Messages

[voice acting]

I've made a big update to the game! The changes include:

voice acting by Duffy Weber
updated graphics
updated and some new animations
new music by Paco Diago
new sound design by Max Grachev
one new puzzle
hotspot highlighter
vertical parallaxing + smoother camera movement
updated responses, the puzzles should be better signposted now
new guis, some cosmetic stuff I'm probably forgetting
and of course the biggest change: "the" in "Off the Clock" is now NOT capitalized

Perfect time to give it a go if you haven't yet!

[DM me here or ideally on Discord (https://discordapp.com/users/honza8830)]

I've made a big update to my oldest game, Off the Clock. The changes include:

• voice acting!
• updated graphics
• updated and some new animations
• new music by Paco Diago
• new sound design by Max Grachev
• one new puzzle
• hotspot highlighter
• vertical parallaxing + smoother camera movement
• updated responses, the puzzles should be somewhat better signposted now
• new guis, some cosmetic stuff I'm probably forgetting
• and of course the biggest change: "the" in "Off the Clock" is now NOT capitalized

It's a very short game, takes about 30 minutes to finish. If you'd be willing to play through it and try to catch some bugs before I publish it on Sunday, please DM me here or ideally on Discord (https://discordapp.com/users/honza8830). Linux users are especially needed . Thank you!

I just got a low-ish rating for this on Itch 2 days ago. Might be a coincidence, but it hadn't been reported before during the year and a half the game has been out... might be some Windows Defender update or something new with Itch.

Don't worry, I didn't expect you to change your mind on a whim. I was just curious about your opinion on the matter.

Sure thing! Unfortunately high-res would be much more time-consuming if I wanted to do it properly, 640x400 is still pretty forgiving when it comes to drawing details. So the retro look isn't just an artistic choice - I like it, but it's also faster to do . I was actually counting at some point and here's how long some of these backgrounds took to redraw. And that's just basic images, without the morning/sunset/night versions, animations and everything... can't imagine doing all of it in high-res.

Lovely new art.

If I were to upscale a game in this style, I think I'd go all the way and choose a high resolution - maybe with help from ESRGAN to speed up the process like they did in Broken Sword.

Output with realesrnet-x4plus :

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Output  with real ESRGAN

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Thank you for the suggestion! But to be honest, I think the 640*400 version looks much better than the AI upscaling, that would just make it bland and smudgy all over again. And I've already poured hundreds of hours into this version of the game, so I'm not going to redraw it again now.

The former, lack of shaded areas on backgrounds.

Oh, ok. Well, the backgrounds *are* shaded, but I guess the shading is pretty light and there aren't realistic shadows cast by objects. It could be better for sure, but this doesn't personally bother me that much, it works for me with the cartoony storybook look. Maybe it's one of those things where I'll see it only once I learn to do it better, and won't believe how I could have drawn it this way afterwards .

Played this now.

I do believe that this art style deserves a higher game resolution; otherwise it have to be "downgraded": to be more pixely and look less smudged in low-res.
But what bothered me most in the art is the lack of shadows! Maybe this is because of the time constraints (i understood this was made for a game jam). Your other game "Shards of God" seem to have shadowed areas, judging by the screenshots (I plan to play it next).

The game itself is pretty well built, has a good and consistent pacing, and rather well developed characters despite story being short.

The uncommon use of inventory item as a compass was quite fun to see, I believe this was already mentioned few times in this thread.

The theme of the "ancient machine" in the "ancient ruins" felt way too random, but I suppose this could be another forced decision due to a time constraints?

Thanks for playing! The smudginess is mostly time constraints (I wanted to try to make a big world quickly, and barely managed as it is), plus inexperience - it was my first time drawing in very low res. I got used to the look of it after a while and didn't expect it would stand out this much, but now it's always the number one complaint about the game and the reason I'm a bit embarrassed to show it to people in this state - it needs to be played in the two-week jam challenge context. About the shadows, you mean a lack of shadows in the drawings, or the fact that there are no regions where the character would be darker?

Point taken about the ruins, some more world-building is probably necessary there for the full version to make the whole ancient civilization thing fit into the world more naturally.

Let me know what you think once you've played Shards!

I had mailed him when I posted and he mailed me back with "Thanks for notifying me, we'll follow up with the account owner.", so hopefully he will get in touch with you.

Awesome, thank you so much! I got the account back.

Thanks, DMd him on Twitter about an hour or two ago, no response so far. Has anyone communicated with him before? He might not be getting messages from people he doesn't follow.

Yes, with several updates (they've since deleted two of my games, replaced the other two with malware and changed my name to Kastchey's). Nothing but one automated response so far.

