Spring Break

[Ghost]

Back in April 2013 there was a "Spring Cleaning" MAGS. I started work on a game but didn't make it within the deadline. For a while it sat there on my hard drive gathering dust and being laughed at by the defragmentation subroutine. But waste not want not, and things did improve a good deal!

SPRING BREAK
An Interactive Spring Cleaning
Pepper is a wind-up doll living a happy life in Candyland- each day a cheerful summer day with her friends, playing and having adventures. One day, however, she finds her clockwork stuck with candy and syrup, and that IS bad when you rely on winding yourself up once per day.



Pepper sets out to restore her gear-box to former glory in a rather literal spring cleaning. And she'll need all the help she can get.



Fortunately she's not on her own, and toys do come with a manual...



...but when even the water's nothing but sirup, how DO you actually clean your spring?

SPRING BREAK started as a MAGS game and remains a short classic point-and-click. I recently updated the majority of the old assets; just for fun, compare this old orignal screen to the updated ones:

Spoiler

[close]

Features:
- the now-standard BASS-style interface
- half a dozen rooms, all of them with EXITS
- classic puzzles all the way
- animations galore
- probably the highest calorie-to-pixel ratio of any AGS game

Should hit the database around March and I hope you'll be along for the ride.

__

I'll post updates on overall progress right here; make sure to check back every once in a while.

14.2. - Rusty Gears WIP
- Plot summary and game bible are in place and ready to be ignored.
- Interface, Framework and Locations in place.
- Base Animations for all characters in place.
- Work on Puzzle scripting starts.

16.3 - Tic-Toc WIP
- Progress has been a bit slower these days, mostly because now I have all the major puzzles written down. To make them interesting they need to be linked into sequence; so
there's a good bit of planning right now.
- Spring Break is going to have an original sound track. Our very own qptainNemo has agreed to lend his services and create some ear candy to go along with the eye candy. I'm very proud to have him aboard; you may remember the downright awesome tunes he's provided over the time.

Designer's Diary: No sense of scale
This screenshot showcases a neat dilemma: Scale is all over the place in this game.

The Patchwork Pepper doll stands exactly 12 inches high, yet our protagonist interacts with characters that clearly fit into a landscape made for the average human. And that's not taking into account the fact that in this land, a slice of cake can be smaller than a jelly baby...
It's fun to simply ignore scale and just mash stuff together. The minute you start building a valley out of pancakes and sirup, you can be pretty sure that people WON'T complain about that kind of stuff. You've essentially removed scale. And even that makes for some neat puzzles

Meet the cast

Uncle Frostee

"A story? Ho-hum, of course I'll share one with you. So, what do you want to hear about?"
We can't say when this certain Candyland came into existence, but when it did, Uncle Frostee was there, and had always been there. Clearly the oldest inhabitant of Candyland, he's an easy-going model of "the cool uncle" we all want to have when we are kids. By tradition Uncle Frostee welcomes everyone to the land once they find their way in, and while no-one in this realm is even allowed to have a proper job, he is a bit of a lore-keeper. If anything, the huge snowman is a traditionalist to a fault, often mixing up the tales he's told so often with real life. But then again, that's uncles for you.
Uncle Frostee lives in the Frozen Dessert, a vast valley made of ice cream and semifreddo. Interestingly, the cold climate has never bothered anyone: In this world you're only cold when you want to be.

Tangy Tanya

"Ooo hi! Hallo! Let's have a party, you and me and everyone! Yay! Birthdayyyyyy parteeeeee!"
Even in Candyland sentient food is not all that common, and Tangy Tanya's one of a kind. Outgoing, cheerful, energetic and always full of ideas, she's the kind of (lollipop) person who's physically unable to be bored. While occasionally a bit too manic, she's a rainbow of inspiration for the Candyland folk, and usually the first one to invent a new game. And before you ask, yes, she IS sweet. Literally.
West of the Playgrounds, there's a small valley of natural layer cake and creamy hills, where every day is a birthday party. This is where a person like Tanya would want to live, and that's why she does just that.

