itch.io

I was at a point in writing where I had to remind myself this story was a game.

Is the best way to write this story just by throwing the players into it? 

So yeah, rethinking my approach to how I start off this story but the old version is still there.

It's not real UI just a visual for the viewer. Hey, do you think I could do concept design for UI on a portfolio? Does that count?

Today I proofread and edited a few passages, then switched out some of the passages with new illustrations. I first  planned on using the phones later down the line, but it actually made more sense to make it look like the options are on their phones so I did that. Here are Sohee and Hye-ryeon's phones. 

I also remembered that today, Xanadu was supposed to be Hye-ryeon's favorite color not Robin Egg blue. . .But Xanadu is also the color of her eyes? When did I decide this? seems a bit conceited for her favorite color to be her eye color? Hmmm.... should I make her eyes a dark blue instead?


After some thought I thought it'd probably be easier to look for a chibi head artist vs an artist for half body and bust... I thought I'd like the chibi heads to have emotions and it might be easier for readers, suddenly seeing a bust might de-immerse them? But I think for key scenes I can still surprise them in some ways? I dunno. 

A fun and productive day today. 

Am also thinking of illustration certain conversations instead of text to cut back on the amount of text I uses, apparently the longer the passage is the more it takes a toll if you used special things like div, transitions etc. 

Scuse my messy drafts. 

Today I learned how frustrating it was to read this on a phone. It's very unfortunate but after fiddling around with the padding and seeing that nothing was changing or that it was only changing a smidge, I decided to leave it alone and just focus on the story for now still. 

I also found an artist for half-body sprites! Yay!

May have to do some extra studying to learn how to adjust that- I think it's the border, I read that adding story-box  to the CSS stylesheet and change the div to storybook as well would work, but nothing changed. Maybe it'll just have to be a browser game?

That aside, I added more passages and pictures today.  Definitely going to have to change the colors. 

"When you're too close to a problem you can't always see things clearly . Were they in the wrong, or... was it me? "

Be My Judge! is the tale of a rich classmate "R"  asking two of our main characters: The socialite "S", and quiet creative "H" to help her judge herself and her dysfunctional friend group by meeting them at a party.  

It's an interactive Fiction game, there's no fancy mechanics, just a few twine animations and illustrations here and there. I'm hoping to recreate the vibes of a visual novel game.

Themes: Luxury, k-drama, rich kids, high school, y2k, goth, christian, modern vibes-

Current Progress:

Tutorial: 60%

Act 1: 0%

Act 2: 0%

Currently writing the tutorial phase- may not look much but it took me quite a while as I keep rewriting the passages and adding some animations and details- still learning how to write those in! I made some of the button art myself but the icons are from flaticon.com's free icons. 

Link: https://veiledbluechild.itch.io/be-my-judge

I would like to commission some Art or ask for the help of students looking to get some experience on their portfolios as I'm a college grad myself. Will list collaborators in credits in game on itch.io page.

Art I Need:

1. Chibi heads png. In a chic PPG and PASWG artstyle.  [I may actually just use chibi heads if I can't find anyone who can help out with the chibis, it will still be fine.]

(There are 15 characters total, but some do not make actual appearances and will just be mentioned. 

(Example of my own art: While trying to make them I had fun but am not very skilled drawing on tablet and would much rather focus on my writing than having to draw art for all the characters.)

2. Chibi- half body - for character introductions & profiles. 

I found a volunteer artist to help with some of the charas!

3. Background art- 1 Room, but has different sections of the room (ex. bathroom, hot-tub, pool- chair area, bar etc), as well as a top down view for the map. Now depending on whether I can find a proper BG artist I will just make a rough top down drawing and use that mostly anyway. 

4. CG/Illustration - for key scenes. Now the story IS mostly text but I'd like to surprise the player with some beautiful scenes to make them feel more invested in the relationships and their choices <3. 

5. Icon art - For profile sections and game notifications. 

6. GUI - this will be done by me. By GUI I just mean button & profile template designs and stuff- it's nothing super visual novel-y.  I'm going for a hot-tub water theme heheh...

I'm still learning how to add transitions, format and  stuff, do not see it with music but I hear you can add some into twine games so maybe in the far off future, you know?

This was a really cute game! I enjoyed it!

It's a major improvement and way more easier to understand. The thing I'd comment on is how tiny the toggling triangles that expand and close  are, I didn't notice them at first. People with vision issues might not notice that.  Then there's the characters and choices section which seems to be blended together? That part is a bit confusing but I see that this is probably supposed to be demonstrative? Are you using AI to make this as well? 

I heard you could make images with chat gpt but I had no idea it could learn to make images this good, that's surprising. 

