campus is: 48.5% bi/pan, 16.2% gay/mlm, 10.3% lesbian/wlw, 10.3% ace (oo tie!), 7.4% queer but not defined as above, and 7.4% straight!
61.9% of you ID as trans/not cis | 23.8% of you ID as cis | 14.3% of you ID as neither trans nor cis
46.8% of you are between 22-26 | 32.3% of you are between 18-21 | 16.1% of you are between 27-32 | 4.8% of you are between 32-45 | 0% of you are older than 45 (sample size I am guessing lol)
For 14.6% of you, Slasher U was the very first dating sim you've ever played (!). For 3.8% of you, Slasher U was the first indie game you've ever played (holy fucking shit!!! this is an actual absolute honor)
76.7% of you instinctively Road Runner away from Melyssa at the fountain in Act 1 | 23.3% let the Melyssa tsunami arrive at you
--
A FINAL WORD (FOR NOW) ON MAKIN' VIDJEE GAEMS
You should totally do it.
No, okay, but for real, I started working in games professionally in 2009 (yeah yeah i'm old. i am 32 and i am dying and they're coming for me in the corpse wagon etc) and I burned out in 2016 and came back two years ago with THIS THING and I can tell you RIGHT FUCKIN' NOW that, if you have ever wanted to make a game and the big guys aren't gonna do it, grab yourself and/or some friends and fuckin' make a video game. I have worked for a bunch of AA and mobile companies and I can tell you right the fuck now that this is the most fulfilling experience I have ever had writing a video game. I taught myself programming logic to make this thing! And sound design! I fucking learned to animate sprite sheets!! YOU CAN ALSO DO IT given the time and energy (pace yourself don't die)! And there won't be any execs around to tell you your weird niche game won't sell!! BECAUSE IT FUCKING WILL
Anyway, my entire career as a game designer, nobody let me write shit for them. You don't need permission to make stuff or write stuff. If you write it, they will fuckin' come, Field of Dreams style (also don't forget to tell everyone you made stuff and share it around. super key here. lmao). Turns out writing is all about sharing yourself with people, and who knows, you might just find that a fuckton of people ACTUALLY relate to you. (And that you're a pretty good writer. Which you knew. Yes, you. I am mixing metaphors and pointing to myself AND you now.)
xoxoxoxooxoxox,
Professor Plutonium
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Devlog #115
Hi-ho, Wudge here. Dart blinks now!
I also sketched a handful of expressions (based on a bunch of references I've collected over the years). I think I only need to polish up three of these for the demo...
With this in mind, and the fact that Mia's two sprite expressions are already implemented, it doesn't seem as daunting to draw expressions for Warden, Griffin, and Jade...! But we'll see!!
I also worked on my credits screen - it's not done yet, but almost! The full gif is a little too big for tumblr, so I don't get to show off the scrolling bit that comes after these main pages.
Lastly, I've worked on some supplementary writing that will accompany the new demo's release - such as an updated content warning.
Lastly-lastly! Have you guys checked out my friends' new game yet?
Play it on itch.io! Go go go! It's a completed short game and it's free, perfect for spooky season!
#interactive fiction#oelvn#visual novel#otome game#otome#amare game#amaregame#english otome#herotome update#indie game
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You did not ask and I am sorry, but I am an infodumper. Everdell has a 1-player option, if you have money to invest in adorable board games. The rules are a bit confusing and unfortunately some use cases are only addressed in fanmade YouTube videos, but it lets you build a big tree and pull cards illustrated with wholesome animal villagers while playing against an imaginary rat, if that helps your solo board game needs. I’ve also recently gotten an escape room game, which says it’s intended for groups of 1-4; would the information of how well those play solo be helpful? I keep planning to test out the one I have some time, but being paralyzed by the fact that you can apparently only play once (since you have to mark up the tokens and stuff). If you have the same issue then maybe this information would not be as helpful.
ooh, info!
i buy a lot of notebooks but don't actually put anything in the notebooks and i felt like journaling ttrpgs might solve that problem for me while also giving me an excuse to use my nice pens and ink. i don't mind creative writing, but i looked at some other ones and they were way too open-ended for me. i like taking disparate facts and events that are fully random and have nothing to do with each other and finding ways to build a cohesive narrative out of them, which is why i write fanfiction for comic books. but also i do this whenever i play munchkin or whatever so i thought maybe solo ttrpgs would be able to scratch a similar itch of rolling dice or pulling cards and random shit happens and i have to find a way to make that work with everything i already did.
anyway i have a bunch from various itch.io bundles but if you know of any that will scratch this particular itch i would be happy to hear recs!
