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{Devlog} No Shade In Shadow

A topic by thea created Jan 03, 2016 Views: 513 Replies: 6
Viewing posts 1 to 6
(8 edits) (+1)

Alternately titled "through The Woods" my first game jam game is about a little girl exploring the deep, dark woods, trying to find her own story/fate. I'm using Adventure Game Studio and I have absolutely zero experience making games. My only vague basis in gaming is that I'm a self-taught illustrator and animator, but my usual work doesn't translate great into pixel art.

If I knew how to make games, or had more time to devote to this project, I'd make the games have multiple endings but as it is it's meant to be a slightly sad point-and-click retelling of some Grimm era fairytales. Most of the aesthetic inspiration comes from Emily Carroll's amazing graphic novel "Through The Woods", and the game "Neverending Nightmares", and the game's tone is slightly more in line with the game "The Beginner's Guide". In the long run, the game is meant to revolve around the player character, Red Riding Hood, helping various other Grimm's character's fulfill their fables' plotline, whether or not that's actually a good outcome for the character themselves.

Anyway, in the first two days I've managed to figure out walkable and walk-behind areas on AGS, but am really struggling with a lot of other stuff. I have the player character sprites made + entered into the system. (Example of a player walk-cycle is my icon. You're a cute lil red riding hood.)

Examples of sprites and things

HostSubmitted (2 edits) (+1)

omg??? i'm yelling bc i loooove all of your influences (emily carroll and neverending nightmares oh gosh...) i'm actually creating a red riding hood retelling in ue4 rn!! less related but if you haven't seen the illos for the rime of the mariner i think you might find them pretty cool--they've got a really moody lithographic style that feels very fairytale-ish. i also look at sam wolfe connelly's work for inspiration sometimes. lastly edward gorey's work is pretty creepy and very neverending nightmares-esque. aaa sorry for the link dump even tho you've got an aesthetic i think you might find some neat inspiration in these works as well. i can't tell you how excited to see and play your game!! the mechanic being heavily based in fables and player choice is really interesting aaaa... lastly: for the images you have to switch to html mode and then use this code <img src="imageurl">

Oh man, I adore Edward Gorey's work! I'm also a huge fan of an Australian artist called Shaun Tan who makes really cute but bizarre monsters, and if I get around to some of the weirder tales, I'll probably draw a lot of inspiration from him! I've actually seen your game around on tumblr and when I was partway through my concept art stuff I was like ..... ah shoot. (but they're pretty different so I think it'll be a-okay). Thanks for the picture help as well

(+1)

Updates:

I've got the player character (Red) walking around properly! I've also figured out level scaling so she scales with the perspective of the level POV. I'm already learning lots, although I don't actually now how to move to another room yet. (Don't worry, I'll figure it out)

I've got dialogue playing when the player clicks on surrounding in the environment, and hope to get a bunch of other sprites and rooms drawn up tomorrow.

Here's the game at the moment, in motion!

Jam HostSubmitted

ooo i have to check out all those influences you mentioned because i'm super interested... so far this looks super cool!!! not gonna lie, rehashes of little red riding hood are My Fave...

(1 edit)

Devlog update!

I haven't been able to do much recently, but I have the short entry into the woods planned out and I should definitely have that done by the time the game jam ends. Currently all the speech is written in rhyming scheme but I might just get rid of that if it stops me from getting my story across.

Anyway here are some progress shots. The little blue fellow is a will'o'the'wisp and he's having trouble drowning people when the lake's all frozen up.

HostSubmitted

ahhh i love how this looks + is coming along. i can't wait to see more screens!