Mr. Woodruff

"Winding down, eh? What's so bad about that? I enjoy winding down."
While apparently a human, Mr. Woodruff all but forgot about his past. It doesn't bother him much- Candyland is the perfect place for a peace-loving, thoughtful man with a gift
for making lemonade, and Mr. Woodruff has quickly settled in. Relaxed, easy going and lazy to a fault he's in charge of keeping the rivers ful of may wine. Rumour has it
he once, just once, lost his cool and actually raised an eyebrow at a particularly annoying fly.
That's how mellow he is. That he settled down close to the soda springs was a given.

The Scissorman

"Abra! Kadabrrraaaaa!"
Nothing is known about the man under the top hat. But even those who are afraid of him must admit that is IS a nice hat.
If you want to meet the Scissorman, you need to walk all the way to the pancake plains (just follow the smell of butter pokey) and, standing with your back to his cylinder, speak out his names three times.
Then you turn around.
If you dare.

Patchwork Pepper

"I like candy!"
The Patchwork Pepper toyline was a huge hit during the late 70s- a quality felt body stuffed with sawdust and housing a clockwork that allowed the doll to walk in a straight line "without ever stumbling" due to the surprisingly well-made gearworks. While the toy eventually fell out of favour it remains a beloved part of many a collection.
But this Pepper didn't like collecting dust in a shelf and one night wandered away to have an adventure. She found Candyland, and gladly made herself at home there: Finally in the company of people who were just like her.
Her carefree life is currently a bit on the upside-down side, but Pepper won't stop until she's cleaned up her broken gearworks. She knows just the right people to help her and, yes, it's just like having another fun adventure!

Meet The Cast is over

[Dualnames]

I want to hug something until its fluffyness kills us both.

[Galen]

That's the suavest lollypop ve ever seen.

[Gurok]

Unashamedly great use of pixels. Love the textures. It's very charming.

[bicilotti]

And want to play this so badly and play a spin-off with Mr. Woodruff as player character!

[kconan]

This looks awesome Ghost!

[arj0n]

Nice one Ghost!

[NickyNyce]

I better put a dentist on stand by before I dive into this one.

Looks sweet!

[Mouth for war]

Looks great man

[selmiak]

Now that is a sweet appetizer for the whole game! I'm totally looking forward to this!

[CaptainD]

Looking very nice indeed.  There will be cookies, right?

[Daniel Eakins]

Woah, that looks amazing! Is this set in the same universe as Once Upon A Crime?

[Monsieur OUXX]

That looks so lovely. I love the style. So clean. So inviting.

[Mandle]

OMG...I LOVED Once Upon A Crime...and this looks similar in style...

By the way...is this the one that the "Mars" landscape background is for?

[Ghost]

Thanks everyone for all the thumbs ups! Reading that is like giving your brain a nice hot shower. And sure, there will be cookies!

Daniel: It's not the same "universe"- Once Upon A Crime takes place on a patchwork world of fairy tales, this time it's a literal "Land of Cockaigne" (Schlaraffenland, Lekkerland, Bengodi, Land of Plenty and what have you)- the whimsical version where food is all over the place. I just like building landscapes out of foodstuff

Mandle: No, the Mars bar was for a Mass Effect parody game. It was not funny enough though.

[Tabata]

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S      W      E      E      T      S      !     


Can't wait to see this being released!


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[Galen]

I think Tabata may be a late 90s Geocities page somehow brought to life by dark arcane magicks.

[ThreeOhFour]

Lovely work Ghost! Those colourful pixels are as lovely as ever.

[Ghost]

Thanks a lot, sir!

Progress-meter added to first post; stay tuned.

[Mati256]

It's great to hear you are still working on this. Since I saw that pic in the MAGS thread, I wanted to know more about it.