itch.io

This is actually so nice and wholesome, I love it

okay, VERY good point

"no unexpected creatures, unless you count the small group of diviners" incredible wording

now, why did the prediction spell end like this? I've got a couple of possibilities in mind

1. the spell actually wasn't constructed well enough so it didn't work

2. the surges cannot be predicted by any means that the scribes know of as of now

3. this is all an inside job and a scribe responsible for it knew of diviners' calculations and just decided to not do this

4. it's not an inside job but the perpetrator just reads the newspaper and decided to not do anything

5. there WAS a surge, it was just "asymptomatic" this time

"Argent's sterling reputation" did NOT go unnoticed

Yep, that's suspicious. It's described as every other familiar and it seems to be trained specifically for contests like this one 

I'm sorry Margo Maxwell, I wasn't familiar with your game

Wouldn't The Convention+The Duel be a two-week long storyline as well?

Intrigued by the arc's title. I suspect we're getting nobles competing with each other over how many creatures they can spot. Pretty sure some drama will ensure and I can't wait for it

Had a very slow day today, so, 7m 03s here.

FASCINATING lore implications. We all already knew that magic is something that can be classified because of how scribes have their little specialties and we knew there is a theory to it all because writing is required to make magic work, it seems, and we also know magic can be stored (Cat's pendant)... but I don't think we've ever heard about arcanospheric anything. 

My hypotheses so far:

- Magic is a force which simply exists everywhere around (hence arcanosphere, like atmosphere). It's measurable like air pressure or temperature would be and there are probably certain "normal" levels of magic that exist out there.

- Since magic is a force which you can measure and all, theoretical studies are still possible. This means that you don't necessarily have to use magic to study magic. That's where the arcanists come into the picture.

- A scribe has some (possibly innate) ability which allows them to take magic from the arcanosphere and, through writing a spell, direct magic towards a particular outcome. A mundane can't harness from the arcanosphere but, as we've seen with Cat, they are capable of writing spells (as it's purely theoretical) and directing magic if they are given a magic source to direct from.

- There are spirit accumulators which are capable of storing magic. We didn't get a lot of info about those but we can deduce that they might be essentially "batteries" of sort. We know they're being used in pocket watches, for example, which seems to support the theory, but who knows, perhaps it's more of a smartwatch thing where it comes with some extra functions.

Either way, excited for the new arc coming soon. I might be a tad too invested in the lore at this point.

I think it could be better than a comment area for a game like this

I've made some VNs (or VN-adjacent things) in Decker without writing even a single line of code. the issue with Decker (though it might also be one of its strengths) is the automatic dithering of images, 16bit color palette restriction (though palettes can be easily swapped out) and low quality sound. other than that, it's really simple to use when you know where to find every option in the menu (I use practically only fields and buttons)

did Remy transfer colleges after the ScribeCon? I'm so invested

I had a comment of some sort but I think it fell down the well. hope that'll make the climate of Ectocomp friendly for you or something

I think you missed the entire point of what this work is about. The point is that exploitation of personal tragedies for art is a thing which is highly encouraged and promoted for artists, no matter how messed up it is. And it is messed up, and I am ashamed that this is where my thoughts go first. But this is the fault of the algorhitmic push towards anger and angst and it is the fault of the fallacy that negative emotions make for better art. The entire point of this work is that tearing yourself (and, perhaps, others) apart for the audience is encouraged, leading to unhealthy mindsets such as the one that led me to this point. I do feel ashamed and this is exactly why I wrote this entire thing. I know there are other people like me out there, people who feel the need to turn every piece of tragedy and trauma into art, and I know this is reaching them and making them think about the relationship they have with their own artistry. And you can't really move on and change without admitting what you did wrong. I'm known for writing rather heavy works, so if this is what I'm known for, then I think people need to know I consider this to be messed up in some way.

And with all the respect: I knew this person. You, most likely, didn't. They were an artist too and I know what they drew in their notebooks, what they wrote about, what they wanted to sing about, what their views on death were. I know what they considered to be acceptable limits in art. They wouldn't mind me writing about their death. I think they'd write about mine if they had a chance to do so, actually.

The vibe presented here is just incredible

This whole game is a mild hell for a non-native English speaker (like me) but also a nice display of wordplay for people who appreciate it (also me). Can't deny, I also found the graphics really charming. This was my first game of yours and I might just try more just to see how wordplay's handled there, it's quite impressive

Everybody shut up, my favorite show is on

This is that type of a game that makes you whisper "oh no" once you realize what's going on. And then you don't stop thinking "oh no" throughout the entire thing, actually. Like watching a trainwreck. Incredible energy

Got utterly slopped by people I played with. 13/13 wouldn't recommend (or would I)

The voting period ends in approx. 3,5 hours, which means I'll be fast asleep. Not sure when the results will be actually announced but just in advance, thank you everyone for playing and I hope you had fun participating. Congratulations to everyone who won and for those who didn't, I hope I'll see you on next Velox, whichever it might be. I'm always happy to be here with y'all. Take care of yourself.

WITH SOME HELP I FIGURED IT OUT. TURNS OUT THAT "PRESPLASH.PNG" FILE WAS CAUSING SOME ISSUE. DELETED IT AND IT ALL WORKED. HALLELUJAH I CAN PLAY EVERYTHING.

