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(+3)

So in the spirit of sharing - the game I'm working on is called Bitemarks & Bloodstains. Where The Wretched was my attempt to distill Alien down into a journaling game, this one is an homage to films like Red Dragon and Se7en

You play an investigative journalist one the trail of a ritual killer. You're trying to build a psychological profile of the killer to be able to identify them and get a scoop on the killings before the police get there first, but in the process you begin being hunted by the killer.

I'm changing up the formula with this one, introducing multiple oracles and allowing the tower to fall a couple of times before the end of the game. Each time the tower falls the killer strikes again, and you move on to a new set of oracle cards as you investigate the new killing. I know a few other people taking part in the jam have made changes to how the mechanics work - one game I can think of that's being written has the player building the tower from the base rather than pulling blocks from a fully-constructed tower, which is awesome! I'm really keen to encourage experimentation with this stuff, so if you're working on something interesting let us know!

And, as Matt said, if anybody needs any help or wants to throw ideas around feel free to get in touch. There are a lot of people in this jam who have never written games before and I'm more than happy to offer any assistance I can.

Looking forward to seeing what people are cooking up!

(+2)

Oooh. I really like the idea of multiple oracles. That's a really good fit for escalating or changing situations.

(+1)

Yeah I'm really enjoying playing with the format in that way! The issue I'm having is making sure the game doesn't go on for too long, so I'm trying to balance the number of pulls etc. One mechanic I'm stealing from Rose Quartz is having the player twist the tower like a helix after rebuilding it, to make it fall faster the second time reound - which will also represent the killer becoming more frantic/speeding up their ritual. There's a long way to go on this game yet and I don't think I'll finish it during the jam but I'm really happy with where it's headed.

As I mentioned on Twitter, I'm now considering multiple oracles (well, two at least, possibly three) for my Castle Dracula idea. But as you said, I don't want the game to drag on for two long. (Though now that I've said that, I'm rather interested in knowing how long a game can go, and if it'd continue to be fun.) Other ideas I had on making the tower fall faster after each reset were 1) rolling more dice for initial pulls, and 2) having cards that force multiple pulls.