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nickolashx · 2 days

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Crow Country (2024)

Crow Country is a 2024 indie survival horror game developed and published by SFB Games.

The year is 1990. It’s been two years since the mysterious disappearance of Edward Crow and the abrupt closure of his theme park, Crow Country. But your arrival has broken the silence, Mara Forest. If you want answers, you’ll have to venture deep into the darkness of Crow Country to find them…

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evrriot · 3 days

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goes best with this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZISFM0pM6Q&ab_channel=IdempotentMatrix

#signalis #signalis fanart #mynah signalis #mnhr #artists on tumblr #queer artist #lgbt art #pinupbabe #indie games #indie dev #beo signalis

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if-whats-new · 2 days

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What's New In IF? Issue 5 (2024)

By Erika, Marjorie, Axelle, Zach and Noi

Now Available!

Itch.io - Google Drive - Keep Reading below

EDITORIAL

Starting a conversation…

With this project, we hope to start a conversation within the community. A conversation about community, and how it could be better connected through projects bringing people together.

The Interactive Fiction is a broad genre, with so many formats and systems. It is full of choices and kinetic, clickable and type-able, visual and textual, loud and quiet, classic and experimental, and available in so many languages! It is diverse…

… and fragmented. Between the language barriers, the different Forums, social media spaces, chatrooms, email chains, lurkers, and non-initiated, there is so much to explore and find. So much hidden behind because of bad search engine, forgotten tags and obscure spaces.

So we hope this project of ours helps you find other corners of the IF space, and maybe create a few bridges along the way!

We hope you enjoy this issue!

ERIKA, MARJORIE, AXELLE, ZACH, AND NOI

EVENTS

CONFERENCE

You can now register for the Narrascope! It is happening June 21-23, in hybrid. They've also released the schedule of talks!

ONGOING (VOTING)

The voting period for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam ends at the end of May. The competition is looking for beginner players!

ONGOING (SUBMITTING)

If Spanish is in your wheelhouse, the Spanish IFComp (Rayuela) is currently ongoing! You can submit a game until the end of June, with the themes Es un sólo botón and/or Conexión.

Also ongoing is the ParserComp, which are looking for parser games, both with a classic feel or a more experimental approach.

If you are looking to make a Visual Novel, the Otome Jam will be looking for entries for the next two months.

🔥 Fuck Capitalism Jam 2024 🔥 is also a fun jam to participate in, where you can submit stories critiquing capitalism (as a whole/aspects of). (We know it's not technically IF, but they took IF entries before)

There are still a week left before the end of the REALLY BAD IF JAM, hosted on itch.io, where the goal is to make bad art (IF-style).

A Visual Novel focused version is also happening at the same time, as a “Worst Ever VN“ Challenge.

Ending soon after this weekend if the Locus Jam, organized by Neo-Interactives (@neointeractives), where the restriction is focused on one space.

Another short but interesting jam, the Text-Based Game/Visual Novel Jam, is also happening for the next week over on itch.io.

ENDED

This week, the results of the Spring Thing have been announced! Congratulations to the two Best-in-Show entries and all participants!

OTHER

The Interactive Fiction Showcase is still running, with new submissions, since last week! It is happening on itch!

GAMES

NEW RELEASE

The Flesh Mechanic (Twine) is a dark horror short story. (@reachartwork)

Terminal 71 (Twine) is a short post-apocalyptic game about tragedy. (@vagrantclown)

Relative Stranger (Ren'Py) is a horror game for people with social anxiety (strong CW!).

NEW RELEASE (WIP)

Орлёнок - Eaglet (CScript) is an early 1900s Russian focused project where you are part of the disgraced Imperial family. (@himbeereule)

Popular (CScript) is a reality-show project where your goal is to become the most popular contestant to win.

Serial Date (Unity) follows Aileen, a Toronto gal in a dead-end job looking for love, and finding more than she wished for. (@lehxra-arts)

GAMES UPDATES

Knights of Venus (CScript) has almost doubled its word count, up to 37k words. (@knights-of-venus-if)

Oh Mother, Where Art Thou? (CScript) has completed its first chapter. (@ohmotherwhereartthou-if)

When Life Gives You Lemons (CScript) now includes chapter 9. (@when-life-gives-you-lemons-if)

Velocity (CScript) has added chapter 2.

