itch.io

I did it!! Dang, that was really satisfying. Took me a while to come up with a viable strategy, but I loved how once things started falling into place, I knew I must be on the right track and was able to iterate from there. Great job!!

I was wondering if there was a way to set your own thumbnail/preview image when linking to your profile on social media. I know for an individual game, you can find it under Edit Game --> Metadata --> Promo Images --> Social Media Image, but I couldn't find anything like that for my profile page. I would've assumed it would be under Settings, but couldn't find anything relevant there, and wasn't able to find any information by searching.

Thanks for any help!

Very cute! I played through them all. It was interesting to see how each game's aesthetics/physics changed the tone. I think my favorite was the Raven game, with my favorite aesthetically being the Octopus game.

And yes, the final snowball did get me, and yes, I did yell. Well done with that.

Thank you!! I do love the constraints Bitsy puts on dialogue, how it forces a certain degree of intentionality. I enjoy the "voice" of Bitsy games. I really appreciate the comment, thanks again!

What a lovely piece! And such clever use of Bitsy!! I'm inspired to think more outside the box next time. Thanks for making this!!

This is cool! Are you still maintaining it, or have you moved on? Either way, wanted to let you know it's an awesome idea!

Thank you! I love selkies (and seals in general), and I'm glad it was still interesting despite not having any of the surrounding context. (And he does get much better with time.)

Played this at a Retro Game expo!! Very fun, made me laugh several times as I fumbled my way through it.

I'm afraid not, but thank you for the interest!

I'd definitely be interested in an update!

(by the way, I played this for "Monday Night Itch": https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1488322561238716416)

I super dig the aesthetic! I'm also intrigued by the weird, "unfair" feeling world. I was drawn in by the idea of everything being dependent on a coin flip. I was curious how that would be used.
For a game made in 48 hours, it's impressive. Seems like there's potential for weird mechanics: like if your "luck" generally improved as you played, that would make cards that trigger on a wrong guess grow weaker over time. Or if you have a "cursed" card with a huge benefit but that guarantees you'll lose the coin flip, that could synergize with passives that benefit you when you guess wrong, or dodge a boss attack that only hurts you if you guess right the turn before they use it. 

Definitely could use UI polish (especially making damage dealt to opponents more obvious and maybe a way to view the contents of your deck), but it was a fun romp. (Also might need some kind of pity system: I missed something like 6 Heads call in a row on the final boss, despite having +10% heads luck and -5% tails luck.)

This was a cool 'venture. I dig the atmosphere you created. Thanks for making this!

Aha, thank you!!

I'm glad you like it!! Thank you! It was fun to incorporate their character for sure.

What makes you think Quill is being paid for this,

Few games will leave you shook like this one.

(Thank you, this was a hoot.)

I finally understand why they call them "bastard" swords...

In all seriousness, well-done. I never thought I'd enjoy a "intentionally battling with the mechanics"-style game but I was hooked from start to end. Got a time of 18:13 my first time through; loved how concise and refined this feels for a game made under such a tight time pressure!

In previous years, the general rule has been "it's okay to upload small tweaks, but major content updates should be saved until after voting ends or uploaded to a separate project." So yes, fixing typos and quick fixes for bugs is kosher, as far as I know.

Thanks for the detailed reply! Let me see...

Play: The eventual goal for the game is to have at least nine possible patrons, and to have a random five chosen for any particular playthrough. I've already put in some work to make it easier to add new characters by creating generic passages which handle the behind-the-scenes mechanics before forwarding the player onto the appropriate text, so I'm not recreating the same logic over and over again.

Aesthetic: Yeah, this is the default style for Sugarcube! And yeah, that's the kind of thing I like to do for polished works, but this time around I had to focus on the writing/mechanics.

Sound: No sound! I could throw a song in there maybe for the full version.

Narrative: I'm not much of a bar-goer myself, aha. The goal for the final game is to include a little illustration for the main characters and the patrons! The main character is a combination of Floraverse species: he's an "okopy" (like "okapi") since he's a mix between a uniqorn and a turf tiger. So think a unicorn with stripes. Uniqorns have doppelgangers, which is where the "kopy" in "okopy" comes from. There's a good sample of art of him here: https://twitter.com/Opaopa13/status/1223259692287299584

Horny: Indeed.