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Here's a little holiday spirit for everyone. You can now go grab the Love Across Thedas zine on itch.io for free, and find this artwork and much, much more inside, including plenty of fanfiction and digital merch.
@loveacrossthedaszine Extra thanks and much love to everyone who worked on the zine, but especially the mods.
(For anyone interested in what I was thinking when I was drawing this tune in below)
I wanted to do nanders because I pretty exclusively just do art about my player characters and their beaus otherwise. But nanders is one of those ships that I have been carrying my torch for since day one, or day 6 months in more like, with the pace I do my playthroughs in. Regardless, they were my favourite part about Awakening, and the greatest tragedy in Dragon Age is that they still haven't reunited for longer than 5 minutes in some dank darkspawn tunnel! So I set out to fix that.
I wanted to create a scene where the Amaranthine Wardens, my Mahariel and Zevran included, would go meet Anders in the middle after what happened to the Kirkwall Chantry, to keep him safe, and the team could finally get that more permanent reunion.
Due to my own headcanons the Amaranthine crew is also having a bit of an exodus, since they're in the middle of planning to go rogue from the rest of the Wardens. Oops :). All in all they're a bunch of outcasts right now, but they have each other.
And of course Nathaniel brought Pounce with them too.
#love across thedas#dragon age#dragon age origins#da awakening#dao#dragon age 2#da2#nanders#anders#nathaniel howe#anders x nathaniel#sigrun#velanna#sigrun x velanna#oghren#zevran arainai#mahariel#zevran x male warden#zevran x mahariel#the warden#hero of ferelden#amaranthine#dragon age fanart#jasko draws
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QUINN K'S SIGNAL FIRE
Hey! Since everyone is pooling from Twitter to other places now, I imagine now would be the time to post a proper little intro post.
I'm Quinn K! I'm a game developer primarily, but do a bunch of other stuff too (music, translation work, poetry). I used to go by RecDra, under which moniker I translated OFF by Mortis Ghost (OFF 3.0 art above by my pal Rosie, @insidecat ).
While strangers on the internet are only ever passing acquaintances, I still want to see if any of the odd 1100 folks that followed my Twitter are around here now. If so: Well, here I am! Here is my little island in this rough sea.
Other important links:
itch.io || Patreon || ko-fi
Please boost this! I'd be much obliged :>
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right, pinned posts
i have a website which is probably the best place to see all of my stuff:
but to get a taste of what you can find on that site, keep reading
most people are probably following me for my murder drones stuff.
i write the critically acclaimed J/Uzi fic, Hostile Takeover
it's a novel length enemies to lovers slowburn, and distinguishes itself by pulling it all off without heavy alteration to canon characterization.
most people are probably put off by the ship, but i've received numerous comments to the effect of "i never liked this ship" or "i didn't think it could be done" followed by "but you somehow pulled it off".
give it a shot!
besides that, i've read a lot of murder drones fanfic, and maintain a page on my website dedicated to indexing and reviewing fics that i'd recommend
several of the people following me are writers, who may be interested in know that i've written several essays on the craft of writing. people tend to find them pretty insightful!
i've written many stories other than Hostile Takeover. you can find them on my site; there's too many to list, but in general, i write nonhuman character near-exclusively. (my friends were only so surprised when i became obsessed with murder drones)
still, HT is my best work, and i'm not certain fans of that will enjoy my earlier writing, and i have reservations about recommending most of them. A Chimerical Hope is still cool, i think.
the majority of my site is dedicated Black Nerve, a dark fantasy setting of my creation about giant sapient insect ninjas and corrupting fungus and gruesome mutagenic blood magic. there's so much going on there that i just cant get into all of it here. not even sure where you should begin reading
lore posts like "In Dialogue With Plagues", or "Lardsuckers and (What Were) Grubsuckers" give you a taste of just how freaky the setting is, and i think "The Duality of Mantis" is a great look at the weird psychology of the dominant species. but there's so many loreposts i can't list them all
writing is probably what i've done the most of, but i have other skills :3
i've released three albums of electronic music on bandcamp:
although i think my best music is the stuff i made for looptober 2023, which though not "officially" released (i'm debating whether i should spend time polishing them), you can still listen to it on itch.io or my site!
and there's more!
i'm sometimes an artist, and there's gallery on my site with over three hundred pieces i've drawn over the years. i mostly draw these weird alien dudes i invented, plus a bunch of praying mantises and dragons and pokemon. quality varies a lot and i'm bad about staying in practice, but here are some pieces i think turned out rather well
ok, now is that it?
well, mostly. i have some poetry that's alright, a game demo that's kinda neat, but nothing i'd seriously promote.
if you read through all of that, i love you. thank you for your time and i hope there's something here you appreciated
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Phylogenesia Automatorum Post-game Devlog #4: Content & Balance
In the final stretch of development, I had finished implementing all the various systems and now it was time to make content to fill it all out!
