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I've been trying to approach it the same way I do poetry writing. Which means the goal is to efficiently evoke feelings using highly specific and unexpected language. So it's not just about being short and descriptive, it's about making that short description do a lot of work. You want to leave space for people to fill in the edges themselves, but you also want to give them interesting edges to fill in, if that makes sense. 

I don't know that I'm always that good at all that, but I find it a helpful way to look at things. 

Here's an example from what I've been working on for this jam:

"The Orchard: Bordered by the verdant fog, the trees compete for air and sunlight, growing ever-more decadent fruits to tempt the newly created."

I like your example above, by the way! I think the "to his shame" bit at the end especially injects some compelling emotion and motivation into it. 

I saw your devlog while you were still working on this and I thought it seemed really interesting so I was happy to finally play it! It's well done. The art is cute and the conversations are tough. I played through a few times and got a couple of different endings. I like how you even have some slightly different endings where they decide to try to work it out. Well done!

This is really cute! I'm surprised by how much you managed to get done in two weeks. The whole world and the art and the characters were adorable.

The combat system was a little clunky. I couldn't figure out how to time my attacks or which part of the attack was actually damage dealing (was it just the end of her arm?). So I died fighting the worm things and it was a little frustrating.

But still, really good work! Especially for your first game, and for the time limit!

I didn't get that far because I'm not very good at platformers, but this is a really good concept and an interesting execution. Being the person I am, I always chose what I thought was right regardless of how it would effect the difficulty, which is maybe part of why I didn't get that far.

It was kind of creepy and thought provoking, which is I think what you were going for. You may not have been able to do everything that you wanted to with it but I think what you did do was really cool.

Very cute! I love the animation of the cat curling up when your'e not moving.

I'm no good at platformers so I didn't make it very far, but the character sprite is super cute! Overall, I really like the aesthetic.

I like the idea of having kickback for the weapon, and needing to use that kickback to solve puzzles. I'm not very good at platformers so I never made it very far past the first level, but it's clever.

This is really interesting! The disconnected dreaminess of it (and the different colors) reminds me a bit of the classic text adventure Photopia. The writing is really good. The words are sometimes put together in strange, unexpected ways that enhances the dream-like quality of the piece. There's no real conclusion and no real answers, but it's better that way. There are hints of something deeper (losing your mother tongue, being a new person in a new land, losing connection to your self when you lose connection to your home, etc) that are super interesting and insightful.

Overall, really cool! I enjoyed it a lot.

This is such a nice idea! It's so simple and therapeutic. Good job.

The art is so cute and the game is fun! I'd love to see a more polished, complete version.

The quotes I have in the first post are all from the original book, ha ha. I haven't done any of the writing for the game yet, but I'm actually pretty good at copying writing styles, and dialogue is one of my strengths! Part of why I wanted to do a fangame was so that I could spend more time on the quality of the writing itself rather than just on coming up with ideas/world building.

Progress 7/10

I spent a lot of the day yesterday and then some time today watching/reading various Unity tutorials. This is my first time using the platform so I have a lot to learn. Orcs of Uberwald will essentially just be a series of menus so I'm focusing on menu tutorials, ha ha.

I also spent about six hours today making the map for the game.

This map will essentialy be the main screen for the game. Players will travel between the white spaces on the map, occasionally running into encounters (essentially small text-based adventures). I definitely won't be able to finish encounters for every space, but I'm hoping I'll at least get some done for the major locations.

This was the only art asset that I was doing myself, so now I've really just gotta concentrate on figuring out the coding.

My first thought was "I love the colors!" but I see everyone is already saying that, ha ha. I guess it's a consensus! The colors are good!

Thank you! I knew I could count on your support. :')

This sounds like a really fun puzzle mechanic!

Wow, this sounds ambitious! I'm a huge fan of farming sims myself, so I'm really looking forward to this one!

This sounds like a neat game! I think Twine is a pretty good engine for creating a dream-like atmosphere for a text game. I like the idea of creating a soundscape, too. Good luck! I can't wait to play your game.

Hi everyone, I'm Brenna. I participated in the first game jam and made a game called Void Talk. This is such a great event with such a great community and I'm so happy to be back!

I just finished another major project (I wrote a novella in a couple weeks, ha ha) so I'm not sure how much time or energy I'll have to devote to the jam this time around, but I'm hoping to at least complete a playable demo by the end of the two weeks!

This is a fangame based on the book Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett, so I definitely won't be selling the game, but I'm hoping to make it fun and accessible to people who have never read the book, too!