Sanguine Sky (CScript) updated its demo with chapter 2 pt 2. (@sanguinesky-if)

Drink your Villain Juice (CScript) part 2 of chapter 6 is available on Patreon. (@drinkyourvillainjuice)

Just Kiss Me (CScript) completed its first chapter.

Anti-Mutant Academy (CScript) completed its chapter 5.

Such Happy Campers (CScript) now includes chapter 4.

Core Uprising (CScript) added another part to its demo.

When Cloud Waves Break (CScript) completed its third chapter in this update. (@whencloudwavesbreak-if)

Incubus (Twine) has released chapter 2. (@sonnet009games)

Stake Through a Bloody Heart (Twine) now includes chapter 4. (@lacewing-if)

OTHER

Scales of Justice (CScript) is looking for beta- testers for the completed demo.

The new Amare Fortnightly Bulletin (@amaregames) is out! Check it out here!

The Twine Gardening v2 (@twinegardening) is updating again, for those wondering how some Twine map look like.

We apologize if we missed an update or a release. We are but volunteers trying to find as much info as possible, but sometimes news pass through the cracks.

Please, let us know if something should have been added to the zine, and we will shout it out next week!

HIGHLIGHT ON...

A couple of games that we thought were cool.

Dungeons & Distractions by E. Joyce (Twine)

D&D is a fantasy short game where you lead a D&D first session with your supernatural friends. It is a fun time, until… distractions arise. Will you manage to reach the planned end of the story?

submitted by Kastel

purrgatory by Niv (@nivrad00 - Godot)

“Heartfelt and touching, this game will make you laugh then cry as you figure out how to get everyone out of purrgatory. Charming art, and lovely music, but it's the writing that shines. Plus great LGBTQ+ rep! One of the best VN's I've ever played!”

submitted by @kris-mage-fics

Repeat the Ending by Drew Cook (@golmac - Inform)

Between meta and “reality”, RtE is a deeply layered and immersive parser, about trauma, guilt, relationships and fate. It is profound and emotional. An experience. It also includes a “Story” mode (no input necessary) and extra downloadables.

recommended by [anonymous]

Your favourite game here?

Do you have a favourite game that deserve some highlighting? Tell us about it! A old or recent game that wowed you so much you want to spam it to everyone? Tell us about it!

We'll add it to the page!

FINAL WORD

Before we end this issue, we would like to thank:

@captchaluff, @elegantunknownphantom, Kastel, @kris-mage-fics, and a dozen of anonymous users!

Your shared news, helpful tips, cool links, filled form, written Sheet line, sent emails… all these little attentions toward the Zine help us so much!

We also would like to thank all of you who told us of cool recs that didn't appear this edition. We'll try out best to fit them in next week!

And a final thank to all of you who not only read our zine, but liked it, shared it with others, left a little sweet reply or dm, or even rated it on itch! Those little bits of support really help us so much!! Thank you for cheering us on this journey!

~

As a final parting word, it is less words but more of a question that we have for you:

Do you experience FOMO (fear of missing out) in the IF Community? If so, what brings FOMO for you and why? Is there a way of alleviating it?

We would really appreciate your POV!!!

See you again next week!

ERIKA, MARJORIE, AXELLE, ZACH, AND NOI

WHAT'S NEW IN IF? 2024-ISSUE 5

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devsgames · 2 days

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"Is Tumblr Blaze Worth It For Promoting My Indie Game?" - a Postmortem

Lately I've been thinking about marketing and promotion of my games and wanting to explore new avenues. Tumblr Blaze was one of those things I wanted to dip my toes into a bit to understand how it works and if it has potential for advertising my sort of stuff. Like as not, there's no point in making games if nobody actually plays them after all!

Conversely I have also heard bad things about Tumblr Blaze; that it's not very targeted, the reach is fairly limited, and people on this site generally hate anything that is Blazed to them.

