THE WHiTE ROOM by Hazel-Bun
THE WHiTE ROOM: A visual novel about a lost soul in purgatory, a hammer space riddled with timed events*, and the angel that needs her to move on in order to get his next paycheck.
*Though they are not shown, the room menus add up to ten seconds. Be for warned.
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My very first Ludum Dare entry-- Jam edition! I packed a lot into this game (heart, soul and sanity) and it didn't all turn out pretty or how I wanted... but at least it's something, yeah?
I apologize as of now for any bugs, wacky sprite placement, typos--typos--typos and general randomness of the plot. I had to cut a lot of it to get it in on time and I don't work well all by my lonesome!
TIPS:
- Most of the menus are timed and it's not displayed. They range from a second long to over eight! Stay alert!
- Save often if you don't want to go through the hassle of skipping over text.
- You don't have to read the beginning really as it's just an emo blurb ^^
- But do try to read the bits before you enter The Room, things are already convoluted and will only get worse if you don't!
- Things go quickly once you get through the text in The Room! If you don't like reading, stay alert and it will all be over soon.
- Have fun! This plot is all over the place but is should wake you up a bit or, at the very least, make you laugh at my botched effort. Whatever makes you smile more :)
Created with the Ren'Py.
Poor logos created with PowerPoint.
BGs from Morguefile and the horrid ones made by me.
Sprites by me with the use of Gimp to color. Poorly.
*SFX from Freesound.
- Horn
-
-
Music from Jamendo:
- Islands-EP by Ivonne Carinni
- "Forever" by Ken Verheecke
- "Fly Together" by Olga Scotland
- "Battle" by Jahzzar
- "Be Calm" and "Allegro Solitario" by Giorgio Campagnano
*Will list the sources later on.
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Warning!
This game contains an un-canon portrayal of purgatory, general bad pacing and questionable mixture of art assets. And don't forget that code! Talk about ugh-- haha!
<><><>
Glossary:
Cycle or Bi-Cycle: Heavenly standards of time that match pretty closely to Earth's most widely used calender.
Report or Rankings: Reports lay out what a soul has achieved, merits and the like while the ranking system judges how well their angels did.
Levels: The level of purgatory a soul is currently on.
Objectives: Mini-missions souls must carry out with varying rewards and chances to move up a level.
Virtues: The opposite of the seven deadly sins, these must be 'collected' by souls during the Test in order to move on.
The Test: A bi-cycle assessment carried out by guardian angels to judge a souls' progress.
Plane of Existence, etc.: The different 'layers', 'rooms' or 'doorways' of being equivalent to Earth, Heaven, Hell and Limbo. The rooms in Limbo serve as smaller planes that have infinite sub-planes a soul can enter and transform.
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Statistics:
Version 1.2
The game contains 348 dialogue blocks, containing 6,778 words and 35,705
characters, for an average of 19.5 words and 103 characters per block.
The game contains 7 menus, 19 images, and 12 screens.
*Though they are not shown, the room menus add up to ten seconds. Be for warned.
<><><>
My very first Ludum Dare entry-- Jam edition! I packed a lot into this game (heart, soul and sanity) and it didn't all turn out pretty or how I wanted... but at least it's something, yeah?
I apologize as of now for any bugs, wacky sprite placement, typos--typos--typos and general randomness of the plot. I had to cut a lot of it to get it in on time and I don't work well all by my lonesome!
TIPS:
- Most of the menus are timed and it's not displayed. They range from a second long to over eight! Stay alert!
- Save often if you don't want to go through the hassle of skipping over text.
- You don't have to read the beginning really as it's just an emo blurb ^^
- But do try to read the bits before you enter The Room, things are already convoluted and will only get worse if you don't!
- Things go quickly once you get through the text in The Room! If you don't like reading, stay alert and it will all be over soon.
- Have fun! This plot is all over the place but is should wake you up a bit or, at the very least, make you laugh at my botched effort. Whatever makes you smile more :)
Created with the Ren'Py.
Poor logos created with PowerPoint.
BGs from Morguefile and the horrid ones made by me.
Sprites by me with the use of Gimp to color. Poorly.
*SFX from Freesound.
- Horn
-
-
Music from Jamendo:
- Islands-EP by Ivonne Carinni
- "Forever" by Ken Verheecke
- "Fly Together" by Olga Scotland
- "Battle" by Jahzzar
- "Be Calm" and "Allegro Solitario" by Giorgio Campagnano
*Will list the sources later on.
<><><>
Warning!
This game contains an un-canon portrayal of purgatory, general bad pacing and questionable mixture of art assets. And don't forget that code! Talk about ugh-- haha!
<><><>
Glossary:
Cycle or Bi-Cycle: Heavenly standards of time that match pretty closely to Earth's most widely used calender.
Report or Rankings: Reports lay out what a soul has achieved, merits and the like while the ranking system judges how well their angels did.
Levels: The level of purgatory a soul is currently on.
Objectives: Mini-missions souls must carry out with varying rewards and chances to move up a level.
Virtues: The opposite of the seven deadly sins, these must be 'collected' by souls during the Test in order to move on.
The Test: A bi-cycle assessment carried out by guardian angels to judge a souls' progress.
Plane of Existence, etc.: The different 'layers', 'rooms' or 'doorways' of being equivalent to Earth, Heaven, Hell and Limbo. The rooms in Limbo serve as smaller planes that have infinite sub-planes a soul can enter and transform.
<><><>
Statistics:
Version 1.2
The game contains 348 dialogue blocks, containing 6,778 words and 35,705
characters, for an average of 19.5 words and 103 characters per block.
The game contains 7 menus, 19 images, and 12 screens.
While running game code:
File "game/script.rpy", line 388, in script
IOError: Couldn't find file 'Space 2.jpg'.
Still, amazing for the time spent :O So much content :D
haha "This was just a botched game! What was that whole timed mess for anyway? Beacuse you didn't really put this together properly!?", sorry it fits, kind of :D
Glad it appealed to you visually and sound wise. Your criticism of the actual "game play" (the menus) per so many words is very valid. Happy you picked up on that little self-jab too lol. It's how I felt when the whole shabang was through and over with. Next time i'll try to do better with incorporating the theme and keeping my wordy-ness low now that I have the basic framework of Ren'Py down pack.
On a side note, the game file should now be public access ^^ As always, if you encounter any bugs or what have you, let me know and i'll get to it as soon as I can!
Amusingly, the consequences are exactly what we game designers might predict: When you reward all gameplay with superficial 'achievements' and other scorekeeping systems your players lose any intrinsic motivation to explore those systems for their own sake.
It was tolerable at the beginning when it had a poetic feel to it, but when the dialog started, it really started to bother me. I read through for a while, and after the first interaction I decided to try and skip to the gameplay that was referenced in some of the other comments. The skip button didn't seem to work and I got bored of click-spamming before it came up.
I'm hesitant to review a game that I haven't actually "played", but here it feels more like rating a game I'm not good enough to beat. I understand the desire to tell a story, I try to do that with my games as a general rule, but this was a bit heavy handed with the exposition.
@Black Glad you liked and understood the overarching concept of the story!