Kink: Yeah, I know it's off-putting to some, so I made sure to include an option to filter it out. I'd like to expand this for the full game; e.g., when I have nine characters, I can let players who are uncomfortable with verbal degradation filter out Vexx as a possible patron. And yeah, this game is set in the world of Floraverse! You can read the webcomic or play games set in Floraverse... in addition to the games published under my account, I'm also the writer for Practice Run and one-half of the writing team for the Alice's Day Off demo.

Harmony and Novelty: Yeah, scope is important! The concept started out as a Bitsy game, aha. Twine and Bitsy are my favorite mediums for avoiding scope creep... except for the (unpublished) game I made that embeds mini-Bitsy games into a Twine project, aha. I hope your own project turns out well, good luck!!

Thank you! And yeah, it's been fun developing the universe! There's a collection that gathers them here: https://floraverse.itch.io/

Of particular interest may be Cherry Kisses (NSFW), which includes Florbet and Quill as customers. There's also Alice's Day Off (NSFW), which has no overlap in characters with Quill Service, but which I did half the writing for, and which does have character overlap with Cherry Kisses. And then there's Spank Quill (NSFW), which I wrote, and which you can probably guess the theme of. I'll mention Practice Run (SFW) too, since I did the writing for that.

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Ah, okay. Physical descriptions are definitely a weakness of mine -- my goal for the final game is to include art for each patron to help out with that. But I can also think about expanding the textual description.

That said, these are furry characters, so "looks like a man or woman" doesn't make as much sense! Vexx is a rabbat -- they're relatively short, have huge, long rabbit ears, long feet and are relatively bottom-heavy. They don't really look like a man or a woman in human terms! But yeah, more description would be a good thing to look into. Thanks for the feedback!

Well, Vexx is neither, they're non-binary! I use gendered pronouns for the characters that use them, like Quill and Florbet.

If you're referring to genitals, I don't feel the need to bring up a character's genitals unless they're involved in the narration. The two characters I added just happened to not have their genitals involved; other customers added to the full version will.

Seems like this is a local storage/cookies issue -- you just have to give the Twine permission to save cookies and it'll work. I hope that helps!

Thank you!!

Thank you for the explanation!

Thank! I've been working on a "full release" version that will include more characters. Quill definitely has a pre-existing relationship with Florbet at the bar. I'm glad it still read well even for people who are unfamiliar with the characters already!

(You might want to check out Cherry Kisses, by eevee, who runs these jams. Florbet and Quill both show up as customers!)

Thank you for the amazing tool!! I'm super stoked to see what's next for Bitsy!

Spawners: Oh! Yes, I see that now, it's spawning the yellow circle. I was reading the "color change" as "capturing" the spawner, especially since my score was going down... that made me think my score was just the total number of spawners I had "captured." I should have realized I wasn't actually "holding" 20 separate spawners at once, though!

I guess I was thinking of a virus, taking over a cell to make more virus instead of more cells... so I was expecting that the "spawners" were the ones making the antibodies, and that capturing them might (in some later version of the game) allow you to have it make more of you instead. Thinking about it more, maybe "capturing spawners" could determine how quickly some kind of "viral load" bar progresses? So when one "flips back," it's not a total reset. Just an idea!

Expanding pathways: My idea there was that any new pathway opened would be permanently opened, even if your score decreased afterwards! Maybe it opens the second you hit the threshold, or maybe you have to arrive at the barrier with the correct score to break it down. The better you play, the more quickly you can hit the next threshold and move onto a more efficient loop. (But that's my bias for games where routing/refining is involved.)

Map: Since you mentioned the "you feel small in a large space" feeling, I think that's a good point and a good feeling to try to capture! And yeah, just having a nice map/mini-map of the area may detract from it. What about a  button that lets you zoom way far out? That could help showcase how small you are, maybe? A persistent mini-map might end up trivializing the exploration / learning aspect of the game... whereas being able to get a glimpse of the larger surrounding area might help a player who's willing to spend the time zooming out get a sense of how everything fits together?

