The Secret of Darkwoods - Open-world illustrated text-based RPG

[rap2h]

https://the-secret-of-darkwoods.vercel.app

Spoiler

After 350+ hours of work, my open-world fantasy game book is almost ready. Release date: February 28, 2023

It is inspired by Daggerfall and Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.

The game will be free (on Steam and GOG hopefully) and features various dungeon synth music composers, illustration has been done with Midjourney.

I suck at promoting a game, so I don't know what to say here. Some people tested it and have positive feedback, I would be glad to have yours. One of my main concerns currently is: what if nobody plays my game?

Also feel free to ask me anything, or to "destroy" the game.

Link to the game: https://the-secret-of-darkwoods.vercel.app/

 

[karoliner]

Is the frog gay or straight?

 

[agentorange]

an illustrated choose your own adventure. so the only two things to focus on would be illustrations and writing. and yet all the illustrations are copy pasted generic shit without any distinctive style. yeah wow cant wait to try this out

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I think the art looks pretty good.

rap2h Have you played Darklands? It's a really old RPG that has some similar features.

 

[Norfleet]

Is the frog gay or straight?

Probably straight. This setting sounds pre-industrial so they haven't had the opportunity to use chemicals to turn the frogs gay yet.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I'm gonna check it out when it releases. Illustrartion looks kind of rough on the edges, like they where scissor cut and attached with glue to the pages. I'd personally would like to have a border there to make it look nicer.

I was actually thinking it might look better with a blend around the edges. But I guess if you're not going to blend them, then a nice border would look better than nothing.

 

[Incognito]

After 350+ hours of work, my open-world fantasy game book is almost ready. Release date: February 28, 2023

It is inspired by Daggerfall and Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.

The game will be free (on Steam and GOG hopefully) and features various dungeon synth music composers, illustration has been done with Midjourney.

I suck at promoting a game, so I don't know what to say here. Some people tested it and have positive feedback, I would be glad to have yours. One of my main concerns currently is: what if nobody plays my game?

Also feel free to ask me anything, or to "destroy" the game.

Link to the game: https://the-secret-of-darkwoods.vercel.app/

Looks promising. Will try when it releases.

 

[Tavernking]

The art looks nice, will check it out eventually

 

[rap2h]

Thanks to your feedback, I just tried to fix the borders of the illustrations and changed the font to make it nicer (hopefully)

By the way, if you are interested join the discord here to have it for free when it's released!

https://discord.gg/MD3gbcMSNb

 

[rap2h]

The game has now a steam page! (and it's still free forever)

 

[rap2h]

Once again I realize that I should have created dev tools on day one

I just added this micro tool (only 20 minutes of dev) that help me quickly design the bones of a subpart of my game book.
Left part allows me to prepare routing (paragraph names and options)
Right part is a generated (thanks to the left part) code template that I have to copy/paste into my code editor to actually add the text.
Previously I was just typing directly in the code editor.

 

[rap2h]

The sewers of felwitch

 

[rap2h]

Writing a non-linear gamebook - an actual picture of my notes on top

 

[rap2h]

New trailer:

 

[luj1]

Does it have checks? Attributes? Skills? Classes? Combat?

 

[notpl]

It's actually a pretty impressive showing for AI art tools. The resulting art isn't anything spectacular, for obvious reasons, but it's certainly better than bare-minimum ascii or other placeholders and the fact that you didn't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on commissions is presumably what made the game possible in the first place. Now we just have to see if you managed to make an actual worthwhile game with all that money and time saved.

 

[rap2h]

It's actually a pretty impressive showing for AI art tools. The resulting art isn't anything spectacular, for obvious reasons, but it's certainly better than bare-minimum ascii or other placeholders and the fact that you didn't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on commissions is presumably what made the game possible in the first place. Now we just have to see if you managed to make an actual worthwhile game with all that money and time saved.

I hope so! The game will be free so you can download it and try it when it's ready! I spent thousands of hours on it to make it hopefully worthwhile, working with music composers, writers, and friends that gave me ideas, so I hope you will not be disappointed!

I would be glad if you play it and give me feedback, my only goal is to have players that enjoy the game!

Thank you for your message notpl !

 

[rojay]

It's actually a pretty impressive showing for AI art tools. The resulting art isn't anything spectacular, for obvious reasons, but it's certainly better than bare-minimum ascii or other placeholders and the fact that you didn't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on commissions is presumably what made the game possible in the first place. Now we just have to see if you managed to make an actual worthwhile game with all that money and time saved.

I hope so! The game will be free so you can download it and try it when it's ready! I spent thousands of hours on it to make it hopefully worthwhile, working with music composers, writers, and friends that gave me ideas, so I hope you will not be disappointed!

I would be glad if you play it and give me feedback, my only goal is to have players that enjoy the game!

Thank you for your message notpl !

The new font is a dramatic improvement and the art looks ok to me. I'll check it out when I have a minute.

Question though: why did you do this if you're giving the game away? If just for shits & giggles then I envy you for the amount of free time you have.

 

[rap2h]

Question though: why did you do this if you're giving the game away? If just for shits & giggles then I envy you for the amount of free time you have.

rojay Thank you for your support! I'm giving this game for free because I like free things I guess. My music is free too.

Also, it's a gift for the younger me, I loved gamebooks when I was a child and I always wanted to do a non-linear one. I have old files with sheets of game books I tried to create when I was 10. I'm 37 now, I guess I can try to make this thing real and then forget about it and move on! I do have not that much spare time TBH (social and family, day job) I tried to make it in 6-8 months. I will rest after that!

 

[Kedar]

Hey rap2h, I think it's really cool that you spent so much time making a game and you're giving it away for free!

I know I sound like a bot but I'm only trying to be positive.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Seems cool. This reminds me of the cool looking Dragon’s Crown DLC (Treasure of Demon Island) also inspired by Fighting Fantasy that we’re never getting in English.

 

[Tyranicon]

Looks interesting, I'll check it out when it releases.

 

[Late Bloomer]

 

[rap2h]

luj1

Does it have checks? Attributes? Skills? Classes? Combat?

• Checks: yes, it's something like "Test your dexterity (5 vs 1D6)"
• Attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Endurance, Speed, Luck (6 attributes)
• Skills: concentration, herbalism, lockpicking, persuasion, swimming, climbing, read runes (7 skills)
• Classes: no (players build their hero by leveling up)
• Combat: yes (players have check choices against the opponent)

 

[luj1]

Not bad