This looks very interesting and promising! 

Love the design picture here! Did you use Figma?  

I looked at  the page and I think it'd be helpful if there was also a tutorial video. Or if you're going to run the tool let it be an empty one where there's tutorial features that can walk the player through how to start writing stuff vs just introducing them to a page where there's already stuff.  I think it'd be more immersive at least than having to pick and comb through a project that's already been started. I can see stuff and guess what it's for but a walkthrough would be nice.

Here's my thoughts on Twine and a few things I hate.

1.  How tedious it becomes to edit. 

Say for example I  don't like a character's name anymore and choose to change it, I can use the magnifying glass to find something in the passage and change it, but it's only for that single passage. This becomes incredibly tedious if you have multiple passages.  So if you're going to make something similar,  I'd say make sure users can edit things in bulk or an identifying feature  that allows characters/dialog sources/items etc to be defined, so little things like that can be easily fixed instead of having to comb through multiple plus passages. Also maybe add in an assistant proofreader?

2. Add different format template options. Learning about html and css has been fun at times, but other times I just want to be able to focus on my writing and not be distracted by formatting immediately. I'm a visual person so I'm the type who gets distracted if I can't fix. Having to burn through time looking up how to make those changes can be tedious depending on how readily available the information is out there- thankful google's ai has been most helpful to me in that regard but still. 

It's a huge time suck. Having a few premade templates, formats or features that allows you to  quickly edit font, text, borders, spacing etc, would be helpful, can edit in high detail later. 

Those are just my two tidbits you can take lightly. 

This picture is giving me so much inspiration right now, it's very polished and atmospheric, makes you feel like you're there. 

This is so cute, quickly and pretty! Brings me back to days of watching Strawberry Shortcake.

I'm actually in love with this theme.  Clean and elegant. Not too simple, not too decorated but it does soooo much! <3

This was fun.

I really enjoyed this demo, especially the writing portion. I admire you! I hope you can continue it again whenever you can- And if you've published any books,  I'd love to read them! Please don't disappear forever and keep us posted!

Hey there Kevallion!

 I'm not sold on Discord  ( I've always preferred good ole Forum site set ups or places with more space). I was thinking of starting an art/game jam of my own and was studying others and how to make a discord server . I also have a game project and am looking for a team and workspace websites to communicate with them so I really like this idea.  If you still need a Beta Tester I'd love to help out! Although presently I'm just a  writer and baby artist, still learning.

This was super fun and so so so cute! I loved the pixel art, specifically the way she walks slowly if the mouse is near and runs if it's far away!
phenomenal job! And the vibrations (or was I imagining it?) from the bounces felt so immersive! 

I'm a Creative Writing student fresh out of university and looking for projects to help build my portfolio. I don't mind working on small projects for free. 

I'm interested in fantasy, romance and slice-of-life genres.  You can check out my website here. 

Hi everyone, I'm a creative writing student. |Discord : yumishi1251

I made a twine game a few months back for an assignment, before graduation, I'd like to polish it up for my portfolio and eventually release it on itch.io. So, this will be an unpaid project. If you're someone looking to collab and add experience to your portfolio like me, please respond!

I'm working on everything else, and also shopping online for pixel art furniture. The game will be mostly text  with few visuals, but I thought when it does show visuals it should be ...enough, you know?

  All I'm asking  for is pixel sprite art, 32 x 32. There are 12 characters in my game. I'll go over their personalities later on discord*.
(My game might be a twine game now, but I'm hoping to make it a unity game later I'll also release on itch.io. The difference between the two is that the twine focuses on one round while the unity version will have more rounds, with more time to learn about all the characters. etc.)

It's a social deduction game. You can think of Among Us, only the story doesn't take place on a space ship, but in a village, at a fancy abandoned mansion, and the monster isn't an alien creature, but something else.

The story is about gamers playing a game, TVITR.   E*, a former expert player, is invited to play by her friend, but the lobby is packed with noobs, and individuals she doesn't get along with. In a game where trust and skill is key, will she be able to guide the dysfunctional team to victory or end  up poisoned by the whole experience?

TVITR basic Summary: 

When the richest man in the village passes away, he invites the villagers to come take what they like after his death, the generous gesture quickly reveals itself to be the opposite as villagers find themselves trapped inside his mansion, prey to a resident monster.

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Please respond if you're interested! I don't mind if multiple people are interested in the project, you can handle one character at a time. 

*Disclaimer*: I am not used to discord, but I noticed that for a lot of you game dev folks it's your bread and butter, so I'm using it. 

Cute but also poetic, and a little creepy.

Everything looks amazing!