itch.io

Hello everyone! I wanted to show off some cool programs and tools that you might not be aware of that I think people would enjoy for the jam! All but one of these can be found right on itchio! 

Decker is a black and white low-code engine, inspired by HyperCard that can be used for Zines, VNs, point-and-click and even small programs! You can find it here: https://internet-janitor.itch.io/decker

Electric Zine Maker is a simple zine-making tool where you can either upload your images into the program, or draw right in it!  You can find it here: https://alienmelon.itch.io/electric-zine-maker

There's also a companion html template if you want to have the zine available in browser on itch. You can find it here: https://jeremyoduber.itch.io/js-zine

Videotome 

Videotome is a very minimal engine for making linear text games. Extremely simple and easy to use! 

You can find it here: https://communistsister.itch.io/videotome (Be aware one of the screenshots on the page has some adult language!!)

And lastly Downpour, which is hosted off-site and uses an app, but you can upload the games here too! Downpour is used for making short interactive fiction games and collages. Here's a link to their website: https://downpour.games/

I can't wait to see what everyone makes!! 

This game is so cute!! I hope part two gets made!

Thank you so much for the lovely review!!

Send me an email, you can find it through my portfolio page 

Excellent use of color for atmosphere!

Hello!

Couple real quick questions:

What operating system are you using?

Is the sprite on screen slightly different than the default one? 

And youre sure you didnt click any of the buttons including acccept/decline? 

🎉🎉🎉

Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked it!

One of the endings is the last one, in which you need to have completed all other endings to obtain. There will be a hint on the guide after you reach the question section of the game if this condition is met. 

Spoilers below for the other ending: 

  After you exhaust all questions, if you wait around 5 seconds, an additional conversation will play. After that conversation another option to the left of "Accept" will fade in in about 2 seconds. 

Let me know if you have any more trouble and I'll double check the code, but everything seems to be working on my end. 

You can if its text youve written in the entry field, but otherwise i wasnt able to figure out how to do it in code. It was mostly supposed to show that the main character was bad at computers, sorry for the confusion

You dont need it!  Just click on the phone and type in the name of the person/place you want to call in the text field and it will call them

Sure! Feel free to leave any sort of playthrough or character sheet in the comments! 

Incredible, numbers really do go up

I think I might know what the issue is. If you are using the space bar to advance the dialogue it will dismiss the lower text box, but you still need to click on the upper box so the | is showing and hit [ENTER] on the keyboard when its blank to dismiss it as well. I'll make sure to put a note on the page in case anyone else has this problem

This made me feel ill 10/10

Thanks for the heads up! It's been fixed now, the correct version is 7-8

Thank you so much for playing! Your video's really helpful, since turns out I missed a couple lines of code which is why it was so frustrating talking to the widow. Several of the conversations simply did not trigger for you when they should have. (I absolutely just guessed on the time it would take to finish, most people ended up taking 1-2 hours) 

Interesting concept but I wish it had done something more similar to the gorilla from the Selective Attention Test from Simons and Chabris (1991) than the jump scares. Once you're aware it's there it becomes obvious, but otherwise people don't notice and failing to first notice something unsettling is way creepier. 

Absolute banger of a stylistic choice with the images. It has a very 'cut out from magazine' look that is very, very good

Incredible sound design!  It's not quite an escape-room game with puzzles, but more like interactive fiction where certain objects only become interactable after interacting with others. This leads to a lot of pixel hunting since you don't know what object leads to what or where it will be in the room.

I'm not sure if you consider this a spoiler or not so it's in ROT13 just in case. I really liked when: lbh tb gb fgnaq hc naq jnyx nebhaq gur ebbz, ohg V jvfu gurer jnf n ovg zber gb frr bgure guna gur glcrjevgre.  

But all in all this is a fun little mystery with some great tension and I would be interested in seeing a post jam version! 

Very interesting concept! I wish there was a way to put people on hold or something while you looked up numbers, I ended up having to screenshot them and have them up on my second monitor just so I could reference them. I also had a hard time putting the plug in the socket until I realized that it was based on the cursor not the plug image. 

A short narrative focused game, with a great color scheme. I loved the foreshadowing with the animals, but I had a hard time reading the documents. 

A very good sense of dread leading up to the end, which was unfortunately a little abrupt, but understandable due to jam time constraints. The muted colors work really well to evoke a sense of decay around the farm. 

