[OUT NOW] rotate PDF - interactive fiction with a very special ~spin~

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[OUT NOW] rotate PDF - interactive fiction with a very special ~spin~

fi-le

Edit 2: The Steam page is live now. :^o
Edit: It's released, yay! Here is the storepage.

Hi folks!

I originally just wanted to get your great input on technical stuff, but then I saw all of your cool projects and wanted to add my own to the list.

The game has a little exploration part:

A little text part:

And a thought-provokingly repetitive and in my opinion extremely aestetically pleasing desk work simulation:

Sound like a good combination? Yeah I'm not sure either but I made it anyway and I really like how it turned out to date.
I'm already quite far in development, but if I have something cool and new to share I'll be sure to post. GIFs of the paper handling would probably be good because that stuff is smooth!!!!

I also tried procedural generation and stuff on this, it has procedural music and a few other cool gimicks like that. (And there's a puzzle with Julia sets if you folks like that kind of stuff.)

Questions and feedback are of course very welcome! I can definitely recommend developing in Godot for anyone who's still unsure.

DeanOrTori

looks cool! I can't wait to see where its going :3

Asthalis

Definitely interesting, show us more of it, please !

fi-le

Really happy that you like it!

I've created an absolute dumpster fire of a GIF, never knew that it was so hard to make one:

Hopefully the gameplay still shines through. To make up for that awful grainy mess, here's a screenshot of a little tangram puzzle I added yesterday:

fi-le

OK, I've gotten better at making gifs! Oh right, and the game is also still there. This is the fractal puzzle I was writing about:

If you know a thing or two about fractals, I bet you can guess how I made that ;⁾ The goal of the puzzle is to turn the circle into the shape on the right using your character's movements.

Hopefully getting at least a little close to the finish line. Now I've just gotta figure out who in the world might be interested in this.

fi-le

Alright folks, here are some more pretty pictures:

My cool running animation: Some more character movement: A still:

By the way, has any of you experience translating games? I translated mine into my native language German and it took longer than expected.

DeanOrTori

nice art! I don't have any experience translating however, sorry. I can't help compare.

Erich_L

@fi-le said: By the way, has any of you experience translating games? I translated mine into my native language German and it took longer than expected.

Anything I make I always have in English and Chinese so as soon as I introduce any language such as standalone words or phrases I setup a key-value dictionary to hold them in each language I want. Setting a language is as easy then as setting the dictionary to be globally available. If you work with others to localize though typically they want you to keep it in a excel sheet that’s easier for them to work with. Godot also has some localization thingies which I haven’t looked into

fi-le

@DeanOrTori said: nice art! I don't have any experience translating however, sorry. I can't help compare. Thank you! Yeah, there's a reason a lot of indie titles don't have as much text, I've gotten to know it pretty well. Writing itself is really hard, too.

@Erich_L said: I setup a key-value dictionary to hold them in each language I want. Setting a language is as easy then as setting the dictionary to be globally available. If you work with others to localize though typically they want you to keep it in a excel sheet that’s easier for them to work with. Godot also has some localization thingies which I haven’t looked into

I have tried both approaches in different parts of my game and I think the spreadsheet works better. You can just put tr("KEY") in GDScript somewhere and then it's done. Also, wow, you speak Chinese?

So on the development front: I implemented The credits, which was very fun! I have my own credits now, how cool is that? I mean, there aren't that many names in them... Scene Transitions. Please do scene transitions. It took me like ten minutes with a simple CanvasLayer/ColorRect/AnimationPlayer and the result is simple, but beautiful * Some more music. I'm really happy to finally unleash all of my music theory knowledge on unsuspecting players' ears. I'll attach a midi of the waltz for the title card.

fi-le

Hm OK, now I'm done with all the ideas I wanted to put in and stil wondering how distributing should work. I'd be really interested to know if you think anyone would pay money for this. If not that's fine! I just want to be realistic, you know how hard it is to evaluate your own work sometimes.

And here's a GIF of the Tangram puzzle for extra fun :⁾

Megalomaniak

Hard to tell, but I recon if you can monetize via ads that likely has a greater chance of success since this looks like the type of game that would typically be free to play online or on a phone or tablet or such. But I don't have any particular experience with these platforms myself, so take it with some grain of salt I suppose.

Perhaps someone else has something more profound to offer on that subject.

hari

I would suggest mobile release with ads, and in-app purchase to remove ad and extra/bonus content.

DeanOrTori

for how much to pay i'm not sure. I'm not usually the 'target audience' for puzzle games (I'm kinda dumb XD) but i admit i think yours looks cool. how long does it take to play and is there any replay-ability built in?

