Fiore's Game Dev Blog

reemerging from the hell caves with another pride sale... two dollars visual novel

My latest game jam entry is out! Very short turn-based/action RPG hybrid with lotsa SNES-style inspirations and at least one mechanic from an unlocalized licensed anime TRPG for the DS. That's a bit of a mouthful.

Rating the game requires rating a few other games from the jam so I'll understand if that's too much effort to go through, but I will encourage checking out some of those other entries regardless!

It's a Halloween sale for my decidedly non-spooky sapphic demon ladies visual novel! The astute among you may have noticed that Halloween has already passed, and I don't really have anything to say to that, however the fact remains that the game is indeed on sale for the next few days.

My new VN, on sale for 70% off until Christmas!

Oh. Oh right. This tumblr account.

I realize this is some kinda bait, but hey, whatevs.

I return from the void once more to share my latest little video game.

It’s a fusion of top-down puzzle-dungeon and side-view action-RPG, a curious blend inspired by my favorite series, Summon Night: Swordcraft Story.

Give it a try, and maybe a star or two in the ratings for this game jam! Just... move those blocks carefully and watch out for softlocks, it’s a jam game after all

If there’s one thing consistent about this blog, it’s my ability to completely forget to post anything to it. Here’s a BIG ol’ dump of recent screencaps.

I’ve posted a bit about this to my twitter already, but I guess I should show this place some love too, huh?

Some of you may remember that RPG Maker game I posted about ages ago. Well, it’s still going, and smoothly coasting towards completion under the somewhat cumbersome title “Slay the Dark Evil Queen!” (Maybe I’ll shorten it at some point...)

So, LGBT+ games in the indie dev scene... They’re VNs. Almost all of them. The number of VNs (and story-centric RPGs that are basically VNs) beat out other genres by a factor of ten, if not a hundred.

I love VNs. There’s nothing that beats the experience of just sitting back and getting fully and deeply immersed in a good gay story that will inevitably make me cry. But stories about romance are not the only facet of the LGBT+ experience, and stories told in words and pictures alone are not the only vehicle for presenting those experiences.

As minorities, we’re forced to assume that characters who aren’t very explicitly Like Us are, well... “Not Like Us.” And when so many developers think that making a story that makes it as explicit as possible has to be the only focus or they may as well not bother, we miss out on a lot.

Where are our over-the-top, cinematic action games, colorful platformers, head-scratching tactics and puzzle games?

Yo, why am I suddenly posting again? Is it because current events have me going a bit stir-crazy? Maybe. It’s been, what, over five years since I last attempted an informational text post? Bear with me here.

Anyway, here’s a brief explanation so I’ve got something to show the few people who have asked me about how to handle camera movement within and between “sub-zones” inside of a larger room.

Less about the coding specifics, and more about the general principles that can (hopefully) be applied to most any 2D game development software.