Game Jam - Blog Posts
Charonwood!
my solo submission for Dungeon Crawler Jam 2023
Short lil dungeon crawler game where you flip coins, hit gummy bears and steal their lunch money
Play it here if you like! https://downtownhipcheck.itch.io/charonwood
Have a cool day B)
Me showing up to the game jam in my all black outfit, skull t-shirt, and studded belt to craft the goofiest little guys I can conjure
1st vitasunday visual novel
a sunday visual novel has released by the name of "Cures Most Fickle"
i hope you can check it out and share your thoughts on my attempt at capturing the transition of the los angeles anime con subculture to something new
A Game By Its Cover 2023
I took part in Game Jam A Game By Its Cover 2023 I invite you to play the game I made. This game is weird, ultimate, but i hope, a fun to play!
literally made a gamejam game about him (it's called Nosferat on itch.io for anyone interested) love this man
i need to smoke a joint with him so so bad
Always happy to see a good grisly mystery! Just played "Disconnected" a fantastic visual novel by Teharra Rose.
You're a 911 dispatcher. You're taking to a woman who wakes up in an ice bath. She doesn't know how she got there. Can you save her life?
Once upon a time...
I wrote a story about a powerful spirit trapped in a tree and the bard that helps to break the curse.
It was written for a very special little bard who was just learning to read. Some years have passed and the bard has grown and now we're adapting the story into a visual novel using Ren'Py.
We're working on bringing the fairytale to life for the Once Upon a Time VN Jam, including the magical song.
I'm working on it using a kalimba as it's a great portable little instrument... Perfect for a travelling bard.
Hopefully I can make a song worthy of such a special quest.
Doing some experimental drawing for my next visual novel project.
This blossoming tree has a spirit trapped inside. In this gentle fairytale you embark on a quest to release her.
I'm thinking the hand drawn style has a kind of story book charm which I like a lot. Especially as I'm hoping to submit this to the Once Upon a Time VN Jam.
The season of scare's dark tendrils are ebbing away to make room for winter's symphony but if you have time for one more supernatural story, give Spirit Driver a go.
This wonderfully cozy Halloween story took the first place winner in the Spooktober Visual Novel game jam and I wished I played it sooner!
The game features a cast of humans and supernatural beings and a cab driver who seems to walk in both worlds. There's heart warming dialogue, subtle and witty jokes and lovely pixel graphic art.
If you're thinking about giving it a go, please do!
There's only 16 hours left of the Spooktober Visual Novel Game Jam!
I want to say a big thank you to everyone involved in the game jam this year! The quality has been amazing! So many talented creators are involved this year. You are all magnificent... the developers, artists, music makers, voice actors, streamers, and the organisers!
Of course I want to also give a big shout out to the players. All of you lovely folks give so much to us by playing the games and the feedback helps us to make things better in future.
If you're wanting to get involved, don't worry... there's still time!
Over 270 Spooktober Visual novels await you! Check them out below...
Thanks for stopping by and stay safe my fiendish friends!
Lydia really hates this statue. Why does she have a statue that she hates in her labyrinth?
https://valhallions.itch.io/lydiaslabyrinth
The nights are growing colder as the barrier between this world and the next weakens. The season of scare is well and truly upon us.
If you're looking for something to stir your cauldron you can check out this years Spooktober Visual Novel Jam where over 270 free and new spooky experiences await your ghoulish delight. If you like any of the horrific offerings please give them your support by rating them for the jam! Time grows short as there's only a week left to rate.
You can see my entry, a choose your own adventure game here.
Thanks for stopping by and take care in the Autumnal air.
It's October 1st, you know what time it is!
Lydia's Labyrinth is out just in time to hit that Spooktober Visual Novel Jam release deadline!
We wanted to mash up the feel of a choose your own adventure book and a mystery story. Then we threw in a hearty helping of a larger than unlife, thirsty vampire who seems to know a lot about you.
Don't keep her waiting darling!
Game jam stuff - today the writer wanted a tiger for the labyrinth!
A tiger getting ready to strike...
So I know I'm not gonna get time to hand draw a vicious tiger so I thought I'd see what I could cobble together from available images on pexels and pixabay.
With a bit of tweaking and some filters I came up with a tiger. This project is getting big so I'm having to resort to some quick and dirty tactics. Here's hoping it works!
Lydia's Labyrinth is coming to the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam 2024 - now with a tiger!
A sneak peek at Lydia's Labyrinth... Mwah Darlings!
It's day 2 of the Spooktober VN jam! Here's a quick image drop to show off the look we're going for in Lydia's Labyrinth!
As always, royalty free photos from pixabay are doing the heavy lifting for backgrounds and graphic design. I add a lot of colouring and effects to make it look more vampy.
I've also started the coding in Renpy and Robert is working on the writing, maze design and sound effects. So it's all go and I hope we can get this dangerous labyrinth finished!
Hope your all having a great Spooktober and keep healthy during the jam!