Orcs of Uberwald: A Discworld Fan Game

Orcs of Uberwald takes up where the book Unseen Academicals leaves off. Pie-chef Glenda Sugarbean and her soft-spoken orc boyfriend, Mr. Nutt, are on their way to Uberwald to find Nutt's scattered people (once thought extinct) and help them to become a part of the wider Discworld community. Of course, Glenda and Nutt will also face the challenge of getting humans (and the other various humanoid species of the Disc) to accept the Orcs, who are widely viewed as mindlessly violent, evil creatures.

It's a game of travel, adventure, and diplomacy!

To quote an exchange between Lady Margolotta and Mr. Nutt

"I would like you to teach [the orcs] civilized behavior," said Ladyship coldly.

He appeared to consider this. "Yes, of course, I think, that would be quite possible," he said. "And who would you send to teach the humans?" --Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

Gameplay

I want to do a sort of combination of a map exploration / text adventure game.

My basic concept is this: You travel around spaces on a map occasionally running into encounters. When an encounter is triggered, a text box pops up that explains what happens during the event, giving the player choices of what to do in response. Usually the player will gain something or be hurt by the results of their choice.

The player will also gather resources that will aid in traveling and in completing tasks.

I based my map of Uberwald on this map by SM9T8 on Deviantart

Characters

Glenda Sugarbean: Fat, motherly, and always the responsible one, Glenda ran the Night Kitchen at the Unseen University. Glenda is strong willed, determined, and can't stand to see people taken advantage of, whether they're poor football players or a nice orc boy with a tragic backstory. She's always ready use her street smarts or her cooking skills to get her where she needs to go, and she's not afraid to chew out authority figures if they deserve it. She has a 3-eyed teddy bear and, despite her overwhelming practicality, loves soppy romance novels.

'They really are all the same, aren't they?' she said to the three-eyed teddy bear. 'You know it's going to be Mary the Maid, or someone like her, and there's going to be two men and she will end up with the nice one, and there has to be misunderstandings, and they never do anything more than kiss and it's absolutely guaranteed that, for example, an exciting civil war or an invasion by trolls or even a scene with any cooking in it is not going to happen. The best you can expect is a thunderstorm.' --Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

Nutt: Nutt is an orc, a species that is widely feared and despised in the Discworld. At an early age, he was chained to an anvil by fearful villagers. Eventually rescued by a clergymen named Reverend Oats and given an education by the vampire Lady Margolotta, Nutt devoted his life to becoming "worthy" of life and affection. Uncertain and afraid of his own origins, Nutt eventually learns to accept himself for who he is. Nutt is soft-spoken, intelligent, and very strong.

"But here I am. You asked why I am strong? When I lived in the dark of the forge, I used to lift weights. The tongs at first, and then the little hammer and then the biggest hammer, and then one day I could lift the anvil. That was a good day. It was a little freedom."
"Why was it so important to lift the anvil?"
"I was chained to the anvil." --Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

Game Engine

I think this game would be pretty easy to make with any number of visual novel engines, but I'd really like to start learning some real programming that I can use for multiple projects, so I'm going to be building this game in Unity. I'm a total beginner here, so it'll be exciting to see how this goes.

Art

Once again, my sister Rose will be joining me to do the art for the game. I'll start posting some concept art as she makes it.

Edit 7/10: Added the finished map near the top of the post.

Your art continues to be SUPER CUTE! I'm really excited for your game!

1. Hi there! What's your name? Want to introduce yourself?

Hi there, I'm Brenna! I'm currently working for a small board game developer, but I'm interested in video game development, too! I'm primarily a fiction writer, but I'd like to learn more programming.

2. Did you participate in the last jam we held? If so, what do you plan on doing better this time? If not, what's your reason for joining?

I did! For the last jam I made a small game called Void Talk. At the time, I was working a crappy food service job and I was very depressed. The jam gave me something to work on that I really cared about for a couple weeks, and left me feeling like I'd accomplished something. The community was also very great and supportive and I made several friends over the course of the jam. The jam really helped me through a tough time!

I don't have much time or energy this time around, but I really want to dive into learning some real programming and test out a few game-play ideas I had. I don't think I'll have anything very substantial done at the end of two weeks, but I'd like to have something playable, at least!

3. What games are your favorites? Did any of them inspire you, or made you want to make your own?

Some of my favorite games are: The original Ace Attorney trilogy, the Professor Layton series, the Harvest Moon series, the first three Monkey Island games, Okami, and Katamari Damacy, among others. I've always loved games that are unique and fun, with good stories and engaging gameplay. You may notice that a few of these are point-and-click adventures. I've always loved that genre, and its waning popularity is part of what first made me interested in making games! I haven't made a point-and-click adventure yet, though.

