There's less than a week left of judging for the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam and it's been a fantastic experience for us so far! Travel Devil has received such wonderful feedback and critiques. We take on board everything that is written to us so we can make better games every time! So today I'm going to give a little insight into how and why Travel Devil came to be. Do you wanna know how Travel Devil came to exist? Originally we put together a game idea for a spooky pet adoptions agency. The game would take place on Halloween and have six pets (3 unlocked and 3 locked) to play with. Each pet was going to have a unique story and minigame associated with it. It was codenamed "Spoopy Pets" and it was far too much for the me and Robert to take on and complete in the Spooktober VN Jam timeframe. We worked on it for the first two days of the jam before we were flagging problems up, so we changed trajectory. It's not a dead idea though, it's in the list of rainy day ideas. Speaking of the rainy day ideas list, that's where Travel Devil comes in. We thought this up a while ago but just put it on the back burner as there was no time to work on it. The concept was simple - a demon escapes hell and starts a travel log. Then the servants of hell follow in its wake starting the apocalypse march on humanity. When Spoopy Pets became too big we had a look at what we had to play with and Travel Devil just sort of fell into place. Robert started writing and I started drawing. Character design went pretty smoothly. I went for a mix of cartoon styles, drawing inspiration from things like Dead End, Gravity Falls, The Simpsons and Garfield. Traditionally, visual novels use anime and manga style design but truth be told, I'm not very good at that style. It takes me ages to make characters look good when I try to draw like that. Hats off to all the wonderful artists in this jam who made beautiful, scintillating characters. I'm so impressed by their dedication to fantastic character art. One of the first pitfalls I encountered was background art. I like to use sites like Pixabay to get backgrounds but recently it's been flooded with AI artworks. The game jam expressly forbids AI use in your game so we had to get creative. Fortunately this game revolves around travel vlog creation in Paris and we found loads of creative commons photos of the famous tourist destination. Seriously there are so many fantastic photographers out there and it was a complete life and time saver for the jam. All I had to do was add a translucent white filter to the top of the photos to make the characters pop out and we had our backgrounds! Development went well once we got on the right track. Travel Devil was made using Ren'py which is a joy to develop with. We did have to wind back our ideas at one point as both Robert and I got sick with a nasty bug but we made it. We stripped back some choices and streamlined the game to make sure we could get finished. Originally, we wanted the player to be able to unlock multiple hidden scenes in one playthrough. As the deadline loomed we simplified it so that the player would only see one of three potential side stories that were growing due to the activities of our main character Tornacense per playthrough. We included 7 unlockable scenes and also 6 unlockable images in our gallery. There's also a nifty guide to finding all the unlockables right here if you want a more relaxing time while playing. If you've had a chance to play Travel Devil you may have noticed that we planted some seeds in our side stories that will be big plot points as we go forward. Travel Devil is going to be a series of five games travelling around Europe making video journals and outrunning the underworld. Tornacense and Kirby will grow, we'll meet lots of new strange and devastating people and love could be just around the corner! Who knows? That choice will be yours.
If you want to check out the first installment of Travel Devil you can nab a pentagram portal and find it right here. Travel Devil was made for the 5th Annual Spooktober Visual Novel Jam in under 30 days. The next one will be made with a lot more time dedicated to it! Thanks for stopping by! DoubleFree - Artist and coder for Travel Devil
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Travel Devil was made for Spooktober VN Jam 2023.
Welcome one and all, to the most Sin-tilating travel vlog on earth and hell. Explore the human world, learn how to blend in amongst the locals, see the sights and most importantly, get insider info on how to better corrupt the pathetic souls you'll meet. "Travel Devil" is the leader in infernal info-tainment, all thanks to your exceptional host and guide, Tornacense. Tornacense rose to Doomtube stardom quickly, after seizing his opportunity when a macabre 19 year old college student attempted to summon a demon in order to get revenge on his enemies. Thus began an adventure of a lifetime, all be it , one the fortunate human did not intend. What you're are about to witness is the premier episode of this historic, ground breaking program, including some never before seen behind the scenes footage. Our first stop on this momentous tour? Paris! Available now: https://valhallions.itch.io/traveldevil The next installment of The Clanlands Saga by Robert McConvey is drawing nearer and nearer! For those wonderful readers who cannot wait for the books release, we have a special treat for you.
A Sample Chapter! Please check out our sneak preview of book 2 "The Calamity" and we hope you enjoy it! Please let us know what you think. Enjoy your weekend Valhallions Our second board game PK is available on the Game Crafter right now!
Can you stay calm and focused? Can you handle the pressure? In a penalty shootout, one mistake is all that stands between victory and defeat. Who will raise the Champions Cup? PK is a fast, exciting two player microgame that brings the high tension, excitement and drama of a penalty shootout off the pitch and onto your table. Each player makes their move at the same time, but will the crowds cheer wildly in jubilation? Or will the valiant goalkeeper crush the dreams of their foe. Quick, fun and small, PK is a perfect game to play on the move or as a little treat between bigger games. It's the drama and dreams of champions that fits in your pocket. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!! Hi everyone, with 2023 reaching its midpoint (I know, I can’t believe it either), I thought now would be a good time to check in and let y’all know what we have been up to this year. I know it looks like things have been ominously quiet for the past six months but don’t worry we’ve not been idle and now I thought I’d share a little update on what we are currently working on and what stage everything is at. I really can’t wait to share all of our creations with you all. Please feel free to let us know in the comments or social media which projects you are most excited for or would love to see!