If you haven't tried the game out yet (it has a web version now!) please do if you want to discover the different plants and their behaviours for yourself. You can also rate it here if you have an itch.io account, otherwise read on!
So at this point in development I had 4 plants I was happy with:
Conway Grass: Default/standard plant that needs a critical mass to thrive based on the Game of Life ruleset
Nullberry: A sporadic plant that has a small chance to pop out of nothingness, and disappear just as quickly
Creeping Mold: A hardy plant that can easily take over the field but generates low amounts of life/death points
Overhedge: A plant that rarely dies or propogates, but generates a fixed amount of points when or if it does.
Starting with the Overhedge was very difficult but doable with some luck, and all other 3 plants were about average difficulty. At this stage, I needed the other plants in the game, so I could see what sort of points should be generated on average (irrespective of plant).
And thus, the other plants I conceptualised were:
Crossthatch: A plant with a very limited spawn/sustain range such that it only grows in lines or diagonals.
Dynamite Tree: A plant with more "explosive" growth style compared to Conway Grass, more permissive in spawn range, but with only a chance to spawn more trees, and a high chance to die each turn.
Shrunk Violet: Supposedly a "shy" plant that spawns a bunch at simulation start, then the entire mass shrinks away, layer by layer. The middle of the clump does not die due to the high min/max sustain range.
Shocklily: A plant with similar characteristics to the Dynamite Tree that would spawn and perish unpredictably. Where this plant differed, however, is that it can randomly persist and spawn over ticks.
Paradise Bird: The second M:tG reference (the first was Creeping Mold). With the way I tuned the birds' spawn and instant death chance, you get a really nice pattern where (sometimes) you will see a flock of birds migrating across the field.
0range: The story of the 0range goes something like this: "I need an orange plant to fill out my rainbow of plants, and it needs to be a pun. Oh I know, I will replace the "O" (letter) with a "0" (number), and turn all of its stats to 0 :)".
On the first few playtests, the meta was choosing a plant with a low spawn minimum, and fishing for an upgrade that reduces the minimum spawn to 0. This in effect makes the plant like a Nullberry, allowing it to spawn on any unoccupied tiles, BUT, unlike the Nullberry, most other plants have a 100% chance to spawn. Thus, every turn, all empty cells would be filled with plants, and on the next would immediately die off, only to repeat the cycle. While this was cool, I decided that you could only get to a spawn min of 0 on a critical upgrade roll.
The second problem was that the the shrinking violets were incredibly oppressive late game. In the early game they wouldn't generate enough life/death points to be worth choosing as a starter, but whenever you had an established field, they would choke the life out of all the cells except the very border, and would not leave. Lucinius and I eventually determined that the violets needed to die off randomly, and I also reduced their sustain max from 8 to 7, such that a completely surrounded violet would die off. They are still, by far, the most unbalanced plant, but they aren't run ending now at least.
The third problem was that some plants were just way too weak and variable in how they generate points. Lucinius had the great idea of giving players 5 free restarts (instead of 1 like I had originally programmed), and this not only served to smooth out early-game point gain but also give me a metric by which I was going to balance the game!
Within 5 runs, all un-upgraded plants should be able to generate AT LEAST 5 death points (enough for the first plant upgrade), and at most 14 death points (enough for the first two plant upgrades. Of course, these were just rough guidelines on average, and some plants will be stronger starters than others. However, as I have set it to ensure Conway Grass always appears on the starter plant roll (and the 0range never appears), one can always have a playable game.
It was still quite easy to get to a state where the points generation vastly outpaced the costs of the upgrades, but this was a more fundamental issue that, if I tried to address it by tweaking numbers, would result in an absolutely brutal early game that would be no fun to play, and promote only a single type of strategy. I'd prefer the game to be more lenient, as it lets people try out different starter plants, and different sorts of builds, without worrying too much about their turn count.
I did end up adding way more stats to the end screen so that if people wanted to compete for lowest amount of runs/mutations, or highest points they could do so, without making the game unfun for those (basically everyone) who wanted to play casually!
