Mall Macabre [Creepy][Liminal]

Because less is more: Noncommercial games of < 1 hour playtime and < 2 month development time.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Fuseblower
Regular
Posts: 189
Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2016 6:01 pm
Projects: Mall Macabre, Slushball Slasher, Doomed Diner, Tenkeiteki Tokyo
itch: fuseblower
Location: Netherlands
Contact:

Mall Macabre [Creepy][Liminal]

#1 Post by Fuseblower »

A couple of years older than she was in The Slushball Slasher but still much younger than she will be in The Doomed Diner, Tina Giallo returns in Mall Macabre!

This time Tina teams up with her school friend Amy and school bully Becky (the same one as in The Slushball Slasher).

Becky dares Tina and Amy to join her breaking into "The Kenopsium", an abandoned mall.

Image

Not willing to ignore Becky's taunt the trio enters the creepy deserted building...

Image

The foreboding silence of the dark halls with empty shops is only broken by the rumble of their roller skates...

Image

Then Becky challenges them to a game of zombie tag...

So, another small visual novel. I got the idea by seeing a liminal game jam on itch.io (although that one seemed to be mostly about shopped photos) and listening to creepypasta stories on youtube. The zombie tag idea comes from Higurashi and watching a play through by someone who thought the everyday shenanigans of the cast was more enjoyable than the hardcore horror and action in that game. So, no blood on the walls or end-of-the-world stuff like in The Doomed Diner, just a creepy story in an abandoned mall.

The same as usual for my VNs, all graphics are water colors. Real ones, as in putting real paint on real paper with a real brush. No intelligence, artificial or otherwise, was involved.

The zombie tag idea serves to split the party up in the creepy mall. Sound will play an important role. Tina can hear how far or near her "zombie friends" are by the sound of their roller skates.

Image

Shouldn't take too long to finish this one. All the sprites are done and a good deal of backgrounds (the more, the merrier). Might throw in some CGs too. I expect this to be finished somewhere in Octobre. Of course, this means that The Doomed Diner won't be finished for next Halloween so I guess it will be finished the Halloween after next one (hopefully, the thing keeps growing...).

User avatar
Fuseblower
Regular
Posts: 189
Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2016 6:01 pm
Projects: Mall Macabre, Slushball Slasher, Doomed Diner, Tenkeiteki Tokyo
itch: fuseblower
Location: Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Mall Macabre [Creepy][Liminal]

#2 Post by Fuseblower »

A little update about "Mall Macabre"...

Image

I've decided NOT to use Renpy for this visual novel.

I wanted to sharpen my non-existent web programming skills so the whole thing is now an unholy mess of JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

I've chosen SVG for the graphics stuff instead of WebGL or 2D Canvas because it gives free scaling and is easy for the UI stuff. I must say I'm impressed by the speed of SVG despite being the slowest of the 3 technologies (not that I'm making a first person shooter, but still...). Only issue with SVG is text, or rather : fonts. So I just ripped the svg version of the font's glyphs with fontforge and draw the text myself.

Now all that's needed is the story (always the afterthought for my VNs). I have half a mind to make it into a kinetic (non-branching) story. After all : this will be a "creepypasta" story and that means it's a true story ("true" as in "completely made up"). I'm not sure having a branching story with different endings will add to the "truthfulness" of the story.

That's it for now. Despite the switch to a web game, I'm still confident it will be finished somewhere next month.

User avatar
Fuseblower
Regular
Posts: 189
Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2016 6:01 pm
Projects: Mall Macabre, Slushball Slasher, Doomed Diner, Tenkeiteki Tokyo
itch: fuseblower
Location: Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Mall Macabre [Creepy][Liminal]

#3 Post by Fuseblower »

And another update for my thousands of adoring fans desperate for the release of "Mall Macabre" : it will take slightly longer. I have high hopes for November though.

As usual, something that seems a piece of cake at face value turns out to have some unexpected complexities. Having all those snooker tournaments at the moment doesn't help either...
MalMacUpdateOct.jpg
MalMacUpdateOct.jpg (143.39 KiB) Viewed 3592 times
For the few that are trying their hand at JS + SVG too :

If you're pulling out what remains of your hair and screaming at your screen that doesn't show your dynamically created svg graphic even though its element is clearly visible in the inspector :

check if you're using "createElement" instead of "createElementNS"....

Not that I would make such an oversight of course, I mean... I'm a C++ programmer, that's tantamount to being God and God doesn't make such mistakes...

User avatar
Fuseblower
Regular
Posts: 189
Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2016 6:01 pm
Projects: Mall Macabre, Slushball Slasher, Doomed Diner, Tenkeiteki Tokyo
itch: fuseblower
Location: Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Mall Macabre [Creepy][Liminal]

#4 Post by Fuseblower »

Ugh, there will be a further delay. The Winter Visual Novel jam is coming up and suddenly I got inspiration (and it's unwise not to heed the call of inspiration). I've already started with backgrounds. It's going to be a doujinshi (can a VN be a doujinshi?). I'm a big fan of "Girls und Panzer" and a winter themed story came to me. Nina and Alina get stranded with their KV-2 during a winter match between Schwarzwaldspitze (Kuromorimine) and Pravda. Can they outsmart the stern Erika Itsumi? Will they be praised or scolded by their commander Katyusha? What is Anzio's Pepperoni doing in Kuromorimine's camp? How will the Jagdpanther's commander Emi react to being paired with a Hetzer? And most importantly : who will win the match?

KV2.jpg
KV2.jpg (106.28 KiB) Viewed 1893 times

Unlike Mall Macabre, I will make this thing in Renpy (I need the snow). The usual style applies : it's all water colors. Watch this subforum for progress on "Katyusha's Cap" when the jam starts.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users