Introducing Lydia...
We're getting ready for Spooktober season with our upcoming escape visual novel - Lydia's Labyrinth!
Can you escape from her evil clutches and solve the mystery of your shared past?
For the third year we're taking part in Spooktober visual novel jam. Can't wait to see what everyone creates!
Travel Devil - better the devil you know!
There's less than a week left of judging for the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam and it's been a fantastic experience for us so far! Travel Devil has received such wonderful feedback and critiques. We take on board everything that is written to us so we can make better games every time!
So today I'm going to give a little insight into how and why Travel Devil came to be.
Do you wanna know how Travel Devil came to exist?
Originally we put together a game idea for a spooky pet adoptions agency. The game would take place on Halloween and have six pets (3 unlocked and 3 locked) to play with. Each pet was going to have a unique story and minigame associated with it. It was codenamed "Spoopy Pets" and it was far too much for the me and Robert to take on and complete in the Spooktober VN Jam timeframe. We worked on it for the first two days of the jam before we were flagging problems up, so we changed trajectory. It's not a dead idea though, it's in the list of rainy day ideas.
Speaking of the rainy day ideas list, that's where Travel Devil comes in. We thought this up a while ago but just put it on the back burner as there was no time to work on it. The concept was simple - a demon escapes hell and starts a travel log. Then the servants of hell follow in its wake starting the apocalypse march on humanity. When Spoopy Pets became too big we had a look at what we had to play with and Travel Devil just sort of fell into place. Robert started writing and I started drawing.
Character design went pretty smoothly. I went for a mix of cartoon styles, drawing inspiration from things like Dead End, Gravity Falls, The Simpsons and Garfield.
Traditionally, visual novels use anime and manga style design but truth be told, I'm not very good at that style. It takes me ages to make characters look good when I try to draw like that. Hats off to all the wonderful artists in this jam who made beautiful, scintillating characters. I'm so impressed by their dedication to fantastic character art.
One of the first pitfalls I encountered was background art. I like to use sites like Pixabay to get backgrounds but recently it's been flooded with AI artworks. The game jam expressly forbids AI use in your game so we had to get creative.
Fortunately this game revolves around travel vlog creation in Paris and we found loads of creative commons photos of the famous tourist destination. Seriously there are so many fantastic photographers out there and it was a complete life and time saver for the jam. All I had to do was add a translucent white filter to the top of the photos to make the characters pop out and we had our backgrounds!
Development went well once we got on the right track. Travel Devil was made using Ren'py which is a joy to develop with. We did have to wind back our ideas at one point as both Robert and I got sick with a nasty bug but we made it. We stripped back some choices and streamlined the game to make sure we could get finished. Originally, we wanted the player to be able to unlock multiple hidden scenes in one playthrough. As the deadline loomed we simplified it so that the player would only see one of three potential side stories that were growing due to the activities of our main character Tornacense per playthrough. We included 7 unlockable scenes and also 6 unlockable images in our gallery.
There's also a nifty guide to finding all the unlockables right here if you want a more relaxing time while playing.
If you've had a chance to play Travel Devil you may have noticed that we planted some seeds in our side stories that will be big plot points as we go forward. Travel Devil is going to be a series of five games travelling around Europe making video journals and outrunning the underworld.
Tornacense and Kirby will grow, we'll meet lots of new strange and devastating people and love could be just around the corner! Who knows? That choice will be yours.
If you want to check out the first installment of Travel Devil you can nab a pentagram portal and find it right here.
Travel Devil was made for the 5th Annual Spooktober Visual Novel Jam in under 30 days. The next one will be made with a lot more time dedicated to it!
Thanks for stopping by!
DoubleFree - Artist and coder for Travel Devil
Continuing the showcase of the 5th Annual Spooktober Visual Novel Jam, I'm delighted to show you Jackalope by SmallBunny.
This visual novel is something truly special. I highly recommend it.
From the eerie, slightly abstract visuals to the heart touching story which hit me far too close to home, this is exactly the kind of game that gets me excited for Spooktober!
It's frightening (but not terrifying), cute, sweet, sad and hopeful all in one delicate, beautiful package.
There are certain games I come back to on a regular bases. This is one of them now. I will play this game again. When the time is right.
From a technical point of view it was built in Ren'py and has some lovely features such as an inventory system and the choice based exploration of a building. Also I would recommend checking out the ??? button on the main menu. It made me smile.
It's partially voice acted and the performances are soft and sweet. Perfect!
All in all it's delightful. If you have an hour check it out and give these lovely people a rating for the jam! Voting ends on the 28th October.
Thanks for stopping by!
DoubleFree
Candy, Costumes, & Canines?!? and Eldritch Idol - Trying out games for the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam
For the past couple of days I've been trying to make a web build in ren'py of my visual novel for the jam but my efforts have proved less than stellar. The sound cues are slightly wrong and as Travel Devil relies on sound effects and music to play a part in the humour and narrative it's looking like a bust for now.