I tried to disable my antivirus stuff COMPLETELY but that seemed to change absolutely nothing. Very fun. I'll still try to get it working but my options are getting slimmer and slimmer

I'm happy that I got someone to try out Decker because I love it a lot 😭 You should be proud of yourself because it's definitely more impressive than my first Decker attempt, especially since I never got into Dialogizer and such.

Honestly this is an absolutely WILD thing to make as your FIRST EVER Decker project. I'm still amazed by how much care clearly went into all of this. Good gods it made me miss metro so much. Even if it's, y'know. *gestures vaguely* an Entity. 

And your Latin wasn't left unnoticed <3

I'D LOVE TO PLAY YOUR GAME I'M SORRY I COULDN'T GET IT TO RUN [SOB EMOJI]

okay at least we're making progress, maybe the next jam will be health-catastrophe-free 😭

the real question is: were you sick this time around too? I'm sorry I just keep wondering that anytime I see you participate 😭

Hello it is I, Naarel, the chronic threadstarter!

So basically I wasn't even meant to be here but I checked the theme in the morning once it dropped and I got struck with divine inspiration so I had to make something I guess. 10 days is a lot of time and I spent like 2 of them dying because the way I approached the topic was killing me mentally. Actually, you can read my extremely rambly postmortem (if you played NIEZWYCIĘŻONA [SEMPER INVICTA] already, of course).

I was kinda surprised that there aren't that many games here but then I remembered that Spooktober exists and people are probably busy with that (as I should be with Ectocomp, which is like Spooktober for the interactive fiction community except nobody wins money lol), so that might be a factor. That's better for me because I frankly am in a bit of a downward spiral mentally (not because of Velox) and it's hard for me to play anything except for Minecraft and Disco Elysium lately, so the amount of entries makes my job of playing every entry a little easier. So far I played... two! I really need to speed up.

When it comes to my project, I was scared at first that it'll be too Polish to be understandable for international audiences but I guess not because the reception seems to be pretty good so far. The concept of a lowkey yandere city traumatized by war seems to be enough of a banger in itself I guess? There's been some interesting interpretations and takes going around and honestly, that means that in my head, I won already. Yippee!

As always, drink some water, touch some grass, eat some fruit maybe, hope you've been sleeping well and all, happy to be here with you once more! See you in the thread and at the winner reveal!

I click and there's literally nothing going on. No error, nothing. I suspect it has something to do with the security settings from my tests with the task manager but I'm not entirely sure what I have to disable to get through

I'm sorry to do this but is anyone else having this problem where the game just doesn't open at all? I spent almost an hour trying to make it run but it just didn't want to, which absolutely sucks, and I don't know if this is my fault or if anyone else is experiencing it too

[OBVIOUS SPOILERS TO THOSE WHO HAVEN'T PLAYED YET OKAY]

"Whae he really wanes eo meet the ghost which haunts his dreams", "As a child he haned violence", "To undestand Blood you mut open its spills", "If the Dream shifts, so do the role" (this is a grammar issue and not a transliteration issue but I thought it's worth pointing out), "ie would lead him to his only ghost", "to let her kill him ?as his Love" (symbol for "w" isn't rendered here properly with two zig-zags but just one)

I think that was all I noticed on my playthroughs.

I can give you a list of mistakes I spotted if that'll help you?

Honestly this is such an exercise in creativity and I LOVE IT. The messages to decode were really cool (though I think I caught some mistakes but that's understandable) and... well, the collages, gods, the collages! It might just be most visually impressive game of yours that I played, I had to pause and take a good look at everything. Really cool stuff!

thank you 💖 it's four layers of text overlaid on top of the original text (red, green, blue, and white), with RGB layers being slightly offset and the final white one being aligned with the original text

we'll be waiting for you Chim 

oh this is gonna live rent free in my head now isn't it

If it's tagged appropriately

Chim I want one look into your mind so badly

...THE LAKES... SWEEP (YOU INTO THEIR DEPTHS)

Honestly, this was simply the best Velox I've ever had - both results-wise and when talking about my mental state. I expected, of course, awards for Narrative and Theme Incorporation (as those are my specialty at this point and I've never left a Velox jam without at least Theme Incorporation award), but... VISUALS??? AFTER I EXPLICITLY SAID "IDC ABOUT VISUALS"??? GOOD FUCKING GODS, CHAT, IS THIS REAL.

I'd like to congratulate everyone who got first places (or got the first place with me, Dreamty I love you <3), each and every one of you absolutely deserved it. As did everyone on places 2-5, but y'know, first place is special. To everyone who didn't see such success, I hope I can see you on another jam where you can do better <3

I will be uploading an unlocked deck version of ...the lakes... so everyone can poke around and see how things were made so that some of you who are more of a "I need to take it apart and experiment with it" type can see if Decker is for you. It won't be now, though. I need to celebrate and be happy for all of my friends who did amazing jobs as always <3

Thank you for voting for my stuff. I'll see you... well, whenever I feel like coming back for Velox stuff.

managed to play and rate EVERYTHING, that was one hell of a ride, thank you everyone <3 I'll see you soon to celebrate and/or cry