Version 2.0 Update And Zine

In June I updated the first Tiny Adventure, The Light At The Frankenstein Place, to reflect the tweaks and art improvements I made for the zine version of the game. I had envisioned this back in 2020 and then the idea sat on the backburner until early 2025 when I decided to see if it could work as I wanted to use the zine as an example of one I had made for a zine making workshop that I co-facilitated for the Open Book initiative in Cape Town, South Africa.

The Time Machine was also always intended to be a zine so once I finished with The Light At The Frankenstein Place I began work on the conversion of the second game in the series. In doing so, however, I decided that I wanted to experiment a little with the original zine format and so the zine ended up having a few extra pages, which translated to one extra passage for the game, a new piece of art, and bonus materials that I have included as a menu item on the title screen.

Once again, however, the game has not changed at all. I updated the layout and design of the passages so they look better and display better, and I updated the title using a new font that I then edited in GIMP to give it a kind of phasing/speed type of look. The mechanics and all the original text passages and paths through the story remain intact, with just slight tweaks to the text in a few places. The biggest update has been to the art, which is still the same, but better. The Light At The Frankenstein Place and The Time Machine games were both created in 2020 when I was just beginning to learn pixel art and so there were some small mistakes, which I have fixed, plus my skills have improved so I've added detail to the art to give it more depth and life without losing the 1-bit aesthetic, which I has always intended for the games and which I need for the zines as they are printed in black and white.

Here is an example of the update I made to the art on the death screen:

The biggest improvement is to the big art piece in the middle of the game, which I want to leave as a surprise for those who have played the game before, although it actually looks better in print as black on white paper rather than on screen as white on black. (An additional note: while I was updating the game I solved an art problem in this big art piece that had been bothering me so the game has a newer version of the art than the current printed copies of the zine. If I ever reprint the zine I will fix this, of course.)

I think the "Bonus Materials" page, which is just a bit of lore that I included as a treat for people reading the zine, and now also for people who play the game, looks cool too:

Thank you to everyone who previously played the game, and especially to the other game developers in the Spring Clean Twine Jam back in 2020 who played my game and posted encouraging comments. The game's highest ranking was sixth (out of 26) for "Most Fun To Play", which really made me happy.

As for the zine, here's a little look at it:

Once again it's A8 in size (very tiny) but it has more pages (36 in total) plus a bonus foldout. The original game did fit on 32 pages (a standard A4 sheet of paper), which was my original plan, but I decided I wanted to try and experiment with a foldout in the middle just for fun, hence the extra passage and piece of art, as well as a less cramped starting page.

The cover is printed eight at a time on 160gsm paper, which I hand cut and fold, the foldout is printed four at a time on 80gsm paper, which I hand cut and fold, and the rest of each zine is printed on an A4 sheet of paper, which I hand cut into eight A7 sections and fold. I then staple it all together. It is a bit of a production but I am really happy with the end result.

If you are in Cape Town, you can get copies of The Time Machine at Readers Den Comic Shop in Wynberg, The Book Lounge in the city centre, and Clarke's Bookshop in the city centre for R25 each. Readers Den and The Book Lounge will also ship to other parts of the country and I think The Book Lounge may also ship internationally. At the moment both Readers Den and The Book Lounge also have copies of The Light Of The Frankenstein Place so you can request those too, although if the stores run out you can still ask for a copy and they will get more from me. (Clarke's Bookshop has sold out and I don't know if it wants to stock more copies but the other shops will if you ask them to.)

Here's The Light At The Frankenstein Place on a shelf at Readers Den:

If you have the means, please buy copies of my zines. It not only supports me but also supports Cape Town's independent comics and book shops, which have always stood behind the local comics community by stocking creators' comics and zines, whereas many of the big retailers won't.

Otherwise, enjoy the new update to the game and the bonus materials, which are a little bit of satire of museum pretentiousness, as well as of some amateur historians who might jump to odd conclusions when some of the facts have become lost to history.

The time machine awaits!

Changelog:
v2.0 20251030:
- Updated the style sheet and coding so that the game displays better on various types of screens and looks better overall.
- Updated the text: made a few narrative corrections and made some of the passages slightly longer and more descriptive.
- Updated the pixel art to fix beginner mistakes and improve it overall.
- Updated the title art.
- Added a new piece of art to the game.
- Added a new passage to the game that replaces a previous interactive-mechanism joke that I don't think worked very well and which doesn't work on a piece of paper.
- Added a "Bonus Materials" section to the title screen that displays an artwork and some lore that appears as a bonus pullout in the zine version of the game.