Whose house is this?
Whose night keeps out the light
In here?
— Toni Morrison, Home
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE is an upcoming exploration-driven RPG Maker game
with an emphasis on
atmosphere and flavortext. You can download the demo here!
(It's
free! In fact, WDYTYA will be a non-commercial game.)
Is it brave or foolish to seek out an intruder in one's own home? Is it one's right, or one's downfall?
Negotiate a stormy night and navigate a darkened manse in pursuit of order. Examine everything in your path, and restore what you can. Every curious detail is relevant, and it will serve you best to pay close attention. Discover what you can about the house and its legacy as you pass through its dust-choked thresholds.
hi there! i go by katana online, and i'm a writer who really enjoys interactive fiction. i've dabbled and experimented in a lot of game-making software before without ever completing anything, but this january, i participated in #myfirstgamejam and the WDYTYA demo was the result! since then, i've been participating in more jams and learning new skills, and i've decided to try to make WDYTYA into a full game!
you can view its original jam devlog for the nitty gritty of me fumbling my way through creating the demo, but i'll condense it here for the sake of brevity (though i'm sorry if this post still winds up text-heavy!). during the jam, i:
- found and imported most of the assets i'd be needing
- began work on the player character sprite
- laid out 10+ maps
- planned about 70% of the story
- plus about ~50-60% of items, events, etc
from 1/1 to 1/16 i worked on this project for the sake of 1). making a game where flavortext is paramount, and 2). learning new eventing tactics, scripts, and effects in rpgmaker vx ace. it was an incredibly fun experience, i got some lovely feedback and encouragement, and i found myself attached to the concept enough that i wanted to see it through to something larger!
as a game, wdytya is pretty straightforward with simple gameplay -- you walk around, you examine everything, maybe something awful happens. it's influenced by the rpgmaker horror genre for sure -- ao oni, yume nikki, ib, etc -- but not really directly inspired by anything. thus far, i'm reluctant to label it a horror game right off the bat, but i'm definitely pleased that it's hitting the Unsettling mark and making players apprehensive!
there's still A LOT left to do. i don't have a strict work timeline plotted out at the moment because i'm a full-time student pursuing a double major and a lot of other creative work (someday i may post about the visual novel i'm working on?) -- but i'd at least like to start posting weekly progress updates in this thread! expect a lot of concept art, screenshots, gameplay gifs, and general rambling.
where things are now: i have the story essentially 100% plotted out and am starting to focus primarily on more mapping, eventing, script implementation, and improving flavortext. i'm super open to any thoughts about the current build, gameplay or concept-wise, so please feel free to comment here or contact me about anything!
thanks so much for checking out Who Do You Think You Are! if you're interested in the development of my other work, feel free to follow my game junk twitter at @RicassoFiction!
best of luck to everyone else working on their games -- this forum is awesome and all these threads are seriously cool and inspiring!
