itch.io

It's not dead! We're occasionally posting updates on our social media :)

Edit:

To give you a brief summary:

We've got most of the sprites done and started on CGs. The story is written and currently on its second editing pass. The music is...well, a lot of it is done, but I actually have no clue how much more the composer wanted to make.

It's a three person project, so progress is very slow. When we started it, we always joked that we'd need about a decade. By now, we've decided to do it in chunks, releasing a route at a time, and that feels much better.

We're all very excited to finally get this thing out, but since it's a hobby project, life and our day jobs sometimes get in the way. But by now an end is in sight at least.

Most of our games are visual novels, so it's going to have VN elements (and we're programming in Ren'Py) but we're adding some gameplay as well since it's not a proper VN jam!

Thank you very much for the kind review :)

Yeah, we're working on one :)

Thanks for asking! I just uploaded the mac build. We sadly didn't have our usual MacOS tester available for the jam deadline, so we published it a bit later!

Thank you very much for the detailed feedback! We'll make sure to focus on UI improvements and upgrading the tutorial for our post-jam clean-up :)

When you click on "End Turn", the enemies move. But with how large we ended up making the map, you can't always see them, which turned out super confusing. Sadly, we only noticed that during our final testing, and the enemies also move much slower in the web version for some reason. We'll definitely speed them up a bit, and maybe we could add a text hint for the player, telling them what's going on!

Thank you very much. We were struggling with different resolutions towards the end, but thought that the issue was fixed. This is definitely something we'll be looking at during our clean-up sessions, now that the jam is finished :)

Eventually, we'll be  releasing a new version with UI improvements, a better tutorial, and new character abilities. Hopefully, we'll be able to fix your problems with that patch as well!

Thanks for the feedback! We'll have a look at the usability now that the jam is over, so figuring out which bits are confusing/frustrating to the players really helps :)

Yeah, we'll definitely try to stretch the tutorial out a bit to make it easier to understand after the judging period. Thanks for the feedback!

Hey, first of all thanks for your comment!

We had one programmer working full-time on the project and four people who were only able to program one of the two days or less, who were helping him out.

Since our group usually publishes visual novels, we had a large amount of artists (3.5 in total, since one of them had to help with the programming) interested in helping out, which lead to this insane amount of beautiful custom art. For that same reason, we also had a composer for the background music, an SFX expert, and someone to master all the audio for us!

Most of the text bits were written by our usual editor, who jumped in when our author had to join the programming team on the last day of the jam, haha.

Sooo if I'm counting correctly, we were 13 people :)

Thanks for the feedback! We've got some more features planned, now that the jam is over - among other things a more intuitive tutorial (lets be honest, we added that one during the uploading grace period and it shows)!

Hey, thanks for letting us know! Could you tell us what operating system you're using and possibly what your screen resolution is? We can't reproduce the issue on any of the devs' machines, so knowing these would be a huge help :)

Have fun exploring more jam games!

With a cinematic soundtrack, cute and expressive characters, and a cool mix of a secret agent-y looking prologue into a fantasy style first chapter, I'm excited to see where this story is going.

I adored the attention to detail in this demo like the little bouncy animations the characters do, as well as the other animations.

Quentin's complaints over the struggle of a web developer hit too close to home, making him a very relatable main character, haha.

Also... THE SNAKE IS SO CUTE!

Thanks for the comment. I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

Glad you enjoyed it :)

I've got a busy weekend, but I'll check out your video as soon as I can!

Hey, thanks for the super detailed feedback, really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to watching your video :)

I don't know if you saw the little note below the download button, but we experienced some issues with covid in our audio team and will be updating the game with the rest of the Artur voice lines as soon as it's possible, so you could wait until then to play the rest!

Thanks for your lovely comment. There will be a sequel for NaNoRenO :)

A cute game with atmospheric music and adorable art for anyone who seeks some wholesomeness and friendship for Halloween.

Hey,

I can't even beging imagining working on sounds in addition to all the other stuff :O

Good thing you kept working on this, it would've been sad if you hadn't finished it! 100% worth psyching yourself up every time!

And I wouldn't worry about the horror elements. Imo the story was great as is. We tried to run at the first chance, just because we wanted to see if there was a cool dead end, and we were not disappointed lol.  The comedy ended up being amazing and you still had some horror elements, so I think overall, that worked out :)

I actually started making VNs when I was couch-bound due to physical issues for far too many months and getting into a really dark place mentally, so that whole "working on something single-mindedly for all of your waking hours" sounds spookily familiar.

Anyway, I'm glad you liked the feedback!

Yeah, it's impressive how much you got done on your own. For me it's the other way around. If I do the art (as I did for the paint jam), stuff looks awful. I suck at anything more complex than stick figures, haha.

Buckle up, for you are about to jump on Otokoshi's wild ride and there's no retreat until the evening is (almost) over. Shinikake No Koi offers complex dialogue that drags you deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole of self-exploration, paired with elaborate direction and use of imagery. This is a *heavy* story.

