#narrat

Well, cat's out of the bag.

For the past few months (and by that I mean I made 90% of this game in two weeks then stalled with the ending for several months) I've been making a short visual novel game called Labyrinthian. If you like grungy black-and-white hallways, paths that only go forward, and indie games that won't take more than 10 minutes of time, this game is for you.

You can play it on itch.io for a minimum of free! Link here:

Narrat Engine demo

Narrat 🐀 is a game engine I created to easily make interactive fiction games (narrative RPGs, visual novels etc) for desktop or browser. I’ve worked on this game engine for some time, mostly to help friends make their games. It’s been used on a few small games, and some bigger ones in progress.

🚀 If you want to try it, get on the website it’s very quick

The demo is a bit boring with placeholder art and content just to show features, and is pretty outdated, but I never posted it here so I figured I should

I really want to make a proper demo one day that would be a small game that actually makes sense and maybe has actual art... but not sure what it would be yet

Games made with Narrat

Here are some screenshots of games made with Narrat. They’re also listed on the website if you want to play them or find the creators:

🎮 Games from the Narrat Game Jam (they’re playable in your browser and free):

Two women in trouble by Mia (also free!)

Lovely Lady RPG by Poppy (in progress):

Features

Here’s a not really exhaustive list of fun features at the top of my head:

🚀 Super easy to get started with a tool that will setup your project either empty or with a template in a minute

✍️ Customisable characters, branching dialog and conditions

👩‍💻 Super easy scripting with a custom made language that focuses on letting you write dialog, but can be used for more advanced logic if you need it

🎧Audio support for music loops and sound effects

📘RPG features like skills with skill checks, inventory, quests

🎨 Accessible UI customisation with CSS allowing for a wide variety of designs

⚙️ Extremely configurable with a layout that can be adapted to different games

💡Plugin system (in TypeScript or JavaScript) to add functionality to the engine, new bits of UI or even extend the scripting language with your own commands!

🖥️ Steam export setup by default (the Steam overlay will work out of the box if you enable it)

🎬 Support for GIFs or webp in images for easy animation (thanks to the browser doing it for us)

🖼️ Dynamic sprites and text to programmatically display custom elements on screen (has been used to make a card game by someone)

🌍 Completely free and open source, and with a helpful Discord community to help with problems

Here’s what the scripting looks like (from the demo game):

I want more people to try this engine so please try it or help people know it exists ❤️

You can also signal boost it on the Twitter thread

The Summer of Translations

Following responses on my summer project, The Summer of Translations is now a jam on itch! So if you want to tag... come join :)

The Summer of Translations is a summer-long chill jam about showing off all the cool languages you speak! Well... write...

Whether it is translating a previously released project or creating a new game from scratch, let's add variety in the narrative sphere by sharing stories in non-English languages!

Spend the summer juggling languages!

Dos almas enamoradas y un deseo: el amor eterno. Cuando Lázaro y Aurora atrapan al demonio de su huerto, no sabían que iba a ser el inicio de una larga historia llena de cariño, estima y, bajo estrellas menos prolíferas, dolor.

Stella Amoris es un juego narrativo en el que serás partícipe de la historia de amor de dos personas que se enamoran a lo largo de la historia: Edad Media, Edad Moderna, siglo XX, la actualidad y el futuro más allá del espacio. Las estrellas las acompañan, ¿lo haras tú también?

Subblog rebranding

From now on I'll be posting things related to a game I'm working on. I'll report if I ever get back to making this comic though

The game

Babel. Reversed is a visual novel where the protagonist has to face the secret that's hidden right above their head, in the Tower. A day as many others kick starts a series of surreal events that have no good ending for the people of the Belows.