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Panzer Strider is the game I am working on I just adapted it to the synopsis contest.

I have paranoid Schizophrenia and am trying to find a way to channel the subjective way of viewing reality into a creative endeavor. I agree the synopsis could have been tighter I wrote it in one sitting after two energy drinks lol

Also... the drew freak name thing is my stage name for music. On paper, it is Mason Andrew Freakbut I go by Drew

I would vote but I can't figure out how to hide the text behind the spoilers thing. Though I enjoyed everyone else's writing, my favorite was Stories of the Connected Continent.

This is 2nd attempt and a more naturalistic approach. I won't share for a bit after this just wanted to show I am really trying to pay attention to the critiques and that I appreciate it.

Thank you I will redo it. You make a lot of solid points.

I was trying to make something that was funny to watch but it doesn't really make sense as is so I am going to research some more. I will try something more naturalistic this time. thank you again.

This is an animation inspired by pen wards adventure time style. I cut up the sprite in asprite and cut and posted each limb on a new layer so it was like cut-up animation with some hand-drawn touching up of the walk cycle. the kid was kind of excitable so made it a run which while not as naturalistic (as far as in real life he would get tired if he ran everywhere) but as I thought sooted his character and gave it some energy.  also if the image did not post correctly I have been trying to get it to show up in the body of the post but if it doesn't I will delete it and try again.

Panzer Strider:
or, We're all wayward bound
By, Drew Freak.

Thomas Roberts is being court marshaled. The man is in a cell and his Panzer Strider (a biomechanical clone that has been genetically modified to be used as a psychically controlled bipedal tank) is going to be broken down to be used as raw materials in a printer. Thomas stopped his unit from massacering a village on a small moon of Toi-715. They had their orders and he had a conscience.

However when the Yama Yama man enters his life... Things get Phawking weird. The Yama Yama man is a near-omnipotent ambiguous force of nature and he looks like Koko the clown from the Max and Dave Fleischer cartoons.

He gives Thomas Roberts a ten-can of spun sugar (looks and tastes like cotton candy and this stuff gives the user psychic powers [though it can trigger psychosis and addiction.]) Then the clown disappeared. thomas used his psychic powers to fight his way to his panzer strider and flew off to freedom. But, Thomas will spend the next decade of his life hunting down a question mark... who is the Yama Yama man?

He will make friends with a psychotically induced hallucination that could be a sparrow or a dove named messiah. Fall in love with a young woman named Terry who has a different personality when she talks in her sleep. She will tell anyone in the room about her life in a strange nightmare realm called Wonderland and how her name is Alice. All the while running from and resisting Namomi Mercia and a Golum that skeleton glow in the dark named Little Horn: a pair of bounty hunters hired to hunt him down and bring him to "justice".

He asked messiah what to do... "how can I start over?" and the potentially hallucinated bird said, "You need guns lawyers, and money".

After adventure and misadventure to the point of absurdity, he lands on a planet of anthropomorphic carnivorous mushroom people. Who are they and why do they worship the Yama Yama man?  Their sacred scripture is a thousand-year-old piece of music that they sang both bawdy and disturbing. that dates back to the root of humanity a 1908 Broadway song... from the pre-star-traveling days on Earth. A Broadway show tune from a thousand years ago... Or, the demon in the Stars?

Is it all paranoid rambling from a spun sugar addict? or is there a solution to this puzzle? Can the juxtaposition of language in it's contrast create anything but reductive absurdity? A stone falls till it hits the earth, is there anything to transcend? all this the meaning and truth of life will be explained you only have to keep turning those pages! Tune in next week for all these answers and more.

no no it is meant to be funny lol. the game may be scary but the animation was just to practice and get a vibe for the look and see how to animate them.

Though I may change the perspective of the sprites. I am hoping to abstract the game. Making it on a flat plane. which may very well not work with the genre because it would lose a sense of space. So I have to experiment and think about that.

Hello everyone.

I am looking for some people to collaborate with for smaller projects more for fun while I work on a larger one.

I have a huge amount of free time right now. I am hoping that if I do some music or pixel art maybe someone could help me learn how the adventure game studio engine works.

I am hoping to help with

Story Design
(I have written five novellas and my writing has been compared to Samuel Becket and Thomas Pynchon.)

Animation (only in pixel art)
Character Art (I use an ink brush for sumi e style ink painting and do some digital painting but with less skill.)
Background Art (Though I am less confident with backgrounds.)
Music (I have released 400 tracks over the years on different sites and have music on most major streaming services under the name Mason Andrew Freak.
Playtesting
Voice Acting

I have several ideas for a smaller project if anyone is looking to collaborate and wants help or has an idea they would like to share. send me a PM so we can discuss it.

Hello, I am Drew. I am trying to learn as much about the adventure game studio engine as I can right now.

I am hoping to make connections and hopefully collaborate with fellow forum members on some smaller games in the future while I am working on my own project.

Hope you all are doing well.

It's hard to say anything without context.

Did the image not post or do you mean in the context of the characters in the game?