I'm glad you found my comments useful!! I hope you find mechanics that you're really happy with!!

nice

Oh, hm, it seems to be working fine for me and the people I've sent it to. It sounds like you may be encountering a permissions issue? Twine (or maybe just the Sugarcube framework I'm using) saves to local memory for things like settings and save files, so if something prevents Twine from doing that, it could cause a storage error. Maybe check your plug-ins or cookies settings?

Could you paste the exact error for me? I'm nearly positive the error isn't specific to my game, but I can do a quick check.

Edit: I took a quick look around, and yeah, the most likely culprit is that you're blocking cookies. If you'd like, try allowing cookies for this page and see if that fixes the issue!

> what would you like to see in a module/extension system for bitsy?

I would absolutely love love love love love love love even something as simple as a textarea input where you can paste in Javascript and have the module/extension apply to the in-browser test. (This is how Twine approaches custom javascript: there's just a textarea where your code can be pasted in.) That's far and away my most desired feature for a new Bitsy version.

Beyond that, having checkboxes to include the mods collected at seleb/bitsy-hacks would be incredible. I want to try wild things with Bitsy, but the process of having to download a game, paste in the mod code, test it locally and then make edits in-browser is a killer when it comes to trying to experiment. 

Thank you so much! I'm super excited to hear you're working on a module/extension system!!

Thank you! I'm planning to add more patrons, for a greater variety of experiences!

I'm having trouble leaving the cage -- I can climb up the stick, but it doesn't seem like there's a way out from there? And I can see some kind of latch on the ceiling on the other side, but I can't figure out a place where I can actually hit it with my tongue. What am I missing?

Thank you!

What a cheeky title,

Looks like a cute start! I feel like you have something very potentially interesting with how "capturing" spawners works, even without any kind of "spawning" mechanic yet -- it seems like trying to figure out efficient "loops" to maximize how many you have captured at once before any revert back to "uncaptured" could be an interesting puzzle. Maybe hitting a certain score threshold permanently unlocks new paths, allowing for better and better loops over time?

Do you have any plans to make "sneezing" a game mechanic, or is that more of a "reward" for capturing enough spawners?

The one thing I really longed for was some kind of map or mini-map, to help me plan out routes. 

Adorable art style, too! The how-to-play screen is really cute.

Good luck with your plans!!

Cute idea, and I always like to see what people do with concepts like this! I think it could definitely use some refinement, though:

My biggest issue is that it assumes a cis, straight couple, when it feels like it would be relatively easy to make that adjustable. Checkboxes for what body parts you have / would like to be involved would make the game way more inclusive. (If pronouns are used anywhere in the game, then this should come with a pronoun picker as well.)

I also noticed some of the girl's prompts had her doing something to herself in a way that didn't seem intentional (e.g. "[girl], caress [girl]'s foot for 9 seconds"). Also, none of the prompts involving "eye" turned out sexy -- maybe there's someone out there with an "let your partner bite your eye" fetish, but I'm going to pass on that, personally.

This is a super minor nitpick, but UI-wise, the sideways timer makes no sense. Neither player is reading the screen from the side, even on a mobile device. There was also a five-second timer on a "[boy], [girl] will suggest a dare" prompt even though the prompt didn't mention a timer. There was also a misspelling of "eyebrow" / "eyebrows".

Seems like there's some potential here, but it's not there yet -- the big one is definitely not assuming a player's body parts or gender, but beyond that: letting players pick the rate at which the dares ramp up, what body parts and kinks are involved, maybe trying to work in other mechanics (like letting a player choose a spicier dare for a reward) to make things more dynamic.

Good luck in your future work, whether on this game or something new!

Just sent an email!

Oh my gosh! I'd be delighted to have you use my game. I'd rather not post my personal email publicly -- could you provide me with your email address? Alternatively, you can DM me on Twitter: @opaopa13. Let me know if either of those options work for you!

Thank you! It is fun to sit down and finish something in basically one long sitting. 

Oh, thank you very much!! I'll absolutely check it out when I get the chance!!