I wanted to test all these waters a bit to see if it's something worth investing in, and share what I found for my own benefit and the benefit of others. Finding various info on topics like this for indie dev can be a pain, so why not share my findings?

The Plan and Goal

While Centauri Dark is still in development and is the thing I actually want to advertise more of right now, Bombing!! 2 is already out and is much more marketable with some cool art made by community members. I think as a first impression it tends to show well, so I decided to make my test post with that to get exposure to it and see how it goes.

My goal was mostly to see what a Blaze post does for advertising a launched indie game and how much "eyes on" it actually gets in terms of actual engagement.

Posting

From the outset I knew I wanted to make a post that 1) wasn't annoying to people just looking at the webbed site 2) featured a call to action of some kind I could measure 3) wouldn't break the bank.

Here's what I came up with:

The intention was to flash some cool looking art to grab their attention, explain what they're looking at, and then link the game a couple of times while mentioning "Buy or Wishlist" for good measure as a call to action.

Since Bombing!! 2 is such an art-forward game, I found the coolest art pieces made by community members that felt the most "Tumblr" to match the audience, and would also show off the range of art you could make in the game. I also wanted to make it personal, like me writing a message to whoever would read it instead of something that sounded like a standard ad. Generally I think it was a fairly reasonable little post that catches some interest and doesn't overstay too much of a welcome. What I think also helps is it's explicitly a "hey this might interest you" sort of framing (as opposed to a more "why am I even seeing this" sort of post you tend to get from Blaze sometimes).

I also think it's worth emphasizing that writing a posted explicitly intending to be Blazed was a much stronger approach than just Blazing some random post I had made for my own followers months ago, because I could align it to my promotional goals. It also assumed that random people on the Internet would be the ones seeing my post, and not the followers and friends who already know me and my work.

Blazing

As I looked into Blaze early on there was actually a few key things I wasn't fully aware of about the system.

It guarantees a minimum amount of views

It guarantees it will be Blazed for a minimum of 24 hours no matter how many views

You pay a single base rate for the whole campaign (great compared to some ads which tend to price based on views/engagement).

You can define an audience explicitly (some info that was floating around lead me to believe this wasn't the case).

Campaigns come in a few amounts:

I paid for the 2nd tier; $17 USD for a campaign, which amounts to $25 CDN. I wanted to go a little more into it than the lowest tier offered, since I figured the lowest wouldn't give me as much data as I would've liked and I wanted to know what to reasonably expect should I decide to do it again in the future.

Since Bombing!! 2 sells for ~$20USDI also figure if the Blaze campaign prompts at least two people to buy the game then the Blaze would have paid for itself.

Blaze lets you use tags to define which audiences you want to reach. Unfortunately it doesn't let you view that data after you've applied it, but the tags I chose were generally anyone who spoke English and has an interest in Digital Artist or Video Game circles.

The campaign ran for 24 Hours, starting yesterday and ending today.

The Results

I definitely noticed a sharp uptick in engagement during the campaign! It hit the target audience of ~7k around one hour into the campaign, after which point I noticed engagement take a sharp decline.

Here's the Blaze campaign analytics provided by Tumblr (which was also very helpful to have):

So it seems ~12.5k views from Blaze, ~370 likes, ~80 reblogs, 5 shares elsewhere. The post itself has ~520 notes, so I assume there's some reblogging and liking happening from beyond the Blaze campaign that isn't pictured here. The good thing is that despite having reached its 7k target after only 1 hour, it continued to circulate and be Blazed until 24 hours later. Eventually the post made it to ~12k views overall, which was nearly double the amount promised by the campaign - I attribute this mostly to a strong post/target audience/subject matter and I'm sure it's not standard.

Here's the general velocity of engagement around when the post was Blazed:

It jumped much more than I honestly expected, but you can tell Blaze seemed to put it in front of people's faces more than my regular posts do. You can see it drops off sharply as I hit the quoted amount as well, back down to the normal amount of engagement I get on Tumblr.

