A little! More so that I’m feeling pretty happy with what I’ve made, even if I did wind up cutting and trimming away at things- scope creep can get a little out of hand, but having read about ‘make it playable, then complicate’ helped. Probably going to submit tomorrow after a study sesh with one of my best friends. Also made a Twitter since I think the submission form optionally lets you add one?
I was also picking through some class related writing recently (our prof basically asks us open ended questions related to the lectures for Evolution, and I’ve enjoyed doing the writeups for them) and pondering making something else, (an irreverent evolutionary biologist?) or poking around at a one room setting and trying to experiment more with what Twine can do (a sidebar specifically) and expanding on one brief scene from Sweetpea to mush it with said idea- lots of little writing scraps floating around. It’s been fun learning a teensy bit of CSS and HTML to muck around with Harlowe. Nothing fancy, but it’s cool to play around with and learn stuff from lurking documentation and forums all the same. Can’t wait until summer when I’ll have the time to piece them together!
I’m finally done~ish with my Spring Thing (well, as done as it’s going to get, anyhow; I ended up cutting a lot of content). It’s called New Year’s Eve, 2019, and it’s a sequel to Pageant, which I wrote a couple of years ago now. It’s a choice-based slice-of-life story about… well, exactly what the title says. It’s also my second game written in dendry, and either the second or third game ever written in dendry, depending on whether you count Bee.
Social gatherings are not your preferred activity. But this one is obligatory, and it threatens to ruin you.
You are Karen Zhao, a senior in college who is home for winter break, and seeing your old high school friends for the first time in years. You are not ready, not even close, but perhaps you could make the best of it.
If anyone’s interested in beta testing before, um, the day after tomorrow, that would be nice, but it might be too late for that…
If anyone is unsure, let me say that this game is extremely well written and took me <30 mins per playthrough, so beta testing it isn’t a huge commitment.
For the purposes of this question, let’s assume we were all squatting on Howland Island (UTC-12) at the time of @pbparjeter 's post (crowded island). In that case, we all had a generous 22 minutes to plan, design, test, and submit our April Fools games before the midnight deadline, and we’re merely sharing the title of the game after the fact.
My game, of course, was titled:
7 DAYS LATER:
It is July, 2002 and a bored teen has just discovered Limewire. When perennially helpful program Clippy (Tom Holland) is recovered from a system restore a week after, he finds his home overrun with strange new interlopers. On the run from the zombie-like victims of HappyJoyJoy69.exe, Clippy stumbles upon a group of survivors, including risk-taking gamer and demolition expert, Sweeper (Shia Labeouf), and by-the-book accountant, X-Cel (Stephen Root), and joins them on a perilous journey to what they all hope will be safety.
Oh, my second entry (under an assumed name to skirt the rules) is a remake of 2021’s Universal Hologram (titled All-Purpose Mirage). This time, there’s only one ending, but the constant illusion of choice with many totally meaningless selections/options. Not only are the images AI-generated, but the text as well, resulting in prose I feel is far more authentic than in the original. The only text that isn’t generated via neural net is the dialogue by the character Chadd, who I inserted to give readers a sense of immersion and relatability: he is a surfer and model from Venice Beach whose catchphrase, “Now that’s one wave I don’t wanna surf!” reverberates throughout the text, grounding readers who felt alienated by the sci-fi trappings of Universal Hologram. I’ve worked with the organizer to create a new award, the Golden Pomegranate, which is sort of the anti-Golden Banana: it goes to the author whose game garners the lowest standard deviation, which I fully expect to win, in one way or another.
All I have is Dr Sourpuss May or May Not Be a Choice-Based Game II: This Time It’s Choicenal (or, Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back Into the Educational System)
I’ve worked with the organizer to create a new award, the Golden Pomegranate, which is sort of the anti-Golden Banana: it goes to the author whose game garners the lowest standard deviation
But what about the most middling standard deviation?
I’d probably keep everything the same in Sweetpea, (maybe readjust the title to make it “Sweetpea 2: Electric Boogaloo” or something like that) except I’d give Michael a gun, and let the hysterics play out from there. Also, give him some crocs to go with his eyesore of an outfit. With the little croc shoe charms for accessory flair.
Tossing a glock into the middle of an absurd situation is usually one of the go-to gags in our D&D campaigns, especially if it’s given to a character who doesn’t know how to wield it (Tobias, the literal five year old with a best friendcat named Mr. Mittens) or a character who can’t wield it (because Michael the archangel’s slightly goopy human-friendly guise currently isn’t in possession of opposable thumbs, lest he melt bystander’s eyeballs if he lets his glamour slip momentarily in adjusting it.)
Oh, are we doing sequels now? The sequel to A Paradox Between Worlds is titled 2 Paradox 2 Worlds. In this story, Luna and all the other online users are magically transported to the Shadow Nebula universe and their memories erased, where they become students or staff at Pulsar Academy along with the original nebulaverse characters, but not Gali, whose stand-in will be the protagonist of this IF. The story will be a dating sim/time management game about the characters’ time in the magical academy, and their support for or opposition to the Administrator’s plot to overthrow the Emperor. Also the Creator of this universe is a magical version of G.T. Macmillan who might also be overthrown.
I am actually kind of writing this although unfortunately the title will not be 2 Paradox 2 Worlds.