And that's it for the last part of the post-game devlog, thank you so much for reading (and for playing)! Stay tuned for the post-mortem! I have lots I want to discuss regarding what went right, what went wrong, and future directions for the game!
#gamedev#videogame#gamemaker#devblog#programming#pixel art#indiedev#codeblr#roguelike#roguelite#life sim#incremental
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Hi Idrelle, I was wondering--Wayfarer is already such a huge game, and you project that it will be millions of words. Are you concerned at all about how Twine will handle such a large game? Do you do anything to ensure that it doesn't lag or crash? I am considering making a (large and complex) game in Twine, and I don't want to get in too deep before discovering some issues. For example, is there a limit to how many images you can have?
This is an excellent question! It's one I've been researching since I started development and there's a few things I've learned along the way.
There are two main concerns when it comes to Twine games and size:
Lag in the editor (if you use the Twine editor)
Lag in the game itself
Editor Lag
The first is fairly straightforward to handle, but it depends on your preferred working method. The Twine editor starts to lag around the 500-700 passage mark (there may be slight differences as to when the lag starts to happen depending on which version of the editor you are using and your PC). This means that it is nearly impossible to make a large game in a single story file.
One way to get around the lag is to work in multiple separate story files and then compile them together using Tweego. I have a couple tutorials about this here and here.
The other option (which may be easier, it depends on how you prefer to work) is to ditch the Twine editor completely and use Twee 3 language extensions in Visual Studio Code. There are a bunch of other benefits to working in VSCode (syntax highlighting, etc), but the set-up can be finnicky. I don't like working in VSCode, so the most I can do is direct you here.
Game Lag
The primary cause of game lag comes down to how variables are stored within the game's history states. States are what allow the player to navigate the game with a back button - how many states you have will control how many moments they're allowed to undo. If it's set to 50, then the player can reverse 50 passages before they're stopped, if it's 100, then they can go back 100.
But in short, what's happening behind the scenes here is that when the player navigates through passage history, all of the variables they have recorded so far get cloned. If your game has a large amount of variables controlling different gameplay elements, then the information being stored in the player's session will bloat, which causes lag during saves, loads and passage transitions.
In SugarCube, the best way to fix this is to set your history states to 1 by putting this in your Story JavaScript:
Config.history.maxStates = 1;
However, this means that your game will have no passage navigation:
You CANNOT have a back button
All your game menus will have to be done through overlays and dialogue boxes. Using passages themselves and requiring the player to navigate through them and use a return button will trap the player in the menu. You can use the built-in dialogue box for this purpose, but if you want game menus that are a little heftier, HiEv's SlideWin Overlay does the trick (this is what I use in Wayfarer).
Some additional things you can do to help prevent lag:
unset variables if you're done using them
use temporary variables where you can
If you want to get really fancy, you can use something like HiEv's FlagBit code to store multiple pieces of information on a single integer value.
Images
Images won't really contribute to lag as long as you put them in a separate asset folder as part of your game's directory (explained here). There is one exception - if you have code that pre-loads image assets on start-up, it will increase your load's time for browser players. If you've ever had a long load time when starting Wayfarer, this is the reason.
As to how many you can have - it depends? If you're planning on your game to be playable online and using a hosting site like itch.io, there's some specific file requirements that cannot be exceeded for browser-based games (ZIP files cannot contain more than 1000 individual files, the size of all extracted content cannot be greater than 500MB, etc). But if you intend for your game to be downloadable and played offline, then this isn't really a concern.
Regardless of all of the above, I cannot say that you will be 100% fine making a very large game in Twine. I haven't hit limitations yet, but I am prepared to. It's always good to have a backup plans in mind as you proceed. In my case, it's splitting the game into a trilogy and using save imports to move the player's data between games, but if I ever do reach the point where Twine cannot handle what I'm doing, then I'll switch engines.
Hope this helps!
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hi, i love your blog! its nice to see others enjoying the male yandere trope too. can i ask for some fun yandere game recommendations that are on itch? Thanks!
I actually have quite a lot of games I've played on itch.io that you can find on my masterlist as well as in my recommendation asks . I've recommended some r18 games on itch.io in this list here, so I'll try to focus on the games that I've liked that are for all ages.
Parasite in Love - a good game for Halloween, explores the idea of being infested by a yandere parasite and surviving it.
Heart Fragment - it's had a big update as well, but it's very well made from the story to the art. The yandere is Kay though he's more of a clingy yandere, but it's a very good game.