But this stuff isn't really what I was looking for; I was looking for sales and keeping an eye on 'conversions' - or how many users followed my call to action because of the post. Likes and stuff are fine and cool, but how many people bought or wishlisted the game on Steam as a result of seeing the post on Tumblr?

Tumblr and Blaze obviously have no way of telling me this, so I'm looking to Steam to show me changes there.

Here's what Steam shows me happened to the Bombing!! 2 views yesterday:

That's not nothing! This shows the last month's worth of traffic to the Bombing!! 2 page, and that number was at least double yesterday as it was regularly. It's very cool to know a number of people did actually click through to the game page in order to view the game from the Blaze post.

But the real REAL question is how many bought or wishlisted the game because of this post?

I'll start with Sales, on a graph of 1 month of data:

Flat line :( Which is fine though, as the game wasn't on Sale and was just reaching people for the first time. I didn't honestly expect any immediate sales from this, and was more focused on other engagement anyways. Honestly I would be surprised if someone saw the game on a Blaze post and bought it immediately. I mean it's good but it's probably not THAT good!

Now to Wishlists, which can be a good indicator of who might likely buy your game in the future. Basically if someone has added a game to their wishlist, there's reason to believe they might buy it in the future, which is good for your game.

Here's the Wishlists for Bombing!! 2 from the last month:

That's 23 Wishlists in one day! That's roughly ~18 Wishlists more than an average day!

It's hard to know if some of these are because of the post or just a statistical fluke. However, when compared to previous trends on the game page that's quite a noticeable difference. It means even if no one bought it now, they were interested enough to add it to their shortlist. Looking at it another way, if two people who Wishlisted decided to buy the game in the future the campaign will have paid for itself.

Conclusions

I think like any advertising if you go into it with a plan in mind and try to build something around a specific action, Blaze seems pretty worth it to me especially if I just want to get eyes on something. On top of the obvious data telling me people were interested in the game, there was a few folks who just plain complemented the game or acknowledged it 'was the first Blaze post they were actually interested in', which felt worth it in it's own qualitative sort of way.

I think having an idea of the message I wanted to send really helped, and I'm sure I'd happily do this again with a larger audience and another plan (and probably will do it for when Centauri Dark releases).

#gamedev #game dev #game development #indie games #indie game #gamedevelopment #indiegames #indiedev #indie dev #bombinggame #blog #blaze #tumblr blaze #game design #thoughts

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cultofgalaxy · 2 days

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Doing some storyboarding for our game. This is how I visualise Kinoko's first discovery of the galaxy's biggest threat, Blackhole, and the destruction he has wrought across the cosmos.

In Starlight City, he meets refugees who lost their home planets to the celestial reaper. 🔥

#space #character design #kinoko the kuparkuke #video games #indie dev #indie games #aliens #galaxy #comics #storyboard #storyboarding #animatic

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morbethgames · 3 days

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Text Box Investigation On/Off Option is Coming!

I’ve heard everyone loud and clear, and since I needed a little break from writing the extra scene I’m on, I went ahead and figured out how to work a toggle option for Text Box Investigations. Starting next update, you will be able to toggle seamlessly between TBI’s and regular choicescript choices for the investigation portions of the game! Obviously I want the game to be accessible to as many people as possible, so this will help serve that end. The Text Box Investigations will be on by default from the beginning of the game, so if you want to play without them, simply turn them off whenever you wish while you’re playing. You can also toggle them back on if you ever wanted to try playing with them on as well!

🛡️Patreon | Forum Page | Demo Link🛡️

#interactive fiction #the bureau #interactive novel #writing #wip #work in progress #original story #choicescript #indie author #indie dev #indie game #books and reading #reading #interactive games #cyoa game #cyoa

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insertdisc5 · 5 months

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🎮 HEY I WANNA MAKE A GAME! 🎮

Yeah I getcha. I was once like you. Pure and naive. Great news. I AM STILL PURE AND NAIVE, GAME DEV IS FUN! But where to start?

