Welcome to the devlog of Skullz 'n Skeletonz!
Itch.io Community Edition!

This game's a surreal Choose 'n Pick Adventure set in it's own unique world filled with spooky 'ol skeletonz, and you, a skull.

Your goal is essentially to make sense of your situation which will become more and more apparent as you progress through it's (eventually to be) 10+ chapters. The game will be split into two parts, stretching over about five chapters each, with your actions and decisions in one part influencing the situations you face in the other.

Unlike most Point 'n Click's, this game is controlled solely by keyboard input, with you picking your actions from the textbox at the bottom, hence the term Choose 'n Pick.

That's not the only thing to set it apart from your usual Point 'n Click, though. There is no inventory to speak of, even though you'll be gathering and using items left and right, your view isn't locked to the same third person view for the entire game and you'll be having bossfights.

I'll try to be posting bi-weekly updates about the development of this game, along with some gifs of what's new or a piece of music as well as some less frequent posts about the technicalities of it all, for example how the art or audio is made. On that note, the entire WIP soundtrack of the game is constantly up for your listening pleasure and will get updated frequently over here:

This game is effectively the sequel to the first game I've ever made, called Skullz, and has been in on- and off development for about two years and I'm more determined than ever to make it the greatest game I possibly can and eventually release it to Steam Greenlight and a couple other platforms, like Itch.io! That's all I got for now. If you don't wanna wait for the next devlog post, you can always take a peek at my Twitter, where I'm posting whatever whenever: https://twitter.com/Pizzamakesgames

Devlog Entry #1.16.12.04

Music: https://pizzamakesmusic.bandcamp.com/track/in-new-09-charcreation

Right now, our protagonists are at these crossroads.

I'm not planning to spoil the entire game, entry by entry, but for these first couple updates I think it wouldn't hurt to set the stage and outline the game by following it's fictional chronology for at least a little bit, keeping in mind that this first prologue chapter is eventually gonna be put out as a demo to a broader audience before releasing the game proper anyway.

These crossroads are also already being preceded by a handful of other scenes that I won't go into detail about now, so I think it's safe not to worry about being robbed of any fresh eyes you might eventually be laying upon this game just by keeping up with whatever's gonna be exposed right here.

Anyway, we're obviously being presented with four directions to eventually wander off to.

How you're going to get Yendor, the skeleton carrying you around, with your player character being the skull he's holding, to actually start shuffling down any of those paths is one of these mysteries (It's not much of a mistery) I'll be sprinkling about this devlog to not waste any precious novelty to these types of puzzle situations. Though, presenting the player with a branching path like that right from the get-go is what I hope will help make this game very interesting to play and replay, as not just one of them will be right, with the other three being wrong or unavailable, but all of them will be a viable choice.

This is this first thing I wasted a lot of potential with (but also cut down a lot of development time) on the predecessor, where you were constantly presented with a number of choices but got nothing except jokey answers on all but one, which did have it's charm, but only once.

So with that, we're about to be visiting one of three different locations, and I think that might've been enough words for now.

If you're more into looking at pretty pictures, feel free to check out my twitter where I'll be talking less and showing more, in a less refined and more frequent manner, especially stuff that might not ever make it into the final game or even this devlog.

Screenshot Update!

Ever so close to Bedlam. I'm keeping a consistent palette between these, though I liked how this one looked before conforming it, too:

Devlog Entry #2.16.12.17

With last week's screenshot update already revealing one of the destinations these crossroads'll be leading us to, namely Bedlam, which will be the subject of Devlog entries to come, let's take a look at where the other ones'll take us.

A cliff and a forest, places that might be familiar to players of the original and give me a chance to tell you of this game's relationship to it's predecessor, which had you start on a cliff and end up in a forest not soon after.

Basically, Skullz 'n Skeletonz will serve both as a sequel and a prequel to Skullz, with the core storyline of the latter being left intact but refitted to and retold during the new storyline that is now expanding around it.

While Skullz was strictly linear, Skullz 'n Skeletonz will be all about making choices, and the locations presented so far already start reflecting that, with this abstract line in the void, which would've taken you from the cliff to the woods in the original, now being retconned to not have ever been anything but our good old Crossroads, turning a linear path into a branching one quite literally.

That's it for this weeks update. Next up, we may be actually finally arriving in Bedlam.