The House of Mr Chocolate

Started by FormosaFalanster, Sat 23/01/2021 11:21:38

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FormosaFalanster

After two years documenting myself and reading and lurking on this forum and elsewhere, I dived in and after six weeks of work I can introduce my first game to you:

The House of Mr Chocolate

Mr Chocolate lives alone in his house. He never goes out, slowly loses his memory, and he is so lonely that he took the habit of talking to objects... But something is happening in this house! Explore with him what is disturbing his peaceful retreat and why something is trying to force him out.

Like in most adventure/point-and-click games, you will have a "Talk To" command, but Mr Chocolate is all alone... Only by mimicking Mr Chocolate's habit will you succeed in completing the game, and hopefully you will get to experience his sense of solitude and the emotions he is going through.

The AGS page link: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2510-the-house-of-mr-chocolate/

The game includes:
- A unique "fog-of-war" system: the house is all dark and as you walk through you will be able to see more of its corners.
- A mystery around the poignant story of a lonely man.
- A pixel-art house to explore with a strong personality and many hidden items.
- An astonishing number of dialogues for a game with only one character...







You can find the game here: https://formosafalanster.itch.io/the-house-of-mr-chocolate

Please report bugs and typos to me (I am not a native speaker!)

Last but not least! I intended this game to be a proof that I am able to sustain a project from beginning to end. Apart from the sprite of the main character and a few random sprites in game, I used open source pixel art. If you enjoyed The House of Mr Chocolate, you know I am able to work on a game and bring it to completion, so please reach out so we can work on future games together! If you want to make a game with me, let me know!

heltenjon

This is a very good first game. The "fog of war" works great!  (nod)

KyriakosCH

This is the Way - A dark allegory. My Twitter!  My Youtube!

sthomannch

Was fun! Good riddles. Only when saving games, after a restart, they were gone. But you can finish the game in reasonable time and without dying or being blocked.

FormosaFalanster

Quote from: sthomannch on Sun 24/01/2021 09:58:04
Was fun! Good riddles. Only when saving games, after a restart, they were gone. But you can finish the game in reasonable time and without dying or being blocked.

How the hell is that even possible, I did not change anything about the saving system from the standard template... is there any explanation to that?

FormosaFalanster

Well never mind, it's solved, if you load the latest version you will not have this problem  :-D

Shadow1000

I stayed up late last night playing this game and it was worth it. Overall an excellent release. Good puzzles and the way the game progresses in a way that you learn more about what's going on in the player's mind is really compelling. There is an amazing amount of objects and quite an impressive world to explore. Puzzles are well designed.

The only problems I encountered were similar to what was mentioned: your saved games are missing (now fixed) but when you start the game again you can restore from a save.

Another problem is that many things to do can be done over and over
Spoiler
one example is getting the incense.
[close]

If you plan to develop the game further, I would recommend some music or sound effects. That might bring it to life a bit more. Otherwise, very well designed and executed.

Laura Hunt

So I haven't finished yet, but I'm really enjoying it so far. The one-character setting and "fog of war" effect are quite original and immediately give the game a lot of personality.

My feedback so far would be:

1) The cursors for "Walk to", "Talk to" etc are a bit hard to see, as light orange on dark orange isn't exactly the most readable combination. I would suggest using a more contrasty/legible colour combo.

2) Full stops are missing at the end of all the character's lines.

3) Like Shadow1000 said, it really needs some music and more sound effects (e.g., footsteps) to really bring it to life. Audio always helps so much with immersion.

Looking forward to getting to the end, but in any case, congratulations on your first release :)

FormosaFalanster

Many thanks to all of you who answered here or contacted me in private to give me your feedback! I am very happy my first game has such a warm and positive reception!

I have taken into account most of the comments and have amended the game accordingly, if you download it now it will include all the corrections. Some things were left behind but it is still a more fluid experience.

I have not added music because I am a mediocre musician. I also tend to enjoy games in silence so I did not really mind but it is true I should find someone to partner with for music. I also looked for free music but nothing was very appropriate, contrarily to the pixel art.

Maybe I would get my old Wurlitzer out of the storage and try to write a tune but I am not sure as I am now working on another game :)

Thanks again!

sthomannch

Again: Good work and I enjoyed it. Hope to see more :-)

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