4. Do you have experience with game development? What did you do/with what engine?

I've used Inklewriter and Renpy before. I wouldn't call myself an expert on renpy, though.

5. Tell us about something you're passionate about!

I'm passionate about good storytelling!

I saw the topic of this game jam and got really excited. I've got a fun idea for a game following Nutt and Glenda's adventures in Uberwald post-Unseen Academicals, but there are no topics in the forum yet, no screenshots posted, and the one game that's been submitted is entirely unrelated.

So if you're actively working on a Discworld game for this jam, reply and let me know. What are you working on? How's progress? Let's start a conversation and create a community.

A pretty fun game! Nicely surreal in concept. I couldn't find the 4th ending so I just kept ordering drinks over and over to see if drinking myself to death was a possible ending or something. I ordered over 200 drinks but it didn't do much, ha ha. I got the Almond Death ending, the Washroom is Occupied ending, and the successfully seducing the lady in red ending.

This game is so strange in concept and SO well executed. I love it!

I've only played through once so far and I may come back and add more after I've messed around with it a bit more, but I wanted to give you my initial impressions.

First off, this game is SUPER cute! The art style, the concept/gameplay, the writing, everything. It's adorable and I love it.

The puzzles were actually a little hard for me and I ended up kind of frustrated. I only succeeded for 2 out of the 4 customers. The most frustrating thing for me was that when I made a sprite for the merserker, in the description of that sprite it said that they're good helpers for gardening and such. So when the plant tamer asked for sprites to help around the garden, I immediately thought to try to recreate the sprite I'd done before. I used the exact same recipe as before but I ended up getting a boo-boo sprite.

I don't know if that was a glitch or if the recipes only work if you're making them for the right customer? It was just frustrating to do something that had made a real sprite before and have it turn out the failure sprite instead. Even if it's not the right sprite for the job if the player uses a correct recipe, I think it should still make a sprite.

But honestly that was the only problem I had with the game. I think it worked having the convos space out the ingredients (the things they all said were so cute and funny!) and the final confirmation menu was helpful. And frankly I loved all the characters so much.

Have you ever watched the Batman: The Brave and the Bold series? The merserker reminded me of the Aquaman from that series a bit. Which is a good thing.

Anyway, fantastic job! I'm glad I got to play it.

My intention is to have other more subtle indications of when a ! statement is truly a lie and when it's just an emotional response. For example, you may not have noticed, but even in this demo Gema always shows a blank face when she's actually lying, but will be emoting if it's not an actual lie. I also want to encourage the player to make sure that they have other evidence that something a character is saying is a lie before they jump on it. Creating a system to achieve that is gonna be my main focus programming-wise for a while.

And twitter DM's could work, so that we don't take up too much room in the thread. My personal twitter is @brenna_asplund and the game's twitter is @void_talk. I'd be fine with you contacting me on either account.

Thank you so much!! The cyberpunk thing is definitely what I was going for, and I have to give massive credit to the artist for implementing it so well. My goal eventually is to implement a way to bring up the papers and a log of previous conversation for reference. Thanks for your interest in the future of the project, too!

Thank you so much!! I really appreciate the long and detailed critique and I'm so glad that you enjoyed it and that you found the story intriguing!

A lot of your critiques are things I had been thinking about--either stuff that I ran out of time to implement fully or that I ran out of time to figure out exactly how I wanted to do them, ha ha.

I definitely think it's a flaw that the only two statements you can press are from the introduction. I don't want to make the players able to turn off the ! because part of the idea for me is that SAM's built in polygraph can be set off either by lies or by intense emotion--which comes up a lot in therapy. I want the player to have to sort through what's really suspicious and what isn't. Of course, I didn't really achieve that with this, either, since the player can't really do much with any of the statements except the lies.

I still haven't decided how I want to go about fully implementing that idea. With the way the basic menus work I could never fit all the ! statements on screen so I'd have to figure out a different way of pressing. That's something I'm going to be spending a lot of time figuring out. If you have any suggestions, let me know!

I almost put a flag on whether or not you found out about her love of robots but decided to concentrate on other things. That should be something that's easy to go back and put in now that the jam is over and the time press is gone.

Going at things from different angles is something I want to do more with so I'm glad you enjoyed that element!

