itch.io

Long live Itch. Like steam, but even better, at least for a developer that is...

Probably in order to get something, anything on the shelves. I'd rather the game be short than terminally unfinished.

Holy shit, the comments section here is kind of overwhelming, this game sure stirred the pot lol. Anyway. Came here to say I played and enjoyed your game. Don't listen to the haters. Keep making it. That's all I'm saying lmao.

It's been a really long time with absolutely zero news or updates on this game, which is a shame, I consider it a real gem. Totally a favorite of mine so far. Is there a discord or something? This game is slept on bruh. So much potential. I'd hate to see it prematurely dead.

-ck

I grew up in the 90s and pixel art is just a stylistic choice for me

Game was fun but just to let you know the sound doesn't work at all on the current manjaro linux release (:

I guess. I mean, Lue has a girl he favors in this game, and it's kind of a shitty thing to do to your broship, but you can pursue her as well. No spoilers!

I liked it. It was... something. Lol.
Music was good. Art was decent.
The conversations you can have with various characters are all well written and moderately interesting enough to keep me pressing Z.

The text goes entirely too slow imo but I understand it was all just to help build up tension and atmosphere.

I liked the games message about getting off your rear end and doing stuff. And the finite amount of life each of us are given. I knew I was in for an interesting experience when the game opened with an Exurbia quote. I like his shit a lot too.

Not sure what the final ten minutes of the game are really about besides waiting for more content.

I, too, am described as emo by a lot of people. But I wouldn't describe myself as one.
Anyway, I played your game all the way through to the final minutes.
And I don't feel like I wasted my time on it. It was good. Enjoyable I guess.
Just wanted you to know that. I've had it sitting on my desktop for like, a month and I wanted to play it some day, I just wasn't sure how I felt about investing an entire hour of my time into it unless it was real good.

Anyway, keep on being creative chum. This was a great title considering it's the first I've heard from you. Not sure what else I can add to this post. The message of the work is a little muddled and I walked away from the experience feeling slightly motivated but also slightly puzzled about what purpose the entire excercise might have had. I love videogames as art tho. And this one is about as bizarre and different as artsy videogames get.

Good on you for making something different either way. Godspeed.