Those are questions i'd ask if i was looking at how much I"d pay for a game. (I may be in the minority here, but i HATE ads, so if i think a game will be good i'd rather pay than just use an ad version. but if you have an option to pay for removal of ads or extra features or such, as was suggested by hari, that could be good too, get everyone to have as they like)

DarcTyde

This looks like a really interesting project indeed. I love the artwork and concept. Looking forward to seeing more!

fi-le

Very interesting feedback, thank you all!

@Megalomaniak said: this looks like the type of game that would typically be free to play online or on a phone or tablet or such.

@hari said: I would suggest mobile release with ads, and in-app purchase to remove ad and extra/bonus content.

That's unexpected, but I see what you mean. Maybe it's the dragging things around that is reminiscent of mobile stuff? The problem is that this probably won't run on mobile without significant rework as I had not had it in mind. Also, I feel like testing and compiling for mobile would be too much trouble as I have more other things to get done lately.

@DeanOrTori said: I may be in the minority here, but i HATE ads

Yes, me too!!! I DESPISE ads!!! I could never put ads on a personal project of mine, so that's off the table. Still, thank you to @hari and @Megalomaniak , who proposed it, because ads might very well be economically sensible.

@DeanOrTori said: how long does it take to play and is there any replay-ability built in?

That's another thing I wanted to talk about sometime. It takes about two hours, maybe. That's not a lot! Replayability is also at a solid 0. When I was a little younger (still pretty young now, I'm talking like Wii U games), I used to buy according to the rule 1 hour / €. I'm sure you folks have made a similar observation that it's very easy to overestimate the play time. I sure did!

Right now I'm pondering whether it might be a good idea to release it for free, but set up a little reward for people who do end up liking it enough that they want to contribute a little bit. Maybe Patreon? The problem with a regular paid model is also that I just do not have the platform to promote it. I imagine that I won't get a publisher for this (tell me if I'm wrong please) and I myself am very bad at selling things.

@DarcTyde said: This looks like a really interesting project indeed. I love the artwork and concept.

It means so much to me that you like the concept! :⁾

Lastly, here's a picture of the main menu. It has a cool gimick, but you'll have to see for yourself when you play it:

DeanOrTori

@fi-le

I think its fine to ask a lil money for it, but its your call. But i see wanting to make sure people would actually buy it.

Re: mobile. I'm probably not in the target audience for mobile so i won't go on about it too much :X (i get distracted easily on mobile games, im much more likely to pay for a pc game than a mobile game since I know i'll play it longer / give it more time to see if i like it)

if you don't ask a small amount of money for it, i think that a link to patreon or kofi or something would be good too. just to see if ppl give you something for your efforts.

either way i think teh game looks pretty cool, ill have to see how it plays when you release it, but the concept seems neat and the art is very nice.

Megalomaniak

Well, the thing is it looks like a very uniquely niche game, so making it free/ad monetized would eliminate a barrier for people to be willing to even try it out. But the Patreon idea might also work, just I wouldn't expect many patrons and I wouldn't necessarily expect much income from this whatever path is chosen, especially if it's your first released game. Could always get lucky I suppose.

fi-le

OK everyone. I'm still puzzling about how to release...

@DeanOrTori said: I think its fine to ask a lil money for it, but its your call.

After doing some of the awful tax and payment stuff I'm beginning to tend more in that direction, >:^o I'm beginning to feel like a criminal with all those forms and confirmations of identity. I just want to sell a game, sigh.

@Megalomaniak said: I wouldn't necessarily expect much income from this whatever path is chosen, especially if it's your first released game

Yup, I agree. It's hard, as you all know.

@DeanOrTori said: either way i think teh game looks pretty cool, ill have to see how it plays when you release it, but the concept seems neat and the art is very nice. Thank you!!!!

Alright, I tried making a painting to have something to look at, because I also paint. It's alright, I suppose? The composition is a bit sedated maybe... and the colors are weird.

Is something like this OK or does it look unprofessional? Hard to judge when you've been staring at it for hours :⁾

fi-le

So folks, guess what?

I released it, wohoo! This is the storepage on itch, and I did make it pay-what-you-want, so there you go. I'm sure there are like 5 game breaking bugs left, but you're just going to find those yourself. ;⁾

Releasing is so scary if you've been working on it for so long. I know it won't gain much traction soon, but you know, we do want to make the best of it. I'd still love to discuss the game here or answer questions if you like, though. If I have updates or recaps I'll probably also post them here again.

I can upload the final version of the artwork here, but you know, I didn't end up using it at all... Just didn't fit the pixel look that well.

The Patreon is up, too. The benefit is that you can make me put your name in the game, sounds good to me. Thoughts about that or other rewards I could offer are also welcome.

And thank you all for pep-talking me up to here!

Megalomaniak

Congrats. Reaching a release is always a significant achievement.