I wasn't sure if I should post details about the game because it is not ready to be announced yet or is not complete enough for that thread. I worked on the world and characters as a novel and a comic before trying it as a game.

I am interested in if the graphics style would read ok in an adventure game? But can post details about the project if its ok?

If you don't die and instead are just knocked out to a point of return, one system that I have been trying to play with is items that you don't know for sure what they are. Say you get an "herb", it can maybe heal, but say you eat and get knocked out next time you look at that herb it can instead read "poison herb" and the like. Essentially having some knowledge you get to appear in the gameplay.

that is a neat idea.

you could do some Alice in Wonderland kind of stuff with that. like magic mushrooms but with question marks over the icons when you hover over them. so you have to interact with them to know what they do like you said.

or you could also have a world only accessible through psychedelics like Tim Schaefer's original idea for full throttle.

 I not much of a programmer but I don't think any of this would be hard to implement from a code perspective.

I think the most untapped thing about adventure games is how with just some simple system put on the framework they become more of a game in the mechanical sense without losing their great stories.

I think the monkey island (I have not played those yet but am going to) sounds closer to what I am thinking.

The only stat would be Hp but I may not do that even. I don't want stats in the game but want consequences I have thought about not failing state like Lucas arts games but then having the enemy mock you for beating you once. or maybe have an event in some situations where they capture you and put you in a dungeon though that could get tedious if it happens often. and not experience points the only progression being narative.

I think I will try to write a short example using the earthbound tree enemy. So it is a sentient tree that has a face and can talk but can not walk because it is a tree. having multiple solutions to a situation would be key. so it wont become tedious. The tree has been given the key to the castle to guard because it is so strong. there is a torch in another room we can interact with so we think we can set the tree on fire. if we do this the room will be darker and harder to see from now on. but we have a axe so if we cut down the tree there will be a struggle and we will lose some hp and if our hp holds out we chop off its hands and then cut it down. I don't know if it's possible but you could make it where you have to walk away when the tree is swaying so it doesnt fall on you.

So what I am thinking is no random encounters. but branching path events. with the only trackable stat being hp. which may cause you get knocked out when your hp reaches zero but it is not game over. whenever you continue you have a third of your health which limits the blunt force options like swashbuckling. because depending on the strength of the enemy there is a chance your character could get messed up. so combat would work like the frog for whom the bell tolls. where there is a rock-paper item system changes creating a rock-paper scissors combat prowess. but every enemy encounter has a solution that doesn't involve using that mechanic.

one benefit of a system like this is the player's stats are defined by equipment and there is no RPG progression beyond that Metroidvania-like equipment system. it makes combat simply one more part of the narrative vocabulary. making an adventure game where you can tell different kinds of stories and even if you want to blunt force push through an encounter the mechanics encourage you to be a trickster of sorts and sense the diminishing resources that is your HP won't last forever you will have to adapt to it and think outside of the box.

I apologize if I posted the GIF wrong I am not very technical and kind of a slow learner.

all constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated.

I am worried without portraits the characters will all blur together. So I may work on that next.


https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/82cf3fd5-ae41-4216-9a10-773328d7cb2b/dhf81gp-25dded67-c022-4e7b-aa47-ea9318ed1d29.gif?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzgyY2YzZmQ1LWFlNDEtNDIxNi05YTEwLTc3MzMyOGQ3Y2IyYlwvZGhmODFncC0yNWRkZWQ2Ny1jMDIyLTRlN2ItYWE0Ny1lYTkzMThlZDFkMjkuZ2lmIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.EPbOOuo04_wlGg82Bz3RJKJ6Vj9ioN8RmNPCHCL8J14

I am working on something and I  want some input from the community. So I can have a better perspective on the appeal of the idea or lack of it.

Combat encounters more as a puzzle than stat grinding. the idea came to me playing Earthbound where when you beat a tree monster it falls and damages your party. I love interactive fiction and adventure-style stories tend to have conflict be it Indiana Jones or Hunter x Hunter.

So if your character has a stat like hp and that is the only resource and there are no variables just choices that raise or lower it. it makes combat more of a narrative thing. it becomes a part of the story. I think maybe adding a checkpoint system to combat encounters allows it to remain a puzzle. and every encounter should either be avoidable or have a solution that allows the player to not take damage.

The question becomes why have combat if there is no fail state (in the long view sense it will checkpoint at the start of hostile encounters)... I think it has to do with why the combat is there. I don't think they should be random but meticulously planned events. no different than the other puzzles except the hp resource whose main function is resource management to discourage not being creative in the encounters.

How would you implement conflict resolution in narrative games where diplomacy fails?

I am kind of new to adventure games. tim schafers work is some of my favorite entertainment in this world. but other than Neverhood and some indie games I have not played many of the classics but am starting to look for some to play.

as a side note any experimental adventure games or ones with combat systems you could recommend? I would be grateful. I have begun to be obsessed with the genre. and trying to get a feel for what can be done with it.

thank you for reading this and I hope you have a good day.