Game File: 

bikedyke.zip

take control of underground game development starlet anna anthropy as she speeds down the highway on her souped up machine to further the girls in games agenda. now with cutting edge red+blue 3d mode.

now if you'll excuse me I think I'm going to throw up.

Game File: 

YellowJoggler.zip

You are trapped in Pillow Factory Inc. and you must kill the CEO.
Collect Ice - Cream Men (tm) and avoid Al the Aliens and Normal Guys.

Protagonist: Yellow Joggler
Antagonist: Normal Guy
Location: At a pillow factory
Weapon: Sword
Objective: Gather all the ice-cream men

So my goal for 2015 is to experiment with character-driven narratives in games, emphasizing romance. Really, I want to make a romance in a game that I can get into. At first I was going to try to do some rapid-prototypes, but I quickly realized that any romance in a single rapid-prototype is going to be trivial and unconvincing. I am a big fan of Korean-drama romantic comedies that follow a 16-episode format. Usually it takes at least 4 episodes (4 hours) for them to manage to make me care about a ship. So I decided to make a larger scope narrative in a game so that a romance could form in context of a larger story. I'm not happy about having to make a larger game, but I do want a believable romance, so I'm doing what I find necessary.
I am using Unity rather than Ren'Py because I like focusing on Unity and C# and there seems to be more potential for gameplay that is not exclusively visual-novel-esque. I don't know what extra gameplay I want to put in, but I like the idea of having some gameplay to break up all the reading. I've spent a lot of time trying to build a system in Unity that would allow me to script the animations and dialogue in a convenient workflow. I basically want to be able to write it as if it was Ren'Py. So for instance, in my StoryScript.cs I can write

Show(character_talking)
Move(character_talking, Direction.InLeft);
Say("Hey there I just came in from the left side of the screen!");

I also included some commands for options that jump to different parts of the dialogue and stuff. I keep thinking that I'm finished with that system, but then I start writing more dialogue and realize that I want to program something else in. The difficulty is largely in programming this stuff that takes simple lines and converts them to various arrays of instructions that are eventually enumerated through during run-time. It is by far the most ambitious programming I have done.

As far as the narrative goes, I'm learning a lot. There are many things I did not consider and trying to create awesome characters is far more involved than I expected. I don't have much finalized, but I have a pretty good idea of how the arcs of 3-5 of my characters will go. I also have a pretty good idea for a main narrative-arc that expresses something that I think other people would benefit from understanding themselves. I'm very excited about how much work I have done in thinking about my characters. When I play a lot of hobbyist games, I often feel that they are lonely or isolating. Even when NPC's exist, I rarely have an opportunity to or interest in getting to know them better. In trying to do it myself, I can see why it is rarely done. In order to have characters that you can get to know, you have to have interesting characters that are interesting to know, and they need to be engaged with the other characters in the world (I'm not doing much of this with emergent systems, I'm doing it with authored narratives). But it is already paying off. Regardless of whether or not I finish this game, it is satisfying to have a roster of interesting characters (that I can call mine) to use in other games and stories. It really is a craft.

I'm going to start my dev-diary here. I'm becoming annoyed with not being able to feel small accomplishments. Part of it is that I'm not keeping track of my progress and part of it is that I haven't been showing any of y'all what I'm working on! BUT I'm not going to concern myself with hiding spoilers, so if you want to be able to play my resulting game in the intended way, don't read this blog. The game's appeal is largely discovering the world and the characters and you can only do that once. There won't be much replay value.
This is a much larger project than I am comfortable with, but I'm going to push until I get something cool or it collapses. One thing I find myself doing is trying to integrate other game ideas I have into this one. The way I do that is this:
-I have an idea in the shower for an awesome concept for a game's story.
-Instead of starting a new game I ask myself if I have a character in *The Witch's Tree* that can express that narrative with their attitude or narrative-arc. If not, I get to make a new character that you may run into!
Thus far, it has worked beautifully.