-CK

Goddamn that was somethin' else. Glad I finished it

I've got some very mixed feelings about this one! I'll start with the positives. For one thing, it's one of the nicest Ren'Py games I've seen on Itch so far. There's a bare bones combat system implemented that shows promise for the future. The sound design is very top notch, I thought all the foley and sound effects were very nicely chosen. On the other hand I do have some criticism's... The scope of the plot is kind of strange and all over the place, imo. Can spot clear plot inspirations from Attack on Titan & Game of Thrones and even Starship Troopers of all things. In fact, it's easier to think of this as some kind of erotic crossover fanfiction spinoff than it's own thing. I don't want to criticize the combat too much as it's clearly a prototype and the creator is working on making it better, I imagine. They've said something about an overhaul of the whole game so I imagine a lot of the issues I mention are already on their way to being fixed. My other biggest problems would be the shortage of romance options in the game. So far I'd say there's about two and a half that I've found so far. I'd like to see more variation in the romance options as well. I don't just mean personality's of the women, I also mean body types. Make the women more distinct as the current 3 options are all... too similiar. The art style isn't consistent. This is being worked on and fixed, I've read. But it's quite jarring. I started the game in Not-Winterfell and got sent to the wall to fight the not-white-walkers, grumpkins and snarks, only to wind up in a strange bootcamp mashup of Starship Troopers and Attack on Titan, maybe a pinch of full metal jacket. Got sent to Klendathu where Dizzy gets killed by an arachnid. Then I found the titan serum which, ended up transforming me into a marvel universe symbiote. Which is aight because it made my character more handsome and chiselled and stuff. But man, this paragraph should paint the idea of all the clashing art styles and ideas going on in this game. As well, more complaints about the women. I just didn't find any of them particularly attractive. Should definitely spice them up a lot more. Your scout-wife looks very unattractive in her full combat getup and when she loses the clothes it doesn't have enough of a "Grand Reveal" feeling to it. Maybe hide something under the clothing like interesting tattoo's with backstory's or scars or something, so we can learn about the female character by romancing her. As it stands the sex scenes feel entirely arbitrary and have little impact on the plot. It's also really silly to mention this, especially since it's something being worked on, but during combat, when my character attacks, his foot lifts off the ground and points towards the enemy, very strangely. It almost makes me laugh which is, again, jarring, given the setting and general atmosphere of the game. I want to finish the review strong though, and mention how I have high hopes for this game despite the initial awkwardness you can find in this beta version. It seems to have a strong artistic vision it's moving towards. The audio is very good. As well, I haven't mentioned at all how much I appreciate the solid writing of the game. I poked fun at the plot structure, but when interacting with NPC's, I noticed no spelling mistakes, or sloppy amateur sounding writing like in several other erogames out there right now. I even enjoy Markus as a Deuteragonist. He's fun. None of the characters speak in an unbelievable way and I'm thankful that this game holds back on spewing paragraphs of author tract at you like most erogames and visual novels tend to do. Every visual novel or erogame tends to have a lot of rambling about inane subects nobody cares about somewhere in the game. Whereas, in this game, I only ended up skipping some of the combat scenes that didn't involve actual combat. The battle between the dwarf dude and the Balrog for example, felt a bit long winded, over the top, overly long and overly detailed. He wasn't exactly a memorable character to begin with (he looks like he walked off the set of the Warcraft Movie) and so when he began to face his inevitable demise I kind of rolled my eyes and began double-tapping my spacebar like a paintball gun to slog through all the dialogue. And whence he was dead I didn't really mourn him in any significant way. It didn't effect the plot too deeply. It was just a semi random event that went into a deep description of the gorey battle between the two.... for some reason? Besides looking like a dwarf out of World of Warcraft, he wasn't a very compelling character. As well, it feels somewhat out of place in a comical way, yet again, that your drill instructor is basically a brawny midget who dies anyway shortly after you bother remembering to memorize his name. Also, having watched Starship Troopers, I'd say your scoutwifes death is entirely too predictable. She even dies, almost shot for shot, the same way as Dizzy did. You know damn well what I'm talking about lol. I don't mean to shit on your project, I just mean to say her demise was very much seen coming by me a mile away, you need to work on that, maybe make it less predictable that she's your Aerith. All that being said, I still really enjoyed this game, especially considering I didn't drop a dime on it. (Sorry! I'm broke as a joke!) If you could like, expand upon the content by like 14 hours and VASTLY improve the combat, I could see myself really sinking my teeth into that as a satisfying experience. For some suggestions on how to improve the combat: -Shaders, shaders, shaders!! -Attack/spell animations besides rotating arms and a sound effect -Screen shakes/Screen Flashes -Don't let me see my characters health fall into negative values. Markus got struck and his health fell all the way to -24, then he died. It works good for debug purposes to see this, and see how the attacks are working "under the hood" but don't let your player see this. It comes across very amateurish. Once the value hits 0 it shouldn't fall any further. It breaks immersion. Anyway, I loved the game. I hope to see much more of it and I'd love to see how it expands and unfolds as time goes on. One final note, maybe try and change the art for the players transformations. As it stands the two of them remind me of Venom and Carnage and... blegh. It clashes really hard with all the allusions made to game of thrones and attack on titan to have these spidey-verse characters flying around in the fields like that. It's extremely odd. I can't understate how jarring and strange it was to see my characters final transformation. They don't look like they belong anywhere in this game. You really need to fix that, lol. Anyway, good luck, I'll be keeping a close eye on this one!

-Sen/CK

My number one go to theme. Making an excellent piece of software just that much better. Mahsi Cho for making everything softer on the eyes, I really appreciate it! 

Yours truly

-Ck

The influence and importance of this game cannot be understated in the Indie Circuit. 

Sexually it's not really my thing as a cisgender male, but other then that, this game is somewhat impressive. I adore Cyberpunk Pixelart Aesthetic and this game brings that to the table with a strong art style. Beyond that I can't really comment. But I do wish this game all the luck and fortune in the future. 

Well that's depressing lol I was enjoying this

I'm pretty sad to see the game go belly up. Yet, I'm very happy that the source is available for all now. I hope Tales of Games knows what this game meant to their fanbase. The original was such a huge source of inspiration for me, along with Funky Chicken by Steelwav (which I can't find anywhere anymore, not even internet archive!)

I'll elaborate a little, since I've said lots about this game elsewhere, but here is where I imagine I'll most likely have my thoughts on the game noticed by the original creators, if I'm lucky.

Barkley taught me all kinds of things, growing up as a young game dev. It held a Joie De Vivre for Game Design that's sorely lacking in the current vidcon universe. With a distinctive style of humour and script that was difficult if not impossible to replicate. The in-jokes were thick and layered with polish and perfection. It had built it's own canon of lingo and terminology. It also made me laugh. Very hard and very often. And for a cold, heartless bastard like myself, that's such a rarity to find. It's a shining gem in the trash heap of shovelware that comes out on a (literal) daily basis.