Ah well... At least I know how to do a web build now so that's good.
And it leads nicely into a game I tried recently that's web build worked great.
Candy, Costumes, & Canines?!?
Canines, Costumes & Canines?!? is a visual novel made in ren'py for the Spooktober 23 game jam and it's a cozy Hallowe'en narrative game. It features adorable costumes (seriously the sausage dog costume is delightful) and well designed cartoon style characters.
The story is about a canine costume contest and follows a mystery of how one of the contestants got poisoned. It has a nice twist and good ending.
The game has slight flickering on the character sprites in the browser version but that is far from a deal breaker. It's definitely charming and it's easy to get past that.
Eldritch Idol
I'm really enjoying cute games this year so naturally I had to check out Eldritch Idol.
The presentation here is strong.
Eldritch Idol is another ren'py devloped visual novel with a whopping 28 endings! The GUI and menus are really well designed and just feel so polished.
There's a couple of nice character choices for you as the producer to Kuku the cute, if terrifying, idol.
The story features plenty of reminders that this world is full of unspeakable abominations but Kuku presents it all in a perky and adorable way.
The gameplay follows managing Kuku's stats by doing daily activities to improve her abilities all in the hopes of creating the ultimate idol. There's sweet costumes and romance options too.
Eldritch Idol is a great, well made visual novel with an irrestable charm.
I'm not sure what I'll be playing next as I'm still going to battle with my own entry in the jam to try and get that web browser build done! I have a couple of ideas on how to make though, so fingers crossed!
Thanks for stopping by!
DoubleFree
Tunnel Vision and How to Summon a Demon. Spooktober Visual Novel Showcase!
Hello and welcome everyone,
It's great to have started playing the entries in the Annual Spooktober Visual Novel Jam. This year I'm hoping to play as many as possible to get into the Hallow'een spirirt!
So far I've given two spooky gems a go and I want to show them off so here goes!
Tunnel Vision
The first one I've tried this year is Tunnel Vision and wow is this game something! Tunnel Visions was made in Unity and is a horror visual novel with five different endings. It opens up with some gorgeous artwork and user interface details. From the get-go this visual novel shows it's technical prowess. The story follow a charcter who wakes up in an unsetling predicament with no memory of how they got there. The story twists around, subverting expectations and changing your perception of the character that you are playing with some genuinely stomach dropping moments. I played this just before bed and felt incredibly creeped out as a result but also intrigued to know more so that's a big win for this team!
I want to take some time and touch on the sound design too. It was very immersive and great quality. I really enjoyed the music and sound effects too. Definitely complimented the story nicely.
This was a fantastic game to start my terror-riffic journey with!
How to Summon a Demon
After playing Tunnel Vision, I wanted to try something completely different and this visual novel was the perfect treat.
How to Summon a Demon is a visual novel devleoped in Ren'py about a demon summoning video tutorial and you had me at demons! I have a soft spot for putting them in my games and stories (as you may have guessed if you've seen my lastest game Travel Devil) so this game was a must play! Plus I was delighted that I could play it in my browser!
The game is downright adorable with wonderful character and scene design. The purpose of the game is to build a demon by making choices throughout the video. You choices can lead to summoning 20 different demons on different playthroughs and they look fantastic! The interface really elevated this game with gorgeous artwork, especially during the choices. On their itch page they mention that development is continuing beyond this jam so it looks like we'll see big things for this novel.
I'm looking forward to trying so many more games this Spooktober and have had a blast with the first two.
You can check out all the entries here:
Thanks for stopping by!
DoubleFree
Spooktober Visual Novel Game Jam - Judging is LIVE!
And we got our game finished!
Hi and welcome everyone!
It's been a whirlwind this September but I'm delighted to annaounce that Travel Devil is live and a part of the jam!
It's a short VN about a botched demonic summoning turning into the adventure of a lifetime. Our host, Tornacense, finally escapes the administrative department of hell to pursue his dreams of becoming the hottest new content creator on Doomtube! But will all this exposure lead to unwanted attention from the upper echelons of demon society?
Travel Devil was made in collaboration with Robert from Valhallions. He was fantastic to collab with and got stuck in with all aspects of the game.
I worked on the coding, character design, image manipulation and GUI. I'm so glad we got it finished on time! It was a mad rush at the end and there were times we weren't sure we would make it. I'm still so tired but so happy!
Also, I can't wait to try the other entries in the jam. This is my favourite time of the year, it's going to be so much fun!
You can check all the games out here:
Thanks for stopping by!
DoubleFree
This was so much fun last year! I've already got some game ideas brewing!
Got more stuff done for the inscryption game jam I'm hoping it turns out good for being made in two weeks (;≧Д≦)y
I'm working on a gamejam for inscryption and these are my backgrounds so far for botopia.
Imagine trying to make a game that mixes ULTRAKILL's movement and retro style, TF2's medieval mode weapon constraints and FISH in under two weeks.
lol who would even try that
btw this was a test map
