Totally agree. I'm trying to fix up most of those in the update. The gamejam version suffered from lack of testing, just didn't have time to check what I needed to add a bit more direction for.
Yeah I think it's good to be testing our limits in the jam though! I tried going bigger this time and had to stop short of getting the whole story done. Learned a lot doing that though.
This took me a few sittings, another big game this year! Only just finished before the voting deadline :). Marco being so disdainful of books/reading was really funny. Nice little character quirk. The map was very good to have, but I liked how the city connected up between rooms as well.
I agree with a few others that the story was a bit hard to keep track of. Probably partly because I played a bunch of others between starting and finishing it. But I liked the scope of the story (ancient evil gods, magic seals thrown into space, etc. cool stuff!).
Your art is really polished, you have your character workflow down perfectly, they're all really varied, and fit their personality, and you have a great sense of colour, really bright and visually appealing.
You really captured a unique setting here, very impressive how much detail you gave it, you feel like you're getting a little glimpse into their lives. I always like your entries, and this is no exception!
A nice enjoyable little adventure game! I thought puzzles were all fair and well signposted, nice balance. Loved all the characters, the animations were great, and I chuckled more than a few times at the writing too :D
He he, great stuff all round! A special mention to the art in the street in particular, the tiny pixel people, and little details like the other characters moving between buildings are fantastic, and the end sequence there too was a great payoff. Voice acting was lots of fun too!
Had a few runs and enjoyed it. It's the sort of game you could flesh out endlessly with more stuff, but what you did gives a great sense of the game. It's easy to get wrecked if you're unlucky at the moment, but makes it more cool when you do get an upgrade :)
Yeah, great atmosphere! Really had me going. The art and audio worked great together. I love setups like this where a character is trapped and you know it's only going to get worse ;) If you'd had time, a bit more interactivity when walking around the town would have been cool, to set more tone and keep the sense of mystery working longer. But you did a lot already, so much nice artwork in this! The comic sections were very tense!
Thanks George! I reckon while I'm still working on the drifter I'll keep these as hobby projects, maybe just so mentally I don't start taking them as seriously. It's not like a game this style can age any more than it already by sitting on it for a few years ha ha!
Doing puzzles this style is easier I think, with just lots of objects scattered around the rooms. Think of random objects you need, put them in a room that makes sense, and then think of something you need in *another* room before you can get that... rinse and repeat. With this setting it's a lot easier to think of stuff that makes sense in the world. Harder on the Drifter where I'm trying to avoid anything that feels contrived in the serious setting. I'm getting better at it with practice too I guess. I'm trying to get more bang for buck out of Drifter scenes too, since that art takes a lot longer.
I haven't finished it yet, but just wanted to say this is breathtaking. I really have no idea how you can do so much in two weeks! like 29 backgrounds or so right? How long do you spend on each one? They look so full of detail! Also curious if you draw them at-res, since it seems like your style would scale up beautifully to high-res. Anyway, I'll play more and give my thoughts, but I'm pretty blown away already ;)
Lol! Glad you ended up making something! Love the unique sense of humor. Laughed every time I died. Your artstyle is really great for this kind of thing too. Nice break doing some comedy after the pulp stuff?
Yeah, in terms of puzzles, it's been interesting with Telwynium trying things much less linear than I'm used to. A lot more puzzles for the sake of puzzles, and characters that are like "I need these 3 things" ha ha. It's less modern feeling for sure. I tend to avoid doing that for the drifter, but it works for a deliberately "retro" one like telwynium. One thing that's nice when you think of more puzzles is that you get more bang-for-buck for the rooms you've done, people can play longer, since it feels like it's a lot of work for 20 mins of play time otherwise! But people don't have as much time to play stuff these days, so I like a condensed experience. Peridium was very similar, just a serious of obvious things to use. But yeah, I like that personally. Just like the flow of "ooh I got the thing, I know what I need to do now". There's a very vocal minority that HATE easy puzzles though :P
My experience writing for these things is similar to yours too, mostly I look back and I can't remember writing most of it at all, such a blur. But one thing I love about these is that you start with nothing and end up with a character you kind of feel like you know somehow.
Thanks SHDon! I really love drawing in this style. I think for Book 3 I'll have to scope down again so I can actually get it done, bit off too much for this one! I'm thinking about having you play from some other characters perspective too. Might be cool.
Congrats! You got tonnes of atmosphere into the game (pun intended). Great setting, and the art is really nice to look at and sets a great tone. Travis was really excellent. I really like the gameplay too, just fun interactions that flow you through the game at a nice pace, and do the job of getting you looking around and engaging, without being too in-your-face puzzley. I'm very happy playing games like this.
Your writing is really good too. I'd maybe have an alternate pose for the character when he's thinking to himself if you do more in the style. But I think you're really good at establishing character through the dialog even in something so short. I'm hoping you do more, get some banter between more characters going because I think you'd have a lot of fun with that!
Great stuff Guga! Loved the nuns with mustaches, and theres a bunch of really clever dialog lines that made me laugh, the line about easter at the start for example! Puzzles were tough but all fair and made sense when I worked them out. (Only one I didn't figure out my self was how to follow someone.) Lots of great animation too, I never got tired of getting hit by that nun!
Yeah, the documentation is very hit and miss. I think without asking things here or in the discord it'd be pretty hard to figure a lot of things out ;)
There's no built in 'follow character' system like in AGS. Partly because there's a few ways to do it and each time I've done it myself its' been quite different. (See the source for Coatrack and Wizard Force)
I think the thing you're looking for though, is the GlobalScript Update function. So having your code in there rather than in each room. Then you can do
if ( C.SupportCharacterName.Room != R.Current )
C.SupportCharacterName.Room = R.Current;
And they'll move immediately to the room you're in. I guess you might want to couple that with some timers so that it's not instantaneous, etc... But that's up to your implementation.
Another function that's useful is StartFacingCharacter() and StopFacingCharacter(). Which get a character to turn to face another automatically with a random delay.
Anyway, let me know how you get on, any followup questions, etc. The Itch forums are a bit quiet compared to the Discord, so check that out too if you want.
I can see that you already have the Game folder, which means you've already installed another package in a way you shouldn't have, and it says you've exited safe mode which means there must have been errors in your project already, which is why you can't now open PowerQuest. Quick thing to do is to delete that whole project folder, and start a new one, should only take you a minute.
I just tested in unity 2020, with PQ v0.15.11 and I'm not getting errors using that template. I'd guess try it again in a fresh project, maybe something got busted the first time. And in-case you were doing it some other way, use the "Set it up button" in the PowerQuest window to do the setup.
Hmm, ok. I'll have to check that 9verb template, maybe I broke it in the last update. I'm guessing all you've done is added PowerQuest and clicked the 'set up' button, yeah?
Ah someone else had that issue, I think I just messed up the settings for the VO lines so they take ages to load for some people, since I haven't had the issue on any other projects... It was a game jam though, def not intended as a tech demo ;)