Yandere Heaven - really, all of @melancholy-marionette's stuff is great, but this one does a very good recreation of the original Yandere Heaven drama cds.
Portrait of Feathers - a short but atmospheric game about an angel who loves you. Future Recommendation.
ITYH: A Horror Otome - really, anything made by Amiralo is good, but this I think is their most recent game and it was very unique and bittersweet.
Stuck in a Yandere Visual Novel... Help!! - I'm a big fan of comedy and this one had me in spades. It's currently just a demo, but even for a demo, I really do like it.
Infatuation- It's really well made in terms of story and there's are about six yanderes and a bunch of endings. I think while the art could be better, the game makes up for it.
Pocket Boyfriend/Pretty Boy Panic - both made by Bingzi who I think does a good job of mixing yanderes and horror.
Tentador Leches - actually I think this creator actually made another yandere game which I need to check, but depending on how you interpret it, this one does have a yandere. Future Recommendation.
There are a bunch of other ones that I have either in my masterlist or in my drafts, (most of the ones in my drafts are r18 vns but that's another story) so if you want to find some more, they are in there. Hopefully this is a good list to play through though.
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Comet Hook devlog #3
First prototype done !!!
-----------------------------
Other devlogs : 1 - 2- 3
-----------------------------
New devlog !!!
I finished the prototype and you can play it :)
(it is bad though, but that's the point ! i can see what works and what doesn't)
Here's what new down below :o
So first, i'm sorry for the lack of devlogs, I actually finished the prototype a month and a half ago, but I needed to tweak some stuff before releasing it. And uh college stuff and I had to study. But I have a break right now so here we are :)
I wanted to lock in to finish the prototype, it is quite rushed but it helps to fail faster. That's why I removed a bunch of animation and simplified some stuff so i could work more on the gameplay loop (and now it's your problem >:) ).
And so, here are some notable changes : (also some gif are from old builds of the game, so stuff are a bit different on the public prototype)
Fusing comets ! Replaces having multiple comets at the same time (Having multiples comets should be an upgrade, but heh too lazy to code it)
There's three type of upgrade right now :
D -> Defense (bunch of extra health)
A -> Attack (extra health + extra damage)
S -> Speed (extra health + extra speed)
The little number under the letter is its health. So when you hit a fish with the comet, only the first upgrade will be hurt.
You can have up to three upgrades at once.
Catch multiple fishes
Catching multiples fishes at the same time grants you a bigger and stronger comet ! Isn't that cool ? But now if you do bad at the minigame, it will end (you can see the fish health at the right, and yours at the left).
Also fishes stay stunned for a limited time now, so you can't catch all of them at the same time
The Shop
I will not speak about how it looks
But anyway, take a comet, throw it in the sell box, and take an item like a comet and throw it in the buy box ! easy
And if you want money outside of selling, there's some gold fishes swimming around that you can KILL for money <3
Mini bosses
You see these little red orbs ? Destroy all the fishes around it and it will be unlock.
Attack it again, and !!! A miniboss !!!
Catch them all and you'll finish the level
A map to explore with upgrades
These little thingy make you stronger (health, speed and attack), collect them !
An actual boss ! (no spoilers hehe)
niark niark you'll have to suffer through the whole prototype
Now that the prototype is done, here are my thougths on it
I think it's a bit too hard and not that much intuitive, it also doesn't feel that much like a fishing game :/
The fishing minigame is also kinda boring, but that's because I didn't bother coding something smart. Though I think I can make it better in an other way.
I'm not a big fan of the gameplay loop, having to fight some minibosses could be cool but the way I did it doesn't really work
And finally comets can get annoying ! At the end you have too much of them and that's a waste of performance + no one will go get the comets they left behind, so I do need to work on it.
I go a bit more in depth in the itch.io description :
So I'll make another prototype (but I'll remove the boss at the end, it isn't worth it for a prototype, but for a demo sure! )
And for the youtube video version of these devlogs, I learning to write music to not rely on copyrighted content but it takes time :(
Anyway I hope you'll still have fun playing it though (three out of four people that tried the game liked it, that's neat)
Next devlog will be about another game, I want to try out some other games idea. I hope to be able to release it in a month or less, depends how I'm feeling (im sick of coding, drawing is easier and I can't even do that because it goes against the idea of prototyping argh !!!)
Thank you for reading this devlog and have a good day
bye byeeeee!!!!
#comethook devlog#comethook#devlog#game development#gamedev#indiedev#indiegamedev#game#fishing game#itch.io
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