It taught me that games are meant to be enjoyed. With Barkley RPG, I never wanted to skip dialogue. I wanted to relish every bite of text. It taught me to think outside the box. Status ailments named after real life diseases, currency named Neo Shekels! Lol! Gods. Did I love this game. I loved Barkley like a cherished friend. It brought me light in the darkness. It brought me cheer in depression. If I could just play 9 more games like this for the rest of the year, I wouldn't be so depressed.

Furthermore, Cyberpunk was such a fresh, trending subject back then. Similiar to Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, Tales of Games took Cyberpunk and made a loving parody of it that also stood on it's own as a serious piece of work. I'll never forget the dating simulator in the first game between Cyberdwarf and Juanita the big black woman who looked like her portrait was taken straight out of google search. It's combination of taking itself jokingly, while simultaneously taking itself deadpan seriously, might never be seen again in vidcons in my lifetime. I pray for the return of the team. I pray this is not the last we've heard of them as I feel they had so much to offer the world with their videogames.

I've taken a copy of the source code and I'll protect it with my life. I feel that, given the blessings of the original team, with a copy of the games script, others can pick up the mantle and finish the game one day, as a labour of love. But I'm not sure how the original developers feel about such a thing. And I wish to respect their wishes as well.

For years now Barkley RPG has been among the top shelf of videogames I'll recommend to everyone and anyone. I seriously can't recommend it highly enough. 

I'll be honest when I say I don't even know how to proceed from here on in my life without it. It was one of the big things I wanted to hold on through infinite pain and misery in my life for. The source code is, as others have put it, worth a lot of money. It is an invaluable chest full of treasure and jewels. To have it for free relieves much uncertainty and despair. Still, though, I'll never give up hope on one day seeing the finished product, to see what could have been and to read more of the extremely unique storyline of the Barkley RPG series. 

Long live Tales of games. Long live Barkley RPG.
Words fail me now. I only hope I've communicated clearly enough what this game meant to me. And to many others. Thank you so much for all the time, energy and effort that was put into this dream project. It will never be a failure in my eyes. I will always be impressed by this. I will always love this dearly in my heart. Thank you again. Now, all that's left is to figure out where we go from here in life?

I'm developing my own cyberpunk game as well, I should mention. If it should ever see the light of day... I want the creators of Barkley RPG to know what a huge influence their game had on me. It inspired the entire direction of my life. But I ramble. Godspeed, fellas.

-Clark/Senretsu

Thanks for getting a hold of me you two! I'm sorry for my absence, but I'm back now. The team is just undergoing a bit of rebranding at the moment that has the usual routine shaken up a bit.
tl;dr
The name I'd chosen for our dev studio turns out to be already spoken for, which took the wind out of my sails a bit, and we need to change our name and stuff now.
I've sent Ward a friend request over discord and I'll try getting back to you as soon as possible through email Dz. Just getting my day started. Thank you so much for your interest in the project, either way. ^_^

I really dig them! Thanks so much!

I've sent you a friend request and we'll see if we can't get you in on the project ^^

Hope it's not against the rules to bump my topic here, but we're still looking and hiring within my studio, Pixel Punk Productions!

I figured, as well, I could give more information on what I had in mind, in order to help build anticipation or increase interest in working on the project. 

The game will be developed in Godot Engine for Linux, Windows and Android. It'll largely be a pixel art action adventure rpg with metroidvania style progression. The plot is a post cyberpunk story with elements of SciFi horror. Very nanomachine oriented. 

I will begin an itch.io devblog soon and detail more of the lore and world building there. For this thread I'll try to stick with technical details. 

Pixel Punk Productions will not take credit for any contributions to the game. All developers involved in the title will be credited with their real names first and foremost, or chosen screen name, whichever is preferred. The name of the collective will simply be used for convenience sake when referring to our team collectively. 

We are currently still hiring and still highly interested primarily in Godot Programmers and Artists. All artists. And Devs of all experience levels will be given full consideration. I am in charge of organizing the effort. If you are unsure of what or how you can contribute, I can find you a spot, no worries. 

Under my belt and for display as my experience... I have roughly 18 years as an amateur videogame developer and pixel artist. With around 500 pages of sprite comics under my belt of every genre, from high fantasy to cyberpunk. My sprite comic "Dungeons and Dumbasses" was particularly well Recieved. I also did a fairly high production shadowrun comic, though it was short lived. I began work through Rpg maker 2000 in the early wild West days of the internet and simply never stopped while many others did. To many others this is a hobby. To me, it is my job. 

