What're you working on for Ectocomp?

Competitions
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I made a game that I was ambivalent about, but since I still had the source code, I thought, “Hey! I could replace all the in-game text with something Halloween themed. That would be silly, but maybe fun? Plus, it’s so straightforward, since the game already works the way it’s supposed to, so I wouldn’t need to do much testing. I should do that!”

Reader: there was so much more in-game text than I had remembered. The game is mostly in-game text.

Worse: I realized there were things about the original design that I would need to change, so all that straightforwardness went right out the window.

I was going to enter it under a pseudonym, but then I didn’t have time to prepare an extra itch.io account, so I just uploaded it under my own name after all.

The good part of all this: I was able to address the flaws I felt so ambivalent about, so in that respect, I like this game better than its predecessor. The bad part of all this hasn’t occurred to me yet, but I’m sure it will. I know I’ve overlooked something, missed something in testing, forgot about something…

8 Likes
64

I finished my entry! Initially, my entry was going to be for Petite Mort, but I think I went a few minutes over time, so I just upgraded it to Grand Guignol. After submitting 30 minutes before the deadline, I think I should sleep now.

Excited to see all the games!

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65

Wow, lots of games (35,) lots of authors I recognize and lots I haven’t seen before.

I hope my Petite Mort and Guignol entries don’t beat the whole concept into the ground. That was a worry. But when I was programming, I was happy.

Thanks to threads like this and my testers for helping keep me sane and motivated.

Time to sleep now.

9 Likes
66

Hi!! I’m probably one of those names most people haven’t seen before!

I had no idea there was a conversation happening here about the competition!

I made a Petite Mort game about texting your friends and summoning the elder gods :blush:

16 Likes
67

I didn’t end up getting my entry done (I couldn’t find a way to fit my idea into 4 hours that I was happy with). I’m excited to dive into the massive pool of entries, though!

6 Likes
68

In a completely unforeseeable turn of events, it turns out I subtly broke my game last night.

Thank you to the organizers for allowing bug fixes past the submission deadline!

9 Likes
69

I’ve spent the afternoon trying to figure out how Itch works, and my game should now have a more readable thumbnail image and a cleaner layout in Itch’s “play online” window. Zarf’s OneColumn template is really convenient for that!

The “hints” link should also work from within the Itch player now, because it turns out you can’t redirect to other sites from within the player (a sensible policy), but you can open outside sites in a new tab. The game (and its interpreter) didn’t change at all, so I don’t think this broke autosaves, but it should be a better user experience.

5 Likes
70

Not enough wine to grease the thinking machine. When will you learn?

3 Likes
71

Wait, there’s grease in wine? Boy, I guess those movies in high school health class just weren’t scary enough!

4 Likes