I'm still unsure how much refinement I'm going to put into the art. Right now, everything is placeholders that I can easily open in Gimp to make further adjustments. So for instance, just this week I decided that the protagonist will be of Peruvian genetic-descent and so I'm going in and changing her skin color. But in doing so, I find myself getting bogged down by whether or not I should go ahead and do something less cartoonish. This is the type of workflow I have.

Usually what will happen is I'll think of a character idea and then try to figure out why they would be going to a magical school of mythical creatures. I'll do some character-sketches and write a sample section of dialogue that gives me a better idea of who this character is and how the interact with the protagonist. Then I'll make a placeholder background and character art to put them into my visual-novel system just so I can see if the dialogue I wrote works well. It usually doesn't, but that's fine because having any dialogue gives me something to mess with and change into something I like.

I'm going to publish some playable builds here as I progress further. Here is the first one.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/witchs-tree/2015-3-18_web/Builds.html

Game File: 

tutpancake.zip

You thought it would be easy working the night shift at a pancake restaurant but nobody told you there was a pharaoh convention in town!

Game File: 

peanutbutter.zip

A cool mouse game with a dopeass intro.

For more good games go to:
www.landsofgames.com

Game File: 

TrampolineGoat.swf

you are a goat having the time of your life on a trampoline. Eat passing cans, but watch out for exceedingly strong birds!!!!!!!

You are a gibbed head in Quake. You need to roll around and find your body before it respawns! But it may be too late...

A game by Thanny Mack (thannymack.com)

Game File: 

Dungoen Vorld Ewal Elf Edition.zip

INSPIRED BY: http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/9220

You have been trapped in the Dungoen by Ewal the Elf! You must ECHAP...
even if the game says you cannot ECHAP!

Presented in amazing folder technology!

I thought the global game jam was not in real life so I thought I needed to make a game but, apparently the opposite is true. (Who needs real life anyway!?)

Someone is killing off the KINGS OF THE INDIE GAMING SCENE.

Only by sending in a Miniaturised David Caruso onto the surface of the stiff can anyone hope to find out WHO IS KILLING THESE POOR FECKERS.

Once day i'll finish this and make it look REALLY POSH.

The Klik of the Month Klub meets right here on this very website on the third Saturday of every month at 4pm Pacific Time (taking daylight savings into consideration) for a two hour Klik & Play Showdown. Everyone who participates gets two hours to create something from scratch in Klik & Play. Abusing the stock objects is encouraged. If you really loathe Klik & Play you can use whatever game development platform you want. Two hours is a pretty tight time limit, though, so choose wisely!

Klik & Play is absolutely free to download, and learning it takes minutes, so everyone can get in on the action.

Want to talk to your fellow Klikwreckers? Join us on IRC -- server irc.freenode.net, channel #glorioustrainwrecks. We've also got a Mumble voice chat server -- just connect to glorioustrainwrecks.com using Mumble and you can talk to us like real human beings! Join the mayhem!

After you've made your game, you should upload it here!

For more information, check out the KotM N00B FAQ.

Sign up below if you want to get reminded by email the day before the klikkening begins!

Games made for Klik of the Month Klub #44

13 games made!
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Name	Created	By	Screenshot	Comments
Fissure of Reality	02/19/2011 - 09:29	L		2
I Hate You	02/20/2011 - 01:32	Super-Dot		3
An Anthology of Irish Democratic Action	02/19/2011 - 19:16	increpare		3
Super Tree Run	02/19/2011 - 20:55	ExciteMike		3
THE BlockGame 20 Million	02/19/2011 - 18:14	Zecks		3
TEN SECOND FIRE JUMP	02/19/2011 - 19:41	jonbro		4
Space Harriet	02/19/2011 - 19:45	PurpleChair		4
Raiding Space Mission Base	02/19/2011 - 20:02	Blueberry Soft		5
My First IGN Interview	02/19/2011 - 19:42	Noyb		7
rainbow dogs or something, i don't know	02/19/2011 - 19:49	mkapolk		8
snakedrive	02/19/2011 - 19:19	kirkjerk		9
Silly family - an original	02/19/2011 - 18:52	rhetoricstu		10
Eyeball 3D: Maze of Felsh	02/19/2011 - 23:41	sergiocornaga		15