Board Games PK – A 2 player micro card game that captures the excitement and drama of a world cup final, that you can put in your pocket. RELEASING THIS SUMMER! Mineshaft – A Dwarven dice rolling resource management game. Art is all in and we are just putting it together and working on the graphic design. ETA – We are hoping by the end of this year but will most likely be early 2024! Video Games Bloopy & The Hero Ruby – A 2d platformer in the classic Gameboy and Gameboy colour style! Bloopy has always wanted to be a great hero but people keep telling him he can’t because he is a little, fuzzy monster. Can you help guide Bloopy to the Hero Ruby and achieve his dreams? ETA - September 2023 Books King Frog – Our first children’s book follows the adventure of a hungry little frog. ETA - This year! The Calamity (Book 2 of the Clanlands Saga) – Aldyn Soaring Falcon sit’s uneasy on his throne, as visions of a storm and a familiar cackling haunts his every waking thought. The storm arrives 2024, however a sample chapter of “The Calamity” will be posted, right here, next month! There are many other ideas and projects that are coming along nicely but aren’t quite at the stage to be revealed yet. However as soon as they are, we will let you know. Also please check out our Ebay store for even more tabletop gaming accessories, part and pieces. Or visit our Redbubble store for merch and apparel. Hope you all are as excited as we are about everything that is to come! Play well everyone! Rob So proud to announce the release of Robert's first novel - KINSLAIN. It is available in both ebook and paperback editions on Amazon. Kinslain is the first book in the Clanlands Saga and work has already begun on the second book. Hi everyone,
We are happy to announce that Final Thing Quest has been voted the winner of the RPG Mania II game jam!!! So proud of this little game and we want to thank all of you for your support and love. We hope you all had fun playing our game and if you haven't had a chance to try it now is the perfect time! Available for free on Windows and now Android! valhallions.itch.io/finalthingquest Thank you all so much and play well! Robert Hi everyone, This is it. Final thing quest is finally finished and available for download today! Available from our itch page, here and for the wonderful price of free! This has been my first time developing a video game from start to finish and although it is a simple little adventure, I’m very proud of it. I hope it brings some joy and fun to each of you. I’ve added the release trailer below if you want to check that out. If you do enjoy any of our games please help spread the word, it really helps. Thank you all so much and play well! Robert Hi everyone! Just checking in with the latest update for Final Thing Quest. There are two big things I’d like to announce today. The first is that version one is complete! Yay! So that has been passed on to my testers for the first round of checks and then I’ll have to do all the inevitable changes and fixes that they flag up until it’s as good as I can make it. I am happy to say that we are still on target for an early to mid September release so you all will be able to play it soon! As for the second announcement, as the title suggests, there will be a town in the game that exclusively speaks Irish. It always felt wrong that in most RPGs the entire world speaks the same language, especially when there are numerous races. It was always strange that they all spoke perfect common, so I really wanted at least one town that didn’t. Now Final Thing Quest has its own little Gaeltacht, an Irish speaking region. This won’t impact the main story at all as the town is a completely optional stop on your journey but I’m happy to announce its inclusion. Special thanks to Ciarán for all your help.
It was important to me to have the Irish language in my first game as it is something that I care about and wish was preserved more. I grew up learning it in school but unfortunately, I quickly lost the language due to lack of use and lack of available media to immerse myself in it. I hope that this in some small way will help others enjoy seeing the language in the wild. This should be my last update before release so hopefully next time you’ll be able to dive in and play Final Thing Quest for yourself. Play well! Robert Hello and welcome everyone. I have an exciting announcement today. So I’ve been messing about with RPG Maker for the first time and have been putting together a turn based RPG to learn the ins and outs of this great software. I’ve now got it to a stage where it’s nearly done! So here is the starting screen in all its JRPG glory. Actually, come to think of it maybe it’s an IRPG given that I’m Irish. Well the point is it’s an RPG and that’s the main thing. Final Thing Quest is an adventure story that lovingly pokes fun at the RPG genre. I’ve been a fan of turn based RPGs my whole life so this means I know their strong points, tropes and flaws very well. As such I wanted to make something that leans in to some of these aspects, yet also is fresh in its perspective. I’ll talk on some of those points in a future developer log. In this game you take on the role of Dahlia, a seeker of “the Thing.” She’s part of a (holy?) organisation who’s Seekers are tasked with the perilous duty of finding “the Thing” and bringing it to “the Other Thing.” Unfortunately what these items are have been lost in the murky depths of history but Dahlia has devoted her life to training to complete her sacred duty. In Final Thing Quest, Dahlia is joined by two other characters. There is also the chance to gain one optional party member if you play your cards right. Giving the players choices was important to me so I also included some dialogue choices, an avoidable boss battle and an optional dungeon. I couldn’t go too overboard as I want to make a short-ish game. After all, it is my first project of this type but I’m really happy with how my testing has been going so far. At this point Final Thing Quest’s game time is approximately 3-4 hours. I don’t think it’s going to deviate too far from that. With my current progress I’m aiming to release Final Thing Quest late September, early October and for the low, low price of FREE!
I’ll have another update soon about something very special that I’ve been working on for the game. Find the thing! Bring it to the other thing! Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Play well my friends! |