A foreigner without much to lose on his trip through Japan makes a pit-stop at a host club for the night. We don't have to get far into this novel to find out that, while certainly geeky, this isn't your stereotypical weeb on his journey through a country he worships. Our main character comes with a load of character and the appropriate amount of problems to go along with it.

Inside the host club, we're introduced to the star of the evening. Our host presents himself as your typical polite Japanese person. He's excellent at his job and carries the conversation easily. Much like our main character, the reader may find themselves glued to Otokoshi's lips, unable to stop digging deeper. However, this novel wouldn't be going anywhere, if Otokoshi weren't to match our main character's troubled mind with his own, complex and intriguing personality.

I have been told that this is not your average yaoi VN and it's not difficult to believe that. Shinikake No Koi ponders the philosophical and psychological. It dives deep into its characters' psyches and has a long, hard look, unafraid of what it may find. As someone who doesn't read ~~a whole lot of~~ romance, I'm in no position to give a comprehensive review of how this VN's romance compares to that of others, but the characters' relationship with each other grows smoothly and naturally. It just makes *sense*. These are two people that have *found* each other.

This story takes your emotions on a roller-coast ride in the most heart-wrenching way.

> "I love you both. You should... /// erm, hold hands. ;3"

Our editor/composer totally ships them lol

>  I want to know more about it all!

This is sort of a spin-off of our long-term project WYSAPOOMP (which is still in development). We released a demo for it earlier this year, but it's not on the same level as PePaThin, as far as assets go - some sprites are missing, there is only one pose per character, we don't have all the background music we want, no voice acting etc.

It's mainly there to gauge interest in the story and figure out what works and what doesn't work with what we've planned. The whole thing currently spans 450k words while the demo includes about 40k of those. We'll also be updating the demo every now and then with some quality of life improvements.

WYSAPOOMP is about the same cult Artur hails from. We follow a fairly young member (~ university age) that has been tasked with keeping an eye on the cult's chosen Host that they want to use to incarnate their eldritch being into our plane of existence.

10 days before the ritual, strangers show up looking for the Host in order to stop the ritual, engaging with our MC and causing him to reconsider this whole sacrificing business. These strangers are some of Emma's buddies and their goal is to assassinate the Host before the ritual goes down.

While Artur stars as a side character (PePaThin actually just started as "some spin-off that should have Artur in it"), Emma sadly hasn't made it into the script yet. Maybe we'll find a place for her in the later routes.

This got kind of long >_<

Anyway, thanks for your comment, it's very much appreciated!

Yeah, that's exactly how we started. First we made sure we could finish making games on time, then later we started playing around with the UI. One thing at a time :)

Edit: also yeah, cows are awesome lol

What an interesting concept for a VN. I think what really elevated this was the fact that you didn't just use standard emoji but these cute ones that fit the rest of the art style. Also the fact that they don't just always appear the way regular text appears, but sometimes have special animations.

This was a cute little story and it was understandable without using any words. The art is so adorable :3

Oh, and the character's "voices" reminded me of lylat wars and undertale!

I checked out all three endings. Luckily, the last one I read was wholesome, so I ended it on a good note :)

Thanks for the nice comment!

And you found a "bug". I simply forgot to put the unlock code for that entry into the VN! I'll fix it whenever we push our next update (there are some other small things we want to change).

The entry in question is about Emma's calming technique! It reads:

"The 5-4-3-2-1 technique is a way to ground yourself when overcome by anxiety. There are variations that involve all five senses while some switch back and forth between only a select set of senses. For Emma's version, she counts five things she can see, then five things she can hear. Next, she goes back to her sense of sight, counting four things she can see, followed by four more things she can hear. This repeats until she counts a single thing each. Between rounds, the same object may be counted - this isn't a competition, it's not supposed to be stressful to come up with items to count."

Thanks for finding that issue :)

Don't be sorry, you did amazingly for a first game and errors happen to everyone. We're all rushed during jams and have to cut corners. The most important part is actually submitting a game! 

I'm also not a native speaker and you won't believe how many stupid mistakes my editor has to catch because of that :)

Now that the jam is over, you have all the time in the world to change whatever you aren't happy with and expand the story as you see fit.

Spoilers below.

You perfectly captured the single-mindedness expected from an AI tasked with a single duty. This was a hilarious little story.

A while ago, our editor told me about Roko's basilik, actually. I found this thought experiment pretty fascinating and am glad to see it in this VN!

The backgrounds are really cool and your character design is both cute and symbolically fitting, considering the way Leena comes off at first vs. what you later find out about her. Love the victim blaming towards her father and the resistance lol.

Also, the voice acting! This was such an amazing display with a huge range of emotions. Beautiful.

And underneath it all an epic soundtrack to round out the experience.

Overall, this was just a cool little game.

