itch.io

Oct 14

Small progress today, made a puzzle for a Mosquito. Part of the trick is that puzzles with symmetry aren't very fun to solve. All the bug puzzles have to be at interesting angles or have interesting features added to make the puzzle fun.

Oct 15

Working on a new title screen with a top-down view of the museum exterior. Pixel art of this scale is hard work! I haven't done much like this before, so I'm following tutorials. Made some progress so far, below:

Oct 16

Dashed out some quick tilemaps for the museum Terrarium/Bug Room and Aquarium/Fish Room.

Oct 17

Skipped today! Feeling sick, will try to get back into it tomorrow.

Oct 18

Feeling under the weather but endeavored to do at least something. Checked the logic on some older puzzles to confirm that they're solvable. Created a few new, tiny puzzles today including a Pill Bug, a Dragonfly, and a Dino Claw Fossil. Of the planned 52 puzzles for the game, 40 of them are ready! The art puzzles take the longest, since it's more like 15-25 puzzles apiece. I'm not crazy about all the designs so far, but now is not the time to be finicky! Editing can come later.

Oct 11

Looks like a lot of my future work on the game is in Fancy User Interfaces. Made a room/level select area for the mosaic Art Puzzles. And (below-below) an interface for looking at specific mosaics and choosing the piece of the puzzle to solve.

Oct 12

Worked on a little mosquito puzzle for the Bug Room.

Oct 13

Worked on a temporary title screen (pixel art museum is temporary and not mine). Figured out how to 9-slice sprites for text backgrounds and buttons! Very pleased with the results so far. Did some sketches of a more top-down version of the museum  to be consistent with the rest of the art style.

Oct 8

Created some fish puzzles for the aquarium wing of the museum. Not too much work today.

Oct 9

Worked on incorporating a tileset into the museum backdrop. Compared to the mockup, I really like how it's turning out! Still need some tweaking and some UI improvements. Will work on creating backdrops for the other rooms later this week. Drew some sketches of what the other rooms will look like.

Oct 10

Setting up more dinosaur puzzles and trying them out in the scene. The whole puzzles put together look fun. Considering making the outsides of the puzzles transparent so they fit in the scene better. Planning to flesh out more museum rooms tomorrow.

Oct 5

Worked a little more on a recolor of "The Scream", not looking how I'd like. Determined that I'm trying pixel art at too high a difficulty level, and I may have picked a poor color palette. Decided to put this on pause for now, will come back after working on easier color puzzles (smaller or fewer in color). Sketched out some menus. Remembered I had a copy of Kenney Game Assets 1! Will use some of the building tilemaps, sound effects, and UI elements in the future.

Oct 6

Started working on the Museum View! Did a quick mockup to see how it feels. Will come back later and flesh it out with a tilemap, add interest and clutter. Each of the doors will lead to a collection of puzzles that the user has already completed.

Oct 7

Did more work on menuing. Boring but necessary! Imported the first ~20 dino puzzles for the game, didn't have time to set them all up yet. Started setting them up in the Fossil Room, really liking seeing everything in place :) Need to set up remaining fossil puzzles, show an empty space if the puzzles aren't complete, and resize the puzzles so the relative sizing is correct (10x10 puzzles should be smaller than 30x30 puzzles).

Thanks much! And yes, I'm a big fan of Picross too :)

Awesome, thanks so much!

Oct 4

Did some mundane menuing work today. Sketched out a general flow to the menus. The core/hub will be a World Map, which will link to a) 5-7 smaller maps with puzzles, and b) the Museum/Gallery. I dashed out some quick map backgrounds for the World Map and Maps 1-3 (likely as placeholders). Then, set up navigation between them all. I've got a placeholder menu for the Museum, but there's not much there yet! I'll probably work on setting up a nicer looking, usable Museum tomorrow. Or maybe draw more pictures instead :D

Everything so far looks so polished! The house looks great and the bunny is perfection 🐇

This is such a cool concept, love that you're making these as a birthday gift for a friend! Best of luck to you

The 1-bit style here is fantastic! The graphics look so snappy and crisp 💯

Love the concept! The example video has got a really satisfying cascading/sequential feel to it, like somewhere between Ghost Leg and Peggle. Hard to describe, but as a user I'd feel very clever for solving these puzzles!

Looks great! The cat animations are on point and concept is super simple to grasp. Looking forward to seeing more 😀

Oct 1

Finished up puzzle design for mural-style puzzle, "Three Musicians" by Pablo Picasso. The blue squares here represent each of the different puzzles (25 puzzles, each 15x15 pixels/squares). Going for mostly realistic, but each puzzles has to conform to nonogram logic rules in order to be solvable. Each puzzle here has been checked and works!

Oct 2

Doing a test to see what it would look like if, after the puzzle is solved, it shows a colorized version (a la Pokemon Picross). Going to see how much time it takes (answer: a lot!) and if it's worth it (answer: not sure!). My partner thinks the payoff is better to see the color version at the end. I'm drawing from a limited color palette and having to brush up on my color theory haha. I feel like the color's quite off. Is it worth it, will it bring delight? Is the art working here or meh?

