itch.io

Yeah, that’ll do it. RPG Maker games get kind of weird on systems other than Windows. Last one I made was made for Mac and it still wouldn’t let the player save their progress. Sadly, I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do on my end to help. I’m really sorry.

Hm, that’s odd. I haven’t come upon that in testing. Does that only happen when you interact with the radio?

Edit: Are you using Wine or another Windows emulator on a Mac? A friend advised me that this may be isolated to that operating system. 

I'm glad! Thank you for playing!

I'll take "nothing interesting but still enjoyable" lol. Thank you so much for the video and the feedback! You're the second person to bring up the ending conditions, so the next QOL update I make will try to fix that.

Thank you! I had a lot of fun making it.

Thank you for taking the time to play and make a video! “Trial and confusion” is definitely the name of the game when it comes to Yume Nikki Fan Games. I’m glad you were able to complete it!

Thank you for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it! The flamingo was fun to make: I had to warn the people I lived with that I was about to shriek into my mic for a game, so that was interesting to explain. If I heard you right, the effects activated when you pressed the one key instead of shift, which I don't think was supposed to occur... but yeah, thanks for taking the time to make a Let's Play!

RPGM (either 2003, Ace, or MV) is the majority, but I’ve also seen Unity, Godot, and at least one Ren’Py.

Thank you so much for taking the time to make a Let's Play of my game! It completely made my day, and I'm glad you enjoyed it so much.

To answer your questions at the end of the video, you found pretty much everything significant, including in the Gallery and with the endings. You're free to go back and play around with the world, of course, but you won't find anything noteworthy.

If you like this style of game, I highly recommend you check out the rest of this year's Dream Diary Jam entires- they're all incredibly good. And if you aren't familiar Yume Nikki, the original game we're all making fan games of, I recommend that, too. It's much larger and leans harder on the horror spectrum, with many more effects, worlds to explore, and quirky events to unlock. Best of all, it's free on Steam.

Seriously, thanks again for playing my game. The feedback is always nice, and tells me what I have to work on next time. (And don't worry about getting copyright struck; all of the songs used are in the Creative Commons!)

Hello! Thank for for your feedback (and please ignore that deleted post: I realized I gave for the wrong information).

I'm currently working on a walkthrough on the YNFG Wikia, but until then, you can find the Spray Can back in the Cheshire Forest. The entrance to the place you're looking for should be slightly north and to the left, and you'll need an effect to get in.

Hope that helps!

(Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you're enjoying it so far!)

(As for the locker hook puzzle, rubbing alcohol should have removed the hook, but I'm guessing you haven't clicked on a hint that would have allowed you to use it. This was an attempt on my part to combat meta gaming, but it was a poor decision looking back. The good news is this is the only part of the game that has this issue, as it's a holdover from when I first started making puzzles. Try checking the poster in the janitor's closet.)

(Regardless, I hope you enjoy the rest of the game. Thank you for playing!)

(Hey, thanks!)

(Hi! Thank you for playing, and I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the project! I'm new to this whole 'game dev' thing, so your feedback is much appreciated. I'll be sure to keep the silhouettes in mind for my next project!)

(Well, I finished. I think I ruined my hand in the process, but at least I'm done. Check it out here: https://strung-up-starlight.itch.io/the-academy-window-of-opportunity )

(Agreed; teleport dodges are the best. It looks great so far!)

(Well, it's less "school" as much as it is "a bunch of weirdos roleplaying school during a plague outbreak," but I'm glad you think it has promise. I'm a little worried it will turn out poorly, but I would much rather finish it and rewrite the ending in a later update than have it sit in my project folders and haunt me with its incompleteness.  Anyway, thanks for the compliment!)

(Hello there.)

(A while back, I made a demo for a game that I was supposed to finish in two weeks, but I overstepped my boundaries and ended up leaving everything on a cliffhanger, with little interest in finishing it. You know, like a jerk.)

(The game itself is... not the greatest, but I can't let it go because it went unfinished. So I'm returning to get this thing out of my head so I can work on other projects in good faith. It's called "The Academy"-- an adventure/puzzle game made in RPG Maker MV, staring a young girl attempting to escape an oppressive school in the aftermath of an apocalypse.)

(I'll update weekly on what I'm adding/doing. At the moment, the outline is finished, the puzzle templates are made, and I've converted the old maps to tilesets in hopes that the game will run faster-- apparently, RPGM MV doesn't do well with parallax. When I have new screenshots to show off, I'll be sure to add them here.)

