shallow_depths

Hi Thumbs. First-time jammer and first time posting on the forums. I'm taking advantage of the looser rules to make something not so tied to Idle Thumbs episodes and references. The plan: Avocado Smash is a 2D, dialogue-focused game. You play as a journalist investigating the seedy underbelly of Melbourne brunch culture. Depending on who you interview and the questions you ask, it will produce a different article about why avocado on toast is indicative of everything that's wrong with society. Context: In Australia there was a recent article that made some waves, suggesting young people would be able to afford their own home if only they weren't wasting money on expensive brunches instead of eating at home. I seriously just read a response that compared seeking a perfectly ripe avocado to bad heroin-- anything I come up with will not be nearly as exaggerated as it seems. Diversifiers: Hoping to incorporate Nice Segue and From the Horse's Mouth. How you can help: My previous game-making experience is with Twine, and this is my first Unity game. I reserve the right to ask silly questions and maybe wig out a bit. I'm also seeking donations of avocado brunch photos.

There are several more sophisticated versions I could imagine that would be interesting to play around with. I hadn't thought about obscuring motives, but I can see how that might be cool. My politics are naturally reflected here, but one thing that would be interesting to explore further is that the people you are interviewing totally do have ideas worth criticising, but they're completely obscured in this format where it's all about churning out hit pieces.

Thanks all

Okay, this is up on itch.io now. https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-4/rate/101651 I have no easy way to test the mac or linux version so if someone could let me know if they work that would be lovely.

I've been quiet just because there's a lot to get done. But things are pretty much coming together and I'm hoping to submit tomorrow. Also, couldn't resist playing with some dodgy box art. Looking forward to trying everyone's stuff, you're all amazing.

Yeah, Twine is good for hypertext/choice-based IF. For more-traditional parser-based IF maybe look at Inform, Quest or ADRIFT. I don't know much about using them though.

I have admittedly shown some of the worst examples for that here. Still definitely a work in progress!

I'm not thinking of it as whimsical but I guess we'll have to see how it turns out. The premise is pretty blatantly political, and I'm not trying to sugarcoat that. Whether I can find a good balance between whimsical joke and serious satire is a good question. My biggest concern right now is trying not to make the interviews themselves completely boring.

Intro sections basically working. Featuring randomly selected brunch. I am going to spend all of Wizard Jam managing avocado cravings.

Thanks for the encouragement. You are all much nicer than my partner, who went on an extended rant about how confronting and creepy my characters are and how much I'm going to unsettle and alienate people. I mean, that's fair, but it's all good and there's purpose in my weirdness. (It's all cool, I am being amused by his reaction). Not a lot to show for myself yesterday, unsurprisingly, but I'm working on writing and basic stuff like menus. Getting there. Grateful for Unity addons (Fungus) that make it simple to get the basic narrative structure and conversations working.

Day 1: Similar face Going with a zine-inspired black-and-white aesthetic and embracing my lack of artistic talent. Ugly characters via photo collage. Tomorrow it's going to be 38 degrees C in Melbourne (100 F). It's only going to get harder to take anything seriously. Maybe that's a good thing.

Thanks all. Can anyone tell me how to get access to the Slack channel?