Seems I got my Discord back though - shocked by that after Kastchey's experience, they responded and let me reset my password

It's true, both my Discord and Itch accounts are currently hacked (happened through a link I got from Kastchey's hacked account). Losing Discord history hurts, but the Itch one is the bigger disaster, hope I manage to retreive it - got all my games, access to revenue, etc. there. The fact that the hacked account is still active after *months* is baffling   

I might not be able to attend the ceremony . I'll try to at least drop in from time to time, but apologies in advance if I miss it. I asked Max Grachev who made sound to represent us though, so maybe he'll be there instead.

Many thanks to everyone who nominated! Especially excited to see both Mother Tiabata *and* Sister Ava in the Best Character category... unless it's a devious plan by Dr Noriko/Walter Gilman to divide & conquer . Congrats to all the other nominees, will be looking forward to the ceremony!

Wonderful graphics, visuals, animations and music! The overall ambient felt great.

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I also feel like some of the information that was given at the end could've been found by playing.
I felt like "Well yeah, if I did have that information before."

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A had great fun playing this great little gem!

Thank you very much, happy you enjoyed it overall!

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I think most of the information should be there throughout, at least to the extent it would be in a typical Agatha Christie mystery. With some small exceptions, I did my best to not have Tiabata use any clues you didn't have as well (you were her "eyes and ears" after all).

About that final scene... I'm a sucker for the "genius detective who's always ahead of the Watson character/reader" trope, and I feel like game mysteries tend to be somewhat bland exactly because you have to design them so that the player can figure them out step by step, so you lose the effect of the detective connecting all the dots in the final "gather everybody" scene. So the idea here was to try to get that effect - give you some agency by letting you identify the killer, but then have you play Watson at the very end. I get that it's frustrating for some people, but it was by design, making the reveals more gradual would have ruined the kind of finale I wanted. Now that I've got it out of my system though, I think I'll try to make the ending more interactive next time .

At least you can still try to guess passively for yourself even when your character can't, as if you were reading a mystery novel. I've seen some people more or less figure most of it out just before Tiabata's reveal, so it's doable .

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[Please consider for:]

For your consideration:





On a distant desert planet, a crime has been committed. As Mother Tiabata and Sister Ava set out to solve the mystery, they soon find themselves facing an impossible conundrum: how does one murder a god?

Shards of God is a retro hand-painted point and click murder mystery - think Agatha Christie in a fantasy/sci-fi setting. It was originally started as part of AdvJam2023, and the full game was then finished within two months.

Check it out here:
ITCH | AGS database

Please consider for:

• Best Game of the Year
• Best Freeware Game
• Best Short Game
• Best Audio
• Best Visuals
• Best Writing
• Best Character (Mother Tiabata)
• Best Gameplay

Just picked it up!

Great, let me know what you think!

Version 1.2 of Shards of God is out! First, a word of warning: YOUR OLD SAVES WILL NOT WORK IN THE NEW VERSION! Now that that's out of the way, here's (some of) the new stuff:

• A clever autosave system which creates separate labeled saves throughout the game's story. Even obsessive types shouldn't have to worry about saving manually anymore (the option is still there though!)
• Mother Tiabata now acts as a hint system. If you're stuck, she'll nudge you in the right direction
• Volume controls!
• More interactions give meaningful responses (eg. using items on characters), and one puzzle has been sliiightly streamlined
• Some small changes and additions to dialogue. For instance, the lamp puzzle is somewhat better motivated now, you can ask Radina about Plint leaving, etc
• A few cosmetic changes to backgrounds (can you spot them?)
• A fancy new Mac launch screen, courtesy of Nahuel! That readme file should be harder to miss now

All in all, if you haven't played yet or feel like revisiting the story, now's the time!

With Nahuel's help, I tried using the script Laura linked and at first it looked like it did the trick:



But then it turned out the files were still not executable, not sure what I did wrong. In the end, Nahuel ended up changing the flags for me manually, so the issue is solved now. Thanks everyone for responding, and especially Nahuel for sacrificing a ton of his time to help me out!

I got this report from a user who downloaded my game:

I'm unable to run it on Linux... After I set the 'execute' permission, it fails with the message: "Shards of God/data/ags64: Permission denied", and I can't figure out what permission it needs.

I don't have Linux myself and have never used it . What should I recommend they do? Thank you!

Thanks ^^ Not sure how I missed that. I thought I had

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examined all, multiple times. Maybe it was triggered by talking to the priest only after examining the room - ie it didn't matter if you had examined everything in previous attempts? Anyway, thanks, I will do the rest now.

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Game is great, by the way 

Thanks, glad you're enjoying the game!

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Examining the carving at any point in the game counts, but I guess it's easy to forget to right-click each picture.

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