Exceptional, a must-play game in the jam 

A very fun little idea, unfortunately when I was cleaning the pot-sticker bug on the cutting board it disappeared and I was no longer able to use the cutting board and had to restart the game. But I love the creature designs! 

A great little typing game! Hitting the up arrow is a little awkward and I wished presenting the offering had been something like shift + enter instead, but other than that very nice!

Parasite is a dice pool CRPG about a wolf regaining control after a parasitic brain infection.  

I like the idea of being able to use almost any skill to when faced with a challenge, and the idea of rolling dice first then assigning them to a skill is pretty neat. I also like how you are limited in the amount of dice you can assign to a skill.

However, I also felt like when I chose a skill that wasn't suited for the situation the consequences weren't harsh enough and often times I was stuck in a loop of just repeating the same skill check over and over. I attempted to run from the hunter many times before realizing that I needed adrenaline and the only thing that happened was I kept getting prompted to flee, which is what I thought I was trying to do.

I also wish that the text didn't clear all the way until you attempted a check. I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of playing and came back to just the question "What will you do?" and I had forgotten the exact context for the situation.  

I also liked the organic look of the pins and the parasite squirming in the background. Very creepy!

The art is very lovely and I especially enjoyed the subtle glitchy effects on the character portrait after going out into the hall. Unfortunately the menu is a bit hard to read, all caps fonts don't really work well for blocks of text, but it works fine for main menu buttons and the title. All in all,  a very good first game! 

The phone name is case sensitive, you need to make sure to capitalize the first and last name of the person you are calling, or the name of the place. E.g. If you want to call the cemetery, it must be Silverleaf Cemetery, not silverleaf cemetery

The vibes are immaculate and the UI is splendid. The sound design really elevated the presentation and the story is subtle but not confusing. Excellent work!

So what Dialogic does is it creates an 'input catcher' as a part of the scene, that means that you can't click anything. You can turn off the input catcher layer entirely through Dialogic by making a new Style, or you can shrink the input catcher by editing the scene. But if you need something on top of Dialogic, then you can always put it in a canvas layer and have that above Dialgoic which is at default layer 3. 

Thanks! I'll check out your game when I have time! 

Evocative of Blake Fall-Conroy's Minimum Wage Machine but far more forgiving. It takes a while for the idle mechanics to kick in, but once it does it hits that good 'number go up' (or down in the case) feeling. 

Thank you so much! I'm really glad you liked it! 

For storyboarding I just used loose-leaf paper and had them laid out on my desk so I could see everything at once. For writing the dialogue, I used ellipsus, which is a google-doc alternative, and just copy pasted it into Dialogic. 

As for writing the story, I came up with the initial concept, then the gimmick with the evidence, and then the body twists and worked everything backwards. I then figured out what I wanted the player to interact with the game, ie the box, the computer and the phone, and I made what I called an 'evidence-chain' where I determined what piece of evidence lead to what else. 

When it comes to using Dialogic, I would recommend learning how to access features from the code, such as flipping variables and pausing for menus. The best example in this game is when you talk to someone the first time I have a variable that gets flipped, so if you call and talk to them a second time, an {if} statement gets triggered that sends a signal to one of the gd scripts turn on the end call button.

When it comes to timelines, personally I prefer to have a lot of little timelines. The phone, for example, jumps to another timeline when you input the correct string, using the string variable. That way if I need to edit something I don't run the risk of messing up too many things. 

If you have a button or a trigger that opens up a dialogic TL, if you press it you can set it to open up even if the TL isn't null, in which it will automatically jump to that TL. I used this with the End Call button which just opens up a new TL that has a single line of dialogue then closes dialogic. 

I hope that answers some of your questions!

Short and sweet and they knew how to change it up once it started to get repetitive. I did have a little trouble reading the font and had to squint, but I also have bad eyesight so that may not be an issue for everyone. 

omg, thank you so much for all your help. it should be fixed now 

Oh shoot i missed that good catch! Thank you!!

yes, that's how the case sensitivity is negated since the code only looks for lower case 

Very cute and simple! I  love the art direction and the limited color palette

Thank you so much! Ill double check to see if its working!

A simple and very cute little game. I loved the art direction and the excellent use of the limited color palette. I wish there was a little bit more variety to the meows but otherwise it was delightful. 

thank you!!!