'Room' Prototype

CONTROLS:
ARROW KEYS TO MOVE
Z/ENTER: Confirm choice/Examine/Interact with things
X/Escape: Open up menu/Cancel out of menu

(Downloads should now have been sent out to all those entitled to them. If you believe you should have received a link, please don't hesitate to PM me and we can sort things out!)

(EDIT: Whoops, I should also add there's some horror elements depending on how you play, so be warned, it can get kinda spooky!)

Hello! I'm back again today with one more surprise to end the month on~

Over the past few months (since late December) I've been working with an artist on something of a fun little prototype and it's finally finished and ready to be shown! I've tentatively named it 'Room' (no, not THAT Room) for now in its prototype phase, but it will be given a proper name if development continues down the line.

To sum it up, it's an adventure game where you have direct control over the character and have to investigate the mysterious room you find yourself in, with some very brief puzzle elements that are more proof of concept right now than providing any kind of challenge. (The solution is fairly obvious!)

It's slightly more brooding and serious in tone than Quest Failed, though as you can tell from the first screenshot, there's still a cute monster girl to meet and 'fun' to be had!

I'd say the prototype is roughly about 5/10 minutes long depending on your reading speed, and includes two different endings depending on your actions: a 'good' ending, and then a...well...I wouldn't want to spoil the other ending~

The game features 100% custom visual assets, of which I'm quite proud of how things came together! Each map/background you see present in the prototype was handcrafted by the artist rather than being made of preset tiles, allowing a greater degree of creativity and freedom when putting the set pieces together. Think of it as something akin to the classic Resident Evil games, where the graphics were pre-rendered, and allowed for far greater visual fidelity than simply polygons may have provided at that time. This is in the same vein, using a combination of handdrawn backings, handdrawn overlays and then shadow/lighting overlaid on top to give a gloomy sense of atmosphere. The character sprites were created especially for the game too, each with their own little animations that play out here and there to help make the scenes feel more alive. All in all, a lot of care was given in the game's presentation to make it stand out among other games of its kind present on the RPG Maker engine, and I hope it shows!

It should be stressed that as this is a prototype, nearly everything you see here would be subject to change if development on the game did take off down the road. Especially the writing. I'm not 100% happy with the writing, but for the sake of putting the prototype out in a timely manner I had to power through some scenes!

Think of this prototype as something that could be expanded on as a small in between project after Chapter 2 is finished, and before Chapter 3 is started. (So a smaller project is finished in a quicker cycle, giving you more to play sooner!) Though work on this prototype would only continue if this is what the community wishes to see after Chapter 2 is released. To clarify--with this release, no further work will be done on this prototype for now. (Unless there was a desire to see more of it gradually, if higher funding goals were hit on Patreon!)

And to clarify, work on this small prototype over the months hasn't taken any development away on Chapter 2. It was intentionally made very slowly, with the artist only making assets for it in between his alloted Quest Failed stuff. It was thanks to a joint passion that we both had for this little project that we were able to make it in our spare time!

I'm going to send out download links for everyone who actively pledges $10 or more shortly after this post, so look forward to the download and I would love to see feedback on it if and when you get the chance! For the next few weeks this game is going to remain exclusive to $10 backers, but down the line I will be making this public in an effort to get more eyes on it and see how things go!