Writer's Block Deblock
Writer's Block Deblock is a narrative adventure for SA Game Jam 2022 (72 hour category). The jam's theme was "So Much Easier Than In Real Life".
The game will launch in full screen mode.
Credits:
- Mandy J Watson (@mandyjwatson):
Game design, narrative and writing, programming, art - Fonts:
Munro by Ten By Twenty (SIL Open Font Licence 1.1);
Nevis by Ten By Twenty (SIL Open Font Licence 1.1); and
Pixel Operator by Jayvee Enaguas/HarvettFox96 (Creative Commons Zero (CC0) 1.0 Universal).
Software Used:
- Base64.Guru, GIMP, Notepad, Twine.
Version 1.0 Notes:
• I hit a major bug at the last minute while setting out the story portion of the game (the generator sections were problem free). Consequently it is not the randomised delight I was aiming for. It may also be buggy and/or break completely, which was happening in Twine, although it worked properly when I tested it in a browser.
Writer's Block Deblock won the Best Narrative Award in the 2022 SA Game Jam! Thank you to the judges, Free Lives for hosting the competition and sponsoring the prizes, and everyone who played the game and commented.
Comments
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This is a very cool idea, I love how it fleshes out more as you play and being able to look back at your progress as the player is really interesting. This defiantly follows the theme :D Love the pixel art too!
Thanks. I had all sorts of plans for more art but just didn't have the time in the end.
This is my playthrough of Writer's Block Deblock
Thank you so much! This is wonderful. I really appreciate how much effort you put into this and how much time you spent with my game - and you even went to the credits to look at and acknowledge all the credits (not just for the other reason)! Wow. I'm actually speechless.
I loved the extra notes that you put on the screen as well to tell us what you were thinking. You had the exact experience I was hoping people would have with this game. That is amazing. Thank you again so much!
Ah np, well I added less comments than I usually would, so yea, that's a bit lacking on my part, and well, I find that it's best to acknowledge the wonderful people who worked on this game, I would usually read the credits, unlesss the credits are in cursive, which is difficult for me to read
Even if it was fewer than normal I still appreciated the comments - it told me exactly what you were thinking and it was what I hoped you were thinking! Thanks again.
Ah np, glad I could help :)
This is a pretty nice game, and it is definitely true to the game's theme, any kind of block, whether writer or artist block seems easier when you hear about it, but quite annoying irl. I really like the speech generator, it was fun reading what the generator picked out for the speech. Can I make a YouTube video on this game?
Thank you for asking - I appreciate that. Please do. I would be interested to see how someone experiences the game. (Please just emphasise that it's a jam game, so the result is function over perfection!)
Oh alright, well I'll definitely emphasize that it's a jam game and put a link to this page, the video will probably be up tmr, I'll put a link to my video then.
I like it. This fits the theme of the jam nicely. Tried both of the generator, The adventure one is fun to do.
I appreciate you playing and leaving a comment. Thank you. The adventure generator has some mini mechanics within it that I think worked particularly well (such as the tavern name generator) that I want to explore more (elsewhere) in future. The speech generator is intentionally very basic (as a proof of concept test) but is also commentary on how lines from speeches and poems can be very interchangeable and how the output (much like political speeches) either has meaning or is meaningless, depending on the reader's interpretation, which is based on their life experience and knowledge. It's also something I want to finesse over time as a personal project as some of the lines don't quite work together and there's a lot more that I could add to it, when not in a jam panic. I learnt a lot, though, even under jam conditions. I'm fascinated by randomisation and procedural generation and love to experiment with it.
It's really cool that you're getting into procedural generation. This game gave me ideas for a future game that I may make!
Oh, cool! I look forward to seeing it if it works out!
(I've been experimenting with procedural generation for a while - there's a little here and there in Jessica (with plans for more complex systems to come) and Midnight Auto Supply, which isn't a visible game yet because we're in polish-build limbo (password is sagamejam), and quite a bit in You Will Not Live (another jam game that was testing out an idea).)
This was great! The writer's journey felt painfully familiar from my typical game jam workflow across multiple playthroughs, lol
Love the story generator, will be going back in to try the politician's speech soon :)
Thank you! I am gutted about the weird last-minute bug that messed up my plans for the narrative start of the game, which was much more flexible (and even more true to the writer's block nightmare) and is now lying in pieces in text documents on my computer, but I am very happy with the generators. They're early structures for things I might play around with a lot more in the future - some basic proof of concepts for projects I've been thinking about but have never gotten around to.
I loved the start! It gave me a slightly different path on each run, but both felt very accurate as to how I use my time when attempting to work to a deadline. Looking forward to seeing where you end up taking the generators in future :)