Do you like sci-fi goblins exploring an alien planet, discovering the ruins and artifacts of an ancient civilization?
Do you like said goblins eating through their profits and getting fat? Maybe even extremely fat?
I, for one, sure do!
I’m happy to release a demo version of Vvakta IX, a visual novel with some resource managing elements, available right now on itch.io!
The game features art from talented artists WholeLottaBlank and ExtraBaggageClaim. You can easily find their work on twitter or deviantart.
Update (2024/03/10): I just released a new version of the demo! Also a Patreon page has been opened if you want to get access to a more complete version of the game, and support the development of Vvakta IX!
Update (2024/03/31): A new version of the game has been released for people on Patreon
Update (2024/06/01): A new version of the game has been released for people on Patreon, including a brand new expedition to a research lab located in cold waters! The demo has also been updated with some new features like Telphedice having more than one expression
Thanks! Yeah, the QTEs need to be worked on. My priority right now, though, is to add more content - the first complete expedition should be available for supporters of the game in a couple weeks!
I’m happy you like it! I think some of the QTEs could get more difficult toward the end of the game, but their system needs to be worked on before that. And anyway I don’t really want to make failing at them too punitive for the player - the core of the game is more supposed to be about your choices regarding resource allocations. Like, will you use all of them to try and satisfy Tel’s rampant appetite? Even when it means you might lack some equipment during the next expedition? That’s what I’m trying to go for with this game
happy to like it. That makes sense with the difficulty curving towards later game with that also nice its not too punitive. Basing it around the resource allocation sounds like it would give you food for thought while you play and ill be interested to see how you develop that. Kinda like a darkest dungeons concept of resource management with less difficulty which sounds fun.
Needs volume settings, or a download button. Game is like 5 times as loud as anything else I listen to. I can’t just turn down the volume in windows volume control because that would turn down my volume for all my browser tabs…
I will say though that I turn all rpgmaker games down 80% as well, so it’s not that the volume is too loud, but that it’s not adjustable, and for some reason my setup demands me to crank almost everything way down…
Thanks for letting me know, I’ll look into that! For anyone who ran into that issue, I guess a temporary fix can be to mute the browser tab where the game is playing
Nice little demo, and a lot more dialogue options than I was expecting for an initial release. Not sure how many of those will be conversation fluff or story-changing decisions, but they’re welcome nonetheless. A suggestion for the QTEs, perhaps bind those to a keyboard input? Would prevent people clicking through them accidentally, although you’d need a different solution if you’re supporting touch controls with it being played in the browser. Either way, looking forward to seeing more!
Thanks! I don’t think I can realistically guarantee that there’ll be lots of story-changing choices - but I want the choices you make to have an impact on several levels. Mostly, how much Tel grow fat, which other characters see their waistlines expand as well, and how much you discover about the vvaktans and their history. To me, these are the core of the game. So I hope there’ll be some degree of replayability eventually
I didn’t think the QTEs would be an issue for people, especially since on their current form they’re more of a placeholder until I come up with something more fun. But all that feedback makes me consider reworking them sooner than I originally intended
Hi everyone, first real update for the game since I released the demo!
The demo now includes a new chapter, directly following the story where it previously ended, and features a brand new character - I hope you’ll like her!
Another big news for the project is that I’ve opened a Patreon page. Subscribing to that page can be as cheap as $3, and gives you access to the most complete version of the game yet. Currently, that’s two more chapters than what’s included in the demo.
Higher tiers in the Patreon will allow you to get a say in what features will be added next, give you access to exclusive resources like sketches and lore, or even access to full-res versions of the art I get from WholeLottaBlank and ExtraBaggageClaim even before it’s integrated in the game!
Whether you’re able to support the project with the patreon or not, I hope you’ll enjoy this update - I put a lot of work into it, so feel free to let me know what you think of it, whether it’s things you like or dislike!
Save and restore is sort of useless in the demo because closing and reopening my browser sends me to the start screen, and on the start screen I cannot access the menu, so I cannot click restore, so when I click new game my save is overwritten? Yes?
The save system is something I’m still actively working on, I’m trying to do it so that older saves can be restored in newer version of the game but it’s easier said than done ><
If I understand your issue correctly though, it’s mostly a missing button in the main menu! Clicking on “new game” doesn’t overwrite your save until you click on “save” (there’s no auto save yet, it also sits somewhere on my todo list). So you can click on “new game”, then “menu”, then “restore” and it should be okay! (that’s what I do myself whenever I’m testing the game)
For those who care, I’m building the game using using the Ebitengine go library. I do that rather than use say, Ren’py, godot or rpgmaker because for me it’s more fun to dev that way, but that means I’m basically reinventing the wheel every so often, be it for menus, text formatting, or the aforementioned save system ^^
That is what I did, it did not work. I bet it would’ve worked if I had downloaded the game or some such? But in the browser for some reason it didn’t. Maybe closing and reopening my browser deleted the save, and I was just incorrectly guessing that hitting new game deleted it?
edit: Oh, also, yeah, a bespokely coded save system would explain it too. The game looks very much like it was made in rpgmaker, a version of rpgmaker that doesn’t exist. I had just assumed that there was a new release of rpgmaker in 2023 or 2024 that I hadn’t seen before that was slightly slicker
Don’t know much about Go but the easiest way to do saves for a game like this is have an object/struct that represents the game state, serialize it to a structured data format (use JSON unless you have a REALLY good reason to use something else), and save that to disk. Loading the game is just the reverse, but could trip you up depending on how you do it. (Read the docs for whatever library you use)
Technically JSONB (binary json) is more efficient but this is a VN so that really doesn’t matter
For version upgrades, the easiest way to handle it would probably be to keep track of the version of the game the save was made with along with the game state. When loading an old save with a new version, you create a new gamestate with sane defaults and then import all relevant data from the old save.
It is VERY easy to introduce bugs like this however, so if you want “upgradeable” saves you’ll want to focus on having few, more content rich updates. Ideally along chapter boundaries if your story will be organized like that.