Oct 3

Continuing test for colorize-the-puzzle juice. Did a mockup of what it would look like it game. The flow from black and white to high/low saturation colors is not quite right. Probably would be surrounded by bubbly "tada!" effects. I like the effect overall! I think it would take more work to get it quite right. Going to get back to must-haves tomorrow, like menu UI.

Hello all and Happy Devtober!

About the game
Nono Puzzle Museum (working title) has the mechanics of Pokemon Picross with the aesthetics of the museum from Animal Crossing. Work to solve picross/nonogram logic puzzles in order to fill out a charming museum with dino fossils, fish, bugs, and art. Meet special objectives for each stage to add more *pizzazz* to the rooms of the museum. Use fancy tools, solve murals made of multiple puzzles, and uncover hidden secrets.

I've been working on the game for a bit, so I'm starting from a good place

- Working nonogram engine (purchased from the Unity Asset Store and modified to suit my needs) and basic menuing system for selecting puzzles

- Full list of planned puzzles; 70% of which are created and checked for nonogram logic (i.e. is there a single, solvable solution to the puzzle without using guesswork)
- Rudimentary save logic that outputs user file data to JSON, for long-term storage
- In-game timer with ability to save and display best solve time


Left to do
- Remaining puzzles
- Add "tools" for players to use (e.g. reveal some squares in the puzzle or show hints for logic)
- Add handling for mural puzzles in menu
- Add "Gallery" view, to see fish, bugs, dino puzzles put together
- Non-programmer art for UI (buttons, backgrounds, font, title screen)
- SFX and bg music

😎 Nice.

📅 [Oct 9] Realized that, to get all the animations and actions in logical order, it would make the most sense to add Finite State Machines. Added some content for idling, walking, and diving.

📅 [Oct 10] Sketched out an animation for diving into the corn. Struggled with the FSM code.

📅 [Oct 11] Took a break from development to get a better hold on the design. Created a Trello board for organizing thoughts and most pertinent to-dos. New game design info now in the top post.

📅 [Oct 12]  Short breaks from dev work generally help me clear my head. Fixed the FSM with a couple lines of code (which is generally what happens). Next, need to add like an "ITEM GET" function after a successful dive. Be back soon!

That vignette issue sounds like a nightmare to troubleshoot! Who would guess that "off" and an intensity of 0 are different things? Way to figure it out, though! The art and the animations look so smooth and expressive :D

📅 [Oct 7] Created new corn crib/corn pit area, and new corn art.

📅 [Oct 8] Filled the new corn pit with corn, and made new player animations for wading around in the corn.
Next, plan on adding some kind of diving-in-the-corn mechanic for finding hidden treasure (such as corn).

I love the character concept art. So bright and patterned! Looks very distinctive.

I'll have to add "hay maze rescue team" to the game's roadmap ⛑️😄

📅 [Oct 4] Added classic fade out/fade in when transitioning between rooms. Moving between rooms is less jarring (and more dooring).

📅 [Oct 5] Worked on fixing the spawn location on transition. Moving between rooms teleports player to wrong end of map, which looks like teleportation but not the cool kind. Ran into compiler errors, discarded all changes, shelved til the next day. Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you write lots of bugs.

📅 [Oct 6] Rewrote all code from yesterday without issue. Transitioning between rooms now plops the player at the threshold of the "door", mostly as intended. Unfortunately, only the top-left corner of the door works as a door, so we'll have to do some door-fixing in a future game jamb.

👋🏻 Hey folks!

🎃 Falloween is a fall festival sim where you can carve pumpkins and bob for apples. Mostly going for the nostalgia of going to a big ol' corn maze as a kid :) It's like if the fall festivals in Stardew Valley were a standalone game. Game built in GMS2; sprites designed in Aseprite.

Features

• 📜 Search a fall festival for four pumpkin-carving stencils
  
• 🎃 Carve pumpkins in order to bring cheer
• 🌾 Traverse a hay bale maze
• 🌽 Go diving for items in a corn pit
• 🎫 Play some carnival mini-games ?

🎮 I have a background in game development, art, and music, but it's been awhile since I've worked on anything consistently.  Started working on a game jam last month, didn't finish, but aim to continue work on the project for Devtober.

📅 [Sep 30] I'm starting with a skeleton of a game with a player character, NPCs with dialogue, stubbed items, inventory, and purchasing. Have some sketched out art and a couple assets from the LPC collection on OpenGameArt (to be replaced).

📅 [Oct 1] Created a new Hay Maze area! Starting off with a simple 10x10 maze. Player sometimes goes into the hay bales, never to return.

📅 [Oct 2] Fixed some collisions, added some player character sprites/animations. PC gets stuck in the hay bales less frequently.

📅 [Oct 3] Added room transitions. PC can now travel between hub world and hay maze. Spawn location is off, that's the next thing to figure out.

More to come soon 😊