To start, here are a couple of entry level softwares you can use! source: I just made a game called In Stars and Time and people are asking me how to start making vidy gaems. Now, without further ado:

SOFTWARES AND ENGINES FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO CODE!!!

Ren'py (and also a link to it if you click here do it): THE visual novel software. Comic artists, look no further ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It has great documentation! It has a bunch of plugins and UI stuff and assets for you to buy! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) You can also port your game to a BUNCH of consoles! ✨Cons: None really <3 Some games to look at: Doki Doki Literature Club, Bad End Theater, Butterfly Soup

Twine: Great for text-based games! GREAT FOR WRITERS WHO DONT WANNA DRAW!!!!!!!!! (but you can draw if you want) ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's versatile! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) ✨Cons: You can add pictures, but it's a pain. Some games to look at: The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo, Queers In love At The End of The World, Escape Velocity

Bitsy: Little topdown games! ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's (somewhat) intuitive! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! You can make everything in it, from text to sprites to code! Those games sure are small! ✨Cons: Those games sure are small. This is to make THE simplest game. Barely any animation for your sprites, can barely fit a line of text in there. But honestly, the restrictions are refreshing! Some games to look at: honestly I haven't played that many bitsy games because i am a fake gamer. The picture above is from Under A Star Called Sun though and that looks so pretty

RPGMaker: To make RPGs! LIKE ME!!!!! NOTE: I recommend getting the latest version if you can, but all have their pros and cons. You can get a better idea by looking at this post. ✨Pros: Literally everything you need to make an RPG. Has a tutorial inside the software itself that will teach you the basics. Pretty simple to understand, even if you have no coding experience! Also I made a post helping you out with RPGMaker right here! ✨Cons: Some stuff can be hard to figure out. Also, the latest version is expensive. Get it on sale! Some games to look at: Yume Nikki, Hylics, In Stars and Time (hehe. I made it)

engine.lol: collage worlds! it is relatively new so I don't know much about it, but it seems fascinating. picture is from Garden! NOTE: There's a bunch of smaller engines to find out there. Just yesterday I found out there's an Idle Game Maker made by the Cookie Clicker creator. Isn't life wonderful?

✨more advice under the cut. this is Long ok✨

ENGINES I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT AND THEY SEEM HARD BUT ALSO GIVE IT A TRY I GUESS!!!! :

Unity and Unreal: I don't know anything about those! That looks hard to learn! But indie devs use them! It seems expensive! Follow your dreams though! Don't ask me how!

GameMaker: Wuh I just don't know anything about it either! I just know it's now free if your game is non-commercial (aka, you're not selling it), and Undertale was made on it! It seems good! You probably need some coding experience though!!!

Godot: Man I know even less about this one. Heard good things though!

BUNCHA RANDOM ADVICE!!!!

-Make something small first! Try making simple: a character is in a room, and exits the room. The character can look around, decide to take an item with them, can leave, and maybe the door is locked and you have to find the key. Figuring out how to code something like that, whether it is as a fully text-based game or as an RPGMaker map, should be a good start to figure out how your software of choice works!

-After that, if you have an idea, try first to make the simplest version of that idea. For my timeloop RPG, my simplest version was two rooms: first room you can walk in, second room with the King, where a cutscene automatically plays and the battle starts, you immediately die, and loop back to the first room, with the text from this point on reflecting this change. I think I also added a loop counter. This helped me figure out the most important thing: Can This Game Be Made? After that, the rest is just fun stuff. So if you want to make a dating sim, try and figure out how to add choices, and how to have affection points go up and down depending on your choices! If you want to make a platformer, figure out how to make your character move and jump and how to create a simple level! If you just want to make a kinetic visual novel with no choices, figure out how to add text, and how to add portraits! You'll be surprised at how powerful you'll feel after having figured even those simple things out.

-If you have a programming problem or just get confused, never underestimate the power of asking Google! You most likely won't be the only person asking this question, and you will learn some useful tips! If you are powerful enough, you can even… Ask people??? On forums??? Not me though.

-Yeah I know you probably want to make Your Big Idea RIGHT NOW but please. Make a smaller prototype first. You need to get that experience. Trust me.