(Thank you for reading. Good luck with your projects, everyone!)

(Hello!)

(In order to practice RPG Maker 2003 and pixel art/animations for later projects, I've decided to make a short game for the Wholesome Jam. This is more of an announcement than anything, but I do have one thing to show off.)

(The game's title at the moment is April: The Liminal Messenger. There's no dialogue: just a messenger who travels through puddles and needs to get to an apartment building on the other side of town.)

(I've got a little of the base game done with placeholder graphics, and I'm working on the character sprites right now. Speaking of which, this is April:)

(Anyway, it's still a work in progress, but hopefully someone might like it. Thanks for reading!)

(EDIT: Due to a sudden lack of motivation and generally feeling like I've got too much to handle, I've decided to leave the Jam. Sorry.)

(Post-Mortem)

(So, I finished. Time to overanalyze everything again.)

(What Went Right:)

  (- Art: This was my second attempt with pixel art, and it went much more smoothly than the first time. Though considering I used to use the brush tool for pixel art, there's really nowhere to go but up. The art ended up being very simple and clean, which is something I can get behind, as it gave the game its own style and made it easier to reproduce.)

  (- File Size: One of my goals for the jam was to reduce the size of my files after my disaster of a fist game ended up being half of a gigabyte. And after plenty of experimentation, I managed to whittle down the final size to about 56 mb. That much I'm proud of.)

  (- Completion: This could go either way. I had originally intended the game to go on for much longer, exploring what happened after the ending. Now I've left it on a cliffhanger, but I managed to figure out that I wouldn't be able to finish the whole thing and modified the plan. Being able to adapt and improvise in jams is an incredibly important skill, and one of the few that I have.)

(What Went Wrong:)

  (- Writing: I'm unhappy with the writing, which feels way too overdramatic and exposition-heavy. If I had to rewrite it, it would be a little less on the nose.)

  (- Gameplay: There may still be glitches in the menu format, and I still can't get the menu to go away by pressing the button to bring it up again. If I ever release a full version, I'll make sure that gets implemented.)

  (- Puzzles: Even with play testing, I can't tell if the puzzles are too confusing or too easy. I don't know if I telegraphed too much or too little, or if I didn't emphasize the menu in puzzle-solving enough.)

  (- Completion: Even though I completed the game, I still didn't complete my goal in the beginning.)

(And that's about it for now. At the moment, I'm awaiting feedback, and might update this later. Until then, thanks for reading!)

Game Title/URL: https://strung-up-starlight.itch.io/the-academy-jam-version

Pitch/Information: (An adventure game developed in RPG Maker concerning a weird fantasy world with a contagion edge to it.)

I'd like feedback on: (Dialogue, storyline, worldbuilding, writing in general. I would also like feedback on the puzzles: were they too easy? Too difficult? I feel like when I release games, I never receive any comments on them, so I never know if I'm doing okay or if I need to improve something. Any direction would be nice (especially if there's any glitches or something very obvious that I've missed), but I would specifically ask you to focus on these things in particular.)

(How did I not notice this develop before? This looks amazing!)

(Day Thirteen:)

(It's out! If you would like to play The Academy, please make sure to check out the Jam Page, found here:)

(https://strung-up-starlight.itch.io/the-academy-jam-version)

(Coming soon...)

(So this is going to be the final update. I managed to shrink the game down even further by deleting all of the audio files I didn't need and running more images through TinyPNG. It's at around 71 MB, which, if I can get the deployed version to work correctly, will be perfect. I'll likely have to add a few back in to mesh with the plugins, but at least it isn't close to half a gig anymore. I ran the Public Domain music I'm using through Audacity this morning to get the loops working. They sound pretty janky, but they'll do for now.)

(I'm still unhappy with the writing, but if I hear enough positive things about the gameplay or puzzles, I'll turn this entry into a real thing, using the improved story ideas I've thought up in the meantime. Otherwise, even if everyone hates it and it goes down as the next E.T. for Atari, I'm still happy that I managed to get this far. Over my first jam, I struggled to complete a mediocre game in eight weeks. Now I can do that in two.)

(So for everyone who followed this Dev Blog or answered my questions here or in the Discord, thank you so much. I really appreciate the help. This may not be my first jam, but it's still my second, so any help was completely welcome. Good luck on your project, and I'll see you tomorrow.)

(Yeah, but I was just curious on how to fit both into one download.)