And yeah, the space thing is another thing that was kind of rushed because I needed to get it in for story reasons but didn't have the time to do much with. SAM actually only asks about it if you see a certain number of suspicious statements regarding being in space/on the ship, but if you're playing the game at all thoroughly it's hard to avoid seeing them. It's a fair critique that it doesn't allow the players to come to the conclusion on their own this way.

I'm so glad you liked Gema! I'll pass on your compliments to the artist. My family has a really extensive history of all sorts of mental illnesses (anxiety and ADD included) so creating good representation for people with mental illnesses--especially in a game about therapy--was something that was important to me in coming up with the idea for this game, so I'm really happy that you appreciated that! In the full game every character will have different mental illnesses that they deal with (and that you help them with) in different ways.

But once again, thank you for this incredibly detailed critique! This is all stuff that I was wondering how people would respond to, so this is all incredibly helpful! If you have time to go through and point out spelling and grammar stuff it would be really helpful, but I don't want to make you go out of your way too much.

Thank you! I'm glad you liked where I took the concept. I've had a lot of fun coming up with different ways to mess around with it based on the premise. The full game will hopefully have a lot of twists and turns and complexities.

I definitely noticed that the game really messed with the kerning and stuff sometimes that made the game less readable but I ran out of time to mess with it. I'll keep searching around until I can find something easier to read!

And same with the file. I realized that this way it would end up being a bit of a memory game. I'm gonna keep messing around with menus and hopefully find a way to make the files re-accessible.

Thanks so much for the feedback! It's really helpful to know where to focus on fixing things.

Game url

http://cepheid.itch.io/void-talk

I'd like feedback on

• How difficult the puzzles/mysteries are and whether or not their satisfying.
• Whether or not the general concept is interesting.
• Whether or not the characters are compelling/interesting
• Any general suggestions for improving on the concept/gameplay since I'm going to try to make this into a bigger thing.

I need help on

Puzzle balance, suggestions for good ways to learn Python / do more customization in Ren'py

And it's finished!!

I hope all of you who were interested in aren't disappointed! We had to scale it back a bit from what we first had planned but I'm ultimately really proud of what we accomplished. Rose's art is really nice and elevates the whole game along with it. I'm also proud of some of the things I was able to accomplish with the programming.

I'll leave you guys with the new, updated cover image and I hope I hear back from some of you after you've played it!

We're mostly finished, I really just have to go through and add in all the official sprites now and I'm already halfway through that. Then just some bug fixes and some soundtrack/sound effect things.

I really love the angry sprites Rose drew.

At around 5am last night (which is actually half an hour later then I usually wake up for work) I started dozing off WHILE writing code and waking up to find weird stuff in the code, so I went to sleep for about 3 hours. Now I'm back at it! I'm mostly done, I just need to go through and add all the art in, really, and do some testing. I think I should still make the deadline.

And Hiroshi, I know how you feel. I also had to scale my game back A LOT to meet the deadline.

We've finally done away with the placeholder sketch!

I'm still plugging away at the tedious writing/programming.

Gif of the burgeoning evidence-presenting system! I'm really proud of it.

Thanks, deer!

It's time for the final night push! Rose and I are going to be up all night getting this done. I've solidified the story and I'm really starting to get into the heart of the coding. I've figured out how to implement a really basic ace-attorney-style evidence presenting system that's going to make the gameplay a lot more interesting. And Rose is finishing the art! Here's a look at our progress:

Ooh, yeah, you've got to put your health before game dev! You should definitely get some sleep if you're recovering from a cold.

And yeah! We can do it!

I work full-time so I didn't really have the time or energy to work on my game much during the week. But I've got tomorrow off so I'm planning on just working straight through to the deadline to make the best, most complete game that I can.

I've got energy drinks and gummy worms to help keep me awake and happy through the night.

Is anyone else going for a big last second crunch? Or are you all better at time management then me?

The roughs look great!

Aaaaah, I love the merserker!!! Both in concept and execution.

Tuesday Update

Today I had a big revelation that's gonna make it a lot more likely that this actually gets done. (Basically, I'm just gonna make it a whole lot more linear. More rails, but a stronger story and I can concentrate more on the lie mechanics)

I didn't make that much actual progress because I spent most of my time figuring out basic code things / making this icon to appear in the corner when a statement is suspicious

Look at that little exclamation mark there.

Not much different to look at still because I'm still using default art. Still, we're getting there, if slowly.

My goal is to have 3 therapy sessions in total to tell something of a complete story. If I have to, though, I'll submit it with only one of the sessions done. I'm definitely going to turn SOMETHING in after all this work.