Messages

Looking fantastic CaptainD and Kastchey.

Can’t wait to play - and hopefully heal Zabella, things are looking pretty dire for her in the screenshot!

Thanks for posting about the jam Privateer Puddin'! And thanks again for doing a playthrough of my game selmiak! Claude and the Phantom came in at #3 overall and scored well on art, dialogue and puzzles. It's not really about the rankings, but I focused on the art style a lot this time, and I'm particularly happy people have responded to that.

Lots of great games this year - one of my favourites was Where Others Lie by xil/calicoreverie. I wrote about the first bunch of games from the jam that I tried on my blog here - all of those are well worth playing! There are other interesting games I've since discovered, like While Dreaming. Once again it's been a really inspiring jam and community.

Refreshing art style that reminds me of certain indie comics, and I really like the purely graphical conversation. Nice work! Would love to see more from you with this approach.

Have you had a look at Scapple? It seems ideal for this.

It's not free, but you do get a 30-day trial to see if it's for you. I can't vouch for it myself, but I am using their other software Scrivener for a writing project, and that's an extremely polished and versatile piece of software.

Really enjoyed the uneasy, moody atmosphere here - the music, graphics, and storytelling (with a few very cinematic touches) all worked together very nicely to create that Lynchian tone. The puzzles were pitched just right too. I only regret not playing it at night! Well done Cloak & Dagger.

Wow, congratulations on smashing the Kickstarter target!

I really like the art style, the setting and the concept. Looking forward to seeing it take shape.

Thanks for the nod to Hang On for Best Short Game, any of you who voted for that! I'm honoured, and it was a nice surprise to find out from Chicky over Discord the other day.

Looking tremendous and it's an interesting setting - I look forward to it!

I love that flat shading, and that fun sort of twisted perspective on the first screenshot is wonderful. DoTT springs to mind of course, but Matt has put his own stamp on this.

Wow - I'm surprised and delighted to be the October MAGS champ, by a whisker ! To be honest, I feel a little bad for just edging it past a family effort, but as Mandle points out, this was virtually a tie. Smarty, I hope you and the kids will combine your talents and enter again sometime soon.

Thank you to all of you who played, commented, and even voted for Moonlight Moggy. I shall now try my best to think of a fun theme for December, which is exciting in itself...

Thanks xBRANEx, glad you enjoyed it and that's good feedback!

I struggled to decide on the sound mix and probably was wrong to bury the wind effect - might alter it as you've suggested for a v1.1 release.

I'm particularly glad you think my style's recognisable, I'm never sure how much of that comes through in pixel art.

Spot on about the sprite doubling. That occurred to me rather too late in the month to do anything about it, once I saw the longer speech strings were obscuring characters. The font I used, while super for low-res stuff, has some odd line-heights which I was able to adjust for in the dialog option scripting, but not in the speech display...

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Durq: I'm not sure how many hours it took, precisely. Looks like first started drawing sprites on 19th October, so it was about 10 days chipping away at it most evenings. This is my fourth little game (third released) so I'm getting a bit quicker with scripting, otherwise it might have taken longer. I tried to get the game playable as soon as I could, then work on things that were 'nice to have' like the music and the leaf animation as time allowed. I'd have liked to get a bit more animation in there, but hopefully it's quite a dense one-room game with lots to enjoy.

As for the puzzle design, yes ClickClickClick

Spoiler

finding the drainpipe

[close]

is a little tricky, and also pretty much the first thing you need to do in the game to progress...but I thought it wouldn't hurt to make people explore and look at stuff a bit. Hopefully it's not too much of a pixel hunt (we're talking big pixels, 160x120 resolution), and most people seem to stumble upon it eventually.

selmiak: Thanks for recording another one of my games! I do really appreciate it. Will share the video around.

josiah1221: Thank you!

Shadow1001: Cheers! Glad you like my twist on the theme.

Mandle:

Spoiler

Glad you and your student enjoyed the final scene, it was a bit of an afterthought but seemed to tie things up nicely in absence of a proper cutscene!

[close]

My game is ready! It's called...

Download here! It's not terribly spooky, but I hope it adds a few minutes' fun to your Halloween.

I've created a Completed Game thread, and the database page...

[Moonlight Moggy]

Moonlight Moggy

Download

Ah, cats - nature's hot water bottles. But the outside world is teeming with things that can frighten our feline companions and prevent them from getting home for a cosy evening...

Paul, an especially timid ginger tom, has vanished. It falls to his buddy Blixa to track him down. To do so, he'll have to help out the garden's various resident creatures and overcome his own phobia of plastic bags rustling in the wind.

My entry for MAGS October 2017, which has a 'Room of Fear' theme and a one-room restriction.

Download

Games database page

Shaun: Thank you! That means a lot.

Lorenzo: Very flattered you liked the game enough to play it again, and really glad to know the music has been a worthwhile addition! And thank you also for flagging up my mistake with one of the links, that should now be correct.

Well done on completing your game, Slasher - I look forward to playing it soon!

I've found some time to work on an entry for this month after all. Here's a screenshot detail from my work-in-progress...

I recently had some time to complete work on Hang On. The main criticism of the MAGS version was the lack of audio, I've now addressed that with the addition of music and some ambient howling wind! There are also some minor gameplay improvements following other feedback.

Hopefully it's a more atmospheric and complete experience - I'm certainly happier with it (although I've kept the original MAGS version available for posterity). Perhaps not worth another playthrough if you already tried it earlier this year, but if you didn't get around to that, do check it out.

Ah, I'm sure that glowing pink portal in the wall is nothing to worry about, back to sleep...

Looks great, as have all your screenshots so far! I'm not familiar with Lovecraft but the game has intrigued me. The light RPG systems sound really novel.

Great guidelines!  I fancy making a one-room game and wish I had time to take part. At the moment it's not looking likely, but looking forward to playing all your games (and hopefully not developing new phobias) come Halloween.

Just grooving to the menu theme now, it's great work!

Pleased to hear the complete version is imminent, looking forward to it.

Just caught up on this thread and saw the videos. I love the backgrounds we've seen so far, and that menu system is really neat. Keep it up!