-If you are not a womanthing of many skills like me, you might realize you need help. Maybe you need an artist, or a programmer. So! Game jams on itch.io are a great way to get to work and meet other game devs that have different strengths! Or ask around! Maybe your artist friend secretly always wanted to draw for a game. Ask! Collaborate! Have fun!!!

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

#reference #gamedev #indie dev #game dev #tutorial #video game #ACTUAL GAME DEVS DO NOT INTERACT!!!1!!!!!#this is for people who are afraid of coding. do not come at me and say 'actually godot is easy if you just--' I JUST WILL NOT.#long post

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auranym · 8 months

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I think the saddest part about Unity's godawful news is that a lot of games are going to just. disappear.

it's like Unity is trying to go the way of streaming where the hidden gems and cult classics don't make enough money, so, they're taken offline. except this time it's with games (mostly indie).

to put it in perspective, hollow knight, cuphead, and ori are made in unity. so are night in the woods, tunic, and countless more indie gems. hell, AMONG US is made in unity. if the devs of any of these games can't shell out the outrageous cost, then maybe the devs will take them offline. and we'll just. never be able to play them anymore

it's a sad possibility that I don't think any of us ever had to consider. but now we do.

#auroras rambles #game dev #gamedev #indie dev #unity #godot #indie games

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inverseninjas · 5 months

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EDIT: THE BUILD IS LIVE

THE MOUSE IS FREE

DOWNLOAD NOW

Look I know I don't have, like, followers on here but I wanna spread this thing wherever I can.

I'm adding Mickey Mouse to my game the literal instant I can legally do so and I thought that was funny. Check it out on Steam or show your friends so they can find out that Mickey's inaugural project into the public domain won't be a shitty slasher movie.

Link to the Steam page here.

#Mickey Mouse #Disney #Public Domain #indie dev #independent games

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tommyoliverblogs · 1 year

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Bluey! (Nintendo DS, 2005)

#low poly #bluey show #indie dev #blender3d #nintendo ds

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sukinapan · 2 months

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rental

#my art #indie dev #gamedev #lonely house #smarto club #3d art #animation #low poly #low poly animals #ps1 graphics

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itsmelilyv · 1 month

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hello!! the Palestine Relief Bundle is live!! for $8 you can get a ton of great games while raising money for the PCRF to bring medical aid to children.

my game BOSSGAME is a part of the bundle, plus killer games like Zero Ranger, Meatpunks, and Lucah! please check it out!

#indie games #indie dev #bossgame: the final boss is my heart #charity #palestine

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mokadevs · 14 days

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🐑 Prey at the Altar 🐑

You are the lamb. Prepare yourself for sacrifice. A short RPGMaker Horror game about cults and the gods that love them by versegm & mokadevs.

Download on itch!

A game including:

Preparing yourself for your sacrifice.

Or not. Or messing it up on purpose.

3 Endings, with 2 'True' Variants

20 - 40 minutes of gameplay

In-depth discussions on the practicality of sleeping on pews.

#indie games #indie dev #rpgmaker #prey at the altar #go follow verse yayyyy #collapses. we made a game #made for the horror indie game jam #moka devs

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devsgames · 4 months

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I saw someone be like "It's still as good a time as ever to take a risk and make your indie game into a breakout success, just look at Lethal Company!"

Let's just be clear that "massively unpredictable viral success making an ungodly amount of money" does not equal "realistic and attainable benchmark" for almost any other indie dev.

#this statement was by a businessman though so of course it was hella capitalist #'lets gauge our industry's potential by its weird extreme top outlier and not its average success' - the capitalism story #thoughts #indie dev #indiedev

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flightrising · 1 month

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The Dusthide dragons are here!

#Flight Rising #FlightRising #Dragons #Dragon #Digital Art #Art #Virtual Pet #Virtual Pet Site #Indie Dev #Game

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miapcain · 1 month

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Lake; level test for Vesna. Thank you to Dana for the shader work.

#Vesna #art #gamedev #VDN #indie dev #3d art #psx #game art

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