Introducing Lydia...

No filters and hot off the drawing table! These are some work in progress sketches for an upcoming project...

Lydia's Labyrinth has received some wonderful feedback during the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam. We aimed to make a choose your own adventure story with a healthy dose of mystery and a cute and deadly host and thanks to some helpful comments and suggestions from amazing players, we're going to bring out a game book of the story 😁

It's going to be the first book in our "Choose Your Fate" series and we hope to bring many of our ideas and stories to the table under this project. The sketches above are for dividing sections of the story and feature props and elements from Lydia's game.

Thanks to everyone who has played our game! It's the most downloaded one we've ever made and it really means a lot to me and Robert.

If you want to see the original jam version of the game you can check it out here...

itch.io

Lydia's Labyrinth by Valhallions, DoubleFree

Welcome to my labyrinth darling! Do please try not to die too quickly, will you?

Thanks for stopping by and take care!

Lydia really hates this statue. Why does she have a statue that she hates in her labyrinth?

https://valhallions.itch.io/lydiaslabyrinth

Getting some practice drawing done on a pretty spring day.

Look, i`ve never been too good at talking politics, but i do wish to make a statement that what happened today in the US elections was fucked. A whole lot of people are going to be fucked. If you are one of those stuck there....please...just do your best to stay alive...

Travel devil 2 - Shame the Devil, tell the truth - DevLog 4

Well folks it's been such a week. I've had some extra work on this week but fear not... Travel Devil 2 continues its march through development.

This week I have

Designed some additional menu assets

Worked on a talk show set

Designed some apocalypse assets based in Paris

Learned about the national dish of the Netherlands - Stamppot (critical cultural research and tonight's dinner)

Paris has fallen to the unholy march.

Unfortunately the talk show set is still a work in progress as it's not coming together in a way that I like. Also things are going a bit slower than I’ve expected. Just gotta keep my head up and keep on with it.

I've also got some news about the writing. Robert has been leading the story development and has

Been writing many new scenes

Started a point of view chapter for our new character Chloe (art reveal coming soon!)

Finished a secret scene

Carried out location research about demonic art in Amsterdam

Poster for the play "Lucifer" from 1910 painter by Richard Roland Holst (1868 -1938) - https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=urn:gvn:WITS01:109324, Public Domain

I'm glad to say that things are still moving forward. These devlogs help me to recognise that. Next week is going to be hectic as well so I'm going to try and focus on character art. I'm also hoping to make some time to play some visual novels. There's a few I've been meaning to try and I always find it inspiring to see what magical creations other people are making.

If you’d like to see how the infernal story began you can download the original Travel Devil narrative game for free on the Valhallions itch page. You can also see my side projects and asset packs on the DoubleFree itch page.

Take care everyone!

DoubleFree

Travel DevLog 2 - Working with the devil on my shoulder.

Week 2 of development has been going well on Travel Devil 2. We’re setting it straight after the first game so you get to see how the dynamics of Tornacense and Kirby are changing as they get used to being around each other.

Tornacense and Kirby facing an unhinged street preacher in the first game.

It’s great returning to these characters. I’m trying to make their drawings more exciting and dynamic. I’ve got a lot more time to make the character drawings now as I’m not working to game jam timeframes. I’m also going to learn to use the Renpy Action Editor to add more options to the movements in the game.

I’ve been working on many different aspects of the Travel Devil 2 to keep things interesting and motivating. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Many more concept sketches were drawn. Now I need to get them looking swish on the computer.

Backgrounds and video footage of Amsterdam have been sourced to showcase in the vlog parts of the game.

Set up a Bluesky profile – now I just have to learn to use it :S

Spent a lot of time updating software – yay!

Planned some fancy menus for 1st game recap, unlockables and character profiles

Coded some of the game framework in Renpy

Drank a lot of tea (Woo rock and/or roll!)

I've been using the plot outline to build the framework for the game. Robert has been working away on the writing. He's already written the recap of the first game and the opening scene which we’ve been hammering out together.

We’re hoping to get Travel Devil 2 out this year if we can. However if you can’t wait, you can pop on the old humask and check out the (short) first installment here on itch.io.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope March is treating you well!

itch.io

CHEATERS (demo) by Venado Artificial

A dangerous ritual, one big mansion, two friends, and three days. (IN DEVELOPMENT)

Played a great visual novel demo today! Super writing and lore which I'm looking forward to seeing more of.

Also thanks for using Mr Fuffington as the cat!

Game jam stuff - today the writer wanted a tiger for the labyrinth!

A tiger getting ready to strike...

So I know I'm not gonna get time to hand draw a vicious tiger so I thought I'd see what I could cobble together from available images on pexels and pixabay.

With a bit of tweaking and some filters I came up with a tiger. This project is getting big so I'm having to resort to some quick and dirty tactics. Here's hoping it works!

Lydia's Labyrinth is coming to the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam 2024 - now with a tiger!

Travel Devil - better the devil you know!

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

Travel Dev(il)Log – And so it begins...

Hello and welcome to the first DevLog of Travel Devil 2!

Ever wanted to get out of the daily grind and escape to a paradise of travel-vlogging in Europe? Well, so did Tornacense the demon! The Travel Devil series follows Tornacense and the (un)lucky human who summoned him, Kirby.

In Travel Devil 2, Tornacense and Kirby are going to Amsterdam to enjoy all the fabulous delights that this city has to offer! The outline is done and development is beginning! Robert has been writing away and has sent over the summary. Now it’s time for me to get stuck in to the art and the code.

So to keep me on track, I'm making weekly progress lists to help keep me motivated. This week I have:

Practised drawing the characters lots (I haven’t worked with these characters since October so I’m a bit rusty!)

Designed our new character Chloe, reveal coming soon – she’s a peach!

Watched a lot of travel guides for Amsterdam – it’s been years since I’ve been there so I hope I can do this fantastic city justice.

Researched art from famous Dutch artists to give the game an air of culture and sophistication - Amsterdam isn’t all red lights and smoking and we want to showcase all the great aspects of this famous city!

Travel Devil 2 is the sequel to a game that I made for a game jam. It was set in beautiful Paris and showed the first episode of Travel Devil featuring the overnight doomtube sensation, Tornacense. I had so much fun making it that I’m diving back in and we’re heading to the Netherlands on the next step of the Journey.

If you want to check out the first instalment it’s right here waiting for you to come enjoy it!

Thanks for stopping by!