The most recent work on the plot and games by me and my writer was today. We are working on an official game design document to keep the team unified and cohesive. I have pages of lore written. I am also pixelling and photoshopping the graphics together and doing the brunt of the code.

So, I'll say again, we're still hiring, we're still looking, we are very serious about this. In time, I also plan on working out a bounty system. The most challenging parts of development will have crypto currency rewards offered for those who can solve them. However this is still in the planning phase right now and I would like to avoid working on the game too heavily for profit and forgetting our passion. 

Please get a hold of me if any of this interests you. You are free to give working with us a trial run as well. No pressure and no obligations necessary. 

You can leave a message here, or email me at clark.k@tech-center.com 

I am also Coinspinner#8815 via discord. 

Hoping to hear from some of you soon, and I hope I'm not breaking any rules with this update. I plan on starting an itch devlog and page for the game, etc in due time. If I seem scant on certain details, it's simply to protect the secrets of the IP.  :) 

Thank you all and have a wonderful day! 

-Ck/Coinspinner

Hey there! I've sent you a friend request through discord. I'm working on something of a SciFi horror game and I think it's possible that we might be able to work together on something awesome!

Of course, it's an unpaid position until release day, so there's no pressure and no obligation. However, if you want to work on a videogame, and you want to work on horror stuff, I do have a project up my sleeve that I could greatly use another artists help with.  I'm largely a programmer and a pixel artist myself. However I could really use another artists help. I simply can't do this alone. If you are good at it, and we work together well, it's possible I can compensate you with some cryptocurrency, as a token of my seriousness. Even traditional hand drawn stuff would be great for character portraits and concept art which I could later pixellize. Full credit and inclusion in the credits of the game are of course, also being offered here. 

Please let me know through any available channel, I will check tomorrow for a reply. Thanks for your time :) 

-Clark/Coinspinner

Hey there! Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. I'll be sure to shoot you an email as soon as possible so we can collab sometime. You sound like just the kind of guy I need to know ^^

Hello everyone! My names Clark, I'm looking for other folks who work with Godot Engine and want to brainstorm and spitball idea's about a Cyberpunk Game or Three, the concepts for which I've been working on for a long time by myself. I'm not looking to lead anything or anyone, but find myself doing so quite often, for lack of a better leader. 

My own personal experience is mainly with Pixel Art, although I'm not a stranger to programming either. I'm looking for practically anyone and everyone who's interested in working on a Cyberpunk Game for the project I have in mind. Although, more than just that, I'm also interested in collaborating with like minds, to the point that I see myself working on your game as well, assuming you have something you have a clear vision of, and assuming of course that we jive well and work together easily as a team.

In exchange for any Godot Guru's out there who are willing to take me under their wing or in the very least are willing to travel the Godot Engine Journey together to indie dev stardom, I am willing and able to put my pixel art skills to work in return for anyone who can help me with my project.

I previously worked in a 3-man pixel art team for several years before we went our seperate ways and ever since then I've been searching for that creative spark, mutual enthusiasm for art and videogame design, and that amazing cohesiveness we had ever since, as I alone have soldiered on and never given up on the Indie Dev Dream.

If you like Cyberpunk and have a serious wish to make dark, grimy games for adults, even if you don't have a world of experience, please let me know, as I'm very serious about my project and I work on it every single day. It's all I think about. Be obsessed or be average, as Grant Cardone once put it. And I'd like to release more than one videogame before I die of old age. To this end, I see the necessity of founding a dev team, or in the very least joining one.

I have a grand vision of a tightly written narrative experience in a dark technoir world. Yet I hope to keep the scope of the project relatively small and manageable, true to the spirit of indie videogame development.

I can provide more references, such as bites of my portfolio and past experience in this area upon request to those who are interested.

I don't mean for this post to be too enormous and intimidating, so I think I'll cut it there. 

I hope to hear from many of you soon. Fingers crossed.

-Coinspinner/CK

Paper RPG Maker on Steam is also totally free for non-commercial projects. You can use it for free until you decide you want to market and sell your game. It's basically all the simplicity of RPG Maker except free. If you learn RPG maker (and if you haven't yet, why not? It's probably the absolutely easiest place to learn basic game development in my opinion) then you'll find the interface and engine is almost identical. It also does that Paper-Mario-Esque 2.5D RPG thing really well and, well, that's a big awesome free feature that hasn't run out of novelty or cool factor yet

Really love the colors on this piece. Can't beat that price either. I'd give you more if I wasn't so broke myself, haha. Cheers!

Heh, it's that chick from Armitage 3. Good show that was. Not a bad asset you have here either. Cheers

Awesome stuff, I love it!