Congratulations on finishing your first VN! It's a step most people never reach as they quit before they are ever done :)

The art in this VN is mind-blowing. There are so many backgrounds, I'm amazed you got all of those done within a single month.

The story is long for a first try, you got a lot done, even if one option still said WIP.

As far as the writing goes, there are some errors here and there. I write for our VNs and it happens to me a lot as well! That's why I have my trusty editor catching most of the awkward phrases and typos I hide all over the story. 

It's always good to have another pair of eyes (or three pairs, or four, haha) to look over the VN, since as an author, it's very difficult to catch your own mistakes. After all, *you* know what you're trying to say!

That being said, I know it's very difficult to find a proper editor to help out. Still, never give up if you're struggling to find one :)

I saw that one option said WIP, so I'm guessing you'll continue this VN now that the jam is over? Good luck and have fun with that! Maybe you could also add some more atmospheric background music while you're at it.

By the way, I got the "natural" ending. It was quite gruesome, as expected from a horror game, haha :D

Good luck on your future projects, maybe I'll see another game of yours in a different jam down the road!

This was a confusing ride :D

At first, I wasn't sure what was going on, being thrown into a world with these weird rules about secrets and with our main character talking to literal voices in her head. But as the story progressed, it became clear.

In my first run, I seem to have gotten my friend killed >_<

Every following run, the prophecy got fulfilled. I think I'm incredibly close to getting a good ending, but I can't seem to find out what I'm doing wrong. Sadly, it takes forever to get back to where I was and try out different choices, so I haven't figured it out yet :(

Maybe you could leave a spoiler detailing which path to take so that I can at least read the proper ending?

One thing that would be great would be the option to save. I saw the circumstances around the save button in another comment and totally get that. For jams, it's always a miracle when you have a working program come deadline! Also, a speed-up button would be cool. That way, even if you don't save, you can skip quickly past the text you've already read!

Anyway, this had me re-reading over and over again on the hunt for a good ending, so you certainly managed to pique my curiosity!

Love me some Beethoven :)

The CGs are *so* beautiful. They just blew me away. The rest of the art is also great and I love the UI.

Sometimes, I would have liked a bit more insight into the main character's decision making process. With some of their choices, there wasn't much explanation as to why they chose to take certain actions. But considering this is a jam game, I understand that your time was limited and you already wrote a whole lot of words for this!

I ran into an issue where the image "distorcerd" could not be found. Probably just a typo in your script, but still wanted to let you know!

I don't know how many dead ends it took me to get out of that blasted house, lol. But I made it in the end :)

This story had several twists and turns. It was a mystery with atmospheric music and fitting imagery to emphasize the mood, and a whole lot of different choices that may or may not get you killed.

Well done!

There are spoilers below.

At the start, it feels like we'll get a bit of the horrors of the mundane. It just immediately seems like there's something off and the fact that we're witnessing the seemingly normal day of a random SAHM, while knowing for this to be a Spooktober entry, only helps to deepen that hunch.

We quickly find some cracks in the "perfectly normal" life we're being shown. It's short, yet effective, quickly breaking down everyday life and twisting it into a horror story.

I needed a second try until I got the good ending. While I had my eyes on Aiden from the start, I figured I should check on him more to make sure he didn't do anything bad, which ended up being my downfall, haha.

Sometimes the music resets after choices. Ren'py offers ways to avoid this if you want to look into that for future games. It's a tiny change that can improve the overall feel of the VN :)

The sprites are very expressive and I especially like the CG with the eyes on top of the black background and the one of the close-up mouth.

Good job!

This is one of my favorite entries. I don't even know where to start with this. I played this together with parts of my jam team and everyone loved it as well.

The voice acting and processing is amazing. It really brings the characters to life.

I love how in many scenes you don't go for the standard way of displaying characters but instead work them into the background. Everything just feels so... immediate? It certainly levels up the game's general polish.

Then there's the story. It's hilarious, sad, and intriguing at the same time. There's so much going on. The stories of the different callers are varied, hitting differently each time with some being silly, others being sweet, and some tearing your heart out.

The characters are diversely characterized, each carrying their own distinct personalities. They are so much fun to be around!

And then there's the horror aspect, slowly sneaking its way into the story. It's such an amazing mix of light-hearted fun with more serious aspects beneath.

Also, I can't begin to imagine how you made a game of this size within a month. This is insane.

I have to admit, the ending came a bit sudden (I've reached one ending that wasn't a bad one so far, will check out more after playing other jam games), but it makes total sense considering this is a 1-month project. All this time I kept wondering how you did all of this within a month.

Anyway, if there's anything I'd wish for in this game, it would be for it to be longer. If you ever make a sequel, I'll check it out for sure :)

Thanks for this amazing experience!

I like me some good, old-fashioned gaslighting in my horror :)

This VN deals with psychological and physical horror, leaving the reader to piece together the events while the main character struggles to keep up.

It's a polished experience with voice acting and atmospheric art. Well done!