R. I. P. Tour [Thriller][Dramedy][Customizable Main Character][Demo available!]

[ghostclown]

R. I. P. Tour

Hey, you know that abandoned amusement park on the edge of town? The one that's been closed since all those students from our university got killed 20 years ago on this very day? Well, hop in the car, because it's reopening!

About the game
R. I. P. Tour is an episodic visual novel in which thirteen would-be party-goers are about to have a hell of a bad Halloween. Drugged and kidnapped, they must vote on who among them will be sent to the Doom Room, where they will be forced to fight to the death with one of their captors.

Content warning: Violence (although the visuals are not especially gory), death, language, alcohol, smoking

The Cast

Features

• Set in the nostalgic year of 2019 when being kidnapped by murderers would be the worst of your problems.

• Customizable character including name, pronouns, body type, and one of up to four different favorite unicorns!

• Stars a cast of thirteen diverse 18-to-20-somethings, three gas-mask-wearing killers, and one cute little pooch... but not for long*!
  * Don't worry, the dog will be okay.

• Multiple endings! Like, seriously a lot of endings! You die in most of them!

Progress
10/24 - Demo has been released on itch.io


Screenshots

[ghostclown]

Question for the thread

I'm very nearly done with the demo, so I'll be able to ask for more direct criticism soon enough, but first I want to make sure I'm conveying the game well enough that people might want to download the demo in the first place. Does this post so far give you a good sense of what this game is? Is there anything you feel I've left out or anything you would have wished to see?

[ghostclown]

Demo is up on itch.io!

[ghostclown]

My first bug fix: My voice blips weren't working.They were audible in the engine but not in the build, which I eventually corrected by just not archiving the blips in question. Possibly there's a better way of telling the packager how to read them after archival, but I don't care that much about having them exposed.

Voice blips seem like a fairly controversial topic; some people really seem to hate them, so I put in an option into preferences to disable them. I like them when they convey information about the character, though, and I ended up happy with the ones I generated, so I'm glad that I got them to work.

[afrikanwizard]

The voice blips are hilarious! I think the add to the game and make it easier to know which character is saying what.

[ghostclown]

I have a short side story coming out by the end of the month (slash year). It's an alternate timeline type thing where Catherine and her friends decided not to go on the R. I. P. Tour after all. Much lighter in tone (you can still die in one of the endings).

It was meant to be a game jam project... for Halloween. I have (hopefully) learned some lessons about time management and trying to do multiple projects at once. But hey, at least I should be able to get it out for Christmas or New Year. Maybe in 2021 I'll release a Halloween game for every holiday of the year*.





* I definitely won't.

[ghostclown]

Side story has been delayed due to how burnt out I got of drawing. I ended up commissioning an artist to finish. Coding and writing are all done though, and it'll be posted shortly after she's done some ending CGs.

At times I wonder if I shouldn't be commissioning all of the art. My art style doesn't seem very "marketable" and I dislike how much development time it takes up.