Painted Red

[Espon]

Story

All I remember is a flower...

Nothing too special, just your average everyday flower.

The rest just feels like a blur...

What is it about this flower that is so significant?

I planted some flower seeds.

Today is the day the flower blooms.

Maybe today I can finally make sense of it all.

To finally remember...

Characters

Spoiler

Adelyn

A young girl searching for clues to her past.

Cody

Adelyn's younger brother. He has a bit of a knack for fixing gadgets.

Petri

A cranky old man (blob?) that hangs around outside the house.

Birch

He usually bothers Adelyn about forgetting to do things that he hasn't told her about. Apparently has something against Adelyn's appearance.

Fifi

Felicity, or Fifi for short, enjoys watching the birds and the flowers. She has difficulty speaking and moving so she requires a bit of help to get around.

Features

• Exploring, finding and using key items
  
• No battles
  
• May contain disturbing content for some players
  
• Custom graphics
  
• About 30 to 60 minutes of game play
  

Information

This is a game mostly about interacting with various people and items. There are no battles to fight in this game. The menu has been replaced by your inventory. From the inventory you can inspect objects or try to combine them with others. Interacting with NPCs and objects gives you the option to speak/use or to use an item.

• Arrows to move
  
• Enter to interact with objects
  
• Esc or Num0 to open your inventory
  
• Shift to walk, dashing is automatically enabled
  

Screenshots

Spoiler

Download



Does not require the RTP to run (28.4 MB).

General

I was a little overambitious with this game. I wanted to go with custom graphics I did myself but as the deadline drew closer I had to start sacrificing certain things. This meant using placeholder artwork for the tiles and a few NPCs and cutting out certain parts. A few items and puzzles had to be changed, simplified, or removed and there's a certain lack of polish in my opinion. It basically came down to whether or not I wanted to have a game finished in time.

I still plan to work on this game, this is actually just the first part (which was planned before I started cutting corners). There's much more to Adelyn's past and mental state than this game currently shows that I would like to dive deeper into.

Known Issues

• Framerate drops when outside of the house
  
• There's a debug NPC that saves the game during the ending sequence - removed, only exists in judge's copy
  

Credits

Created by:

- Espon

Made with:

- RPG Maker VXAce - Enterbrain

Graphics:

- RTP - Enterbrain

- Additional graphics - Espon

- Flower - Livinus - http://livinus.deviantart.com

Sounds:

- Music - Enterbrain

- Extra - Shades, Timbre - http://www.freesound.org/

Scripts:

- Victor Sant - http://victorscripts.wordpress.com/

- Yanfly - http://yanflychannel...ress.com/rmvxa/

- Yami - http://yamiworld.wordpress.com/

 

[RyanA]

It's adorable :3

 

[Espon]

Updated my post with proper information and images. I also changed the download to one that does not require the RTP to run.

Please feel free to leave comments and criticism, and tell me you come across any bugs including spelling or grammar mistakes.

 

[Des]

BEST

 

[Archeia]

Totally not a complete feedback.

Spoiler

· Nice title screen music· I love the windowskin.

· I love the Zelda shout out.

· The dying thing is cool

· The items are hard to see because of the colors.

· Fifi is adorable.

· It’s interesting to see the contrast between the real world and mental world.

· Like what does the flower mean?? It was never answered.

· I am not sure what I feel about the twist.

· I didn’t feel fulfilled at all. It’s starting to get into and it stopped. Disappointed and stopped.

· It left more questions than answering anything. Did it even answer a mystery? All I was concerned about is what is about that flower? Is it connected to Fifi? Why? What’s the semblance and why is it important? It felt like the main point and mystery of the game is unsolved and I wasn’t given any other mysteries to actually find out? That’s what bothered me.

· The brother’s face heel turn o_o I actually liked him in the dream world.

· I’ll write something more detailed when I’m not sleep deprived.

 

[Espon]

Were the items hard to see? I tried to make them stand out and keep them out in the open. There was a couple harder to find items but they don't actually do anything. This wasn't the tileset I was planning on using from the beginning so it's not quite like what I was hoping to have in the end. Currently it's just the default tileset thrown into some color filters.

A lot of the game's eventing was done in about 2 days with getting no sleep as I tried to meet the deadline. Unfortunately I guess I lost the players along the way. The ending sequence itself was made in like 4 hours, something I definitely needed to put more time into.

Just to clarify a few things that I was meaning to portray but guess failed on.

Spoiler

Adelyn's perception of the world around her and her concept of time is a little messed up. The "real world" are events she believes took place in the past but doesn't quite remember them, but for some reason the flower seems to stick out in her mind. Picking up certain items gives her a little flashback; something I would of preferred to show a brief cut-scene but time constraints meant I had to go with just text on a black screen (each flashback is the same as something she says during the end). Attempting to pick the flower was the last thing she remembers doing before everything went bad hence why it's so significant.I know the ending introduced a lot of new questions and ends up on a large cliffhanger, but as I started planning this game I really started to get into it and meant for what was released here to be just the beginning...which means I didn't want to conclude everything. Main mystery goal for this part was just trying to figure out why the flower stood out so much in her mind.

I was planning to get into this more when I added more content but I should mention that the "real world" is actually no more real than Adelyn's fantasy world and is just one of many running through her mind. There's a lot more going on with the characters that will be revealed later. Adelyn sees the blob characters as over-exaggerations of actual people she knew. She sees Cody as the little brother she can always count on, when in reality Adelyn's relationship with him is extremely poor and they hardly ever meet more than once or twice a year. Adelyn's view of herself isn't quite right either...but that's something I want to get into as the story progresses.

Thanks for the feedback so far, looking forward to what else is to be said.

 

[ImmortalDreamer]

So you made this entire game in 2 days on basically no sleep? Color me impressed.

 

[Espon]

No, I meant the past 2 days leading up to the deadline I got no sleep because I still had a ton left to do in order to get the game playable. I've been working on it since the start of September but most of that time was put into making graphics.

 

[Aeslynn Winterfell]

Just wanted to say I enjoyed playing this. Thank you for making it.

 

[Jaide]

I really enjoyed this game, though I was sad it ended so abruptly. I would love to see more. :3 I absolutely love adventure games like this and I wish the community made more of them.

 

[Espon]

Glad you both enjoyed it. Maybe when I got more free time I can work on the next part of the game instead of leaving things on such a big cliffhanger.

 

[Blackheart]

Very nice, just finished it, and was very cool how in her mind everyone was portrayed differently but you could still see their personalities be constant between her mind and reality... plot twist was kinda sudden and thrown at the player... would've been nice if there was some more foreshadowing to that part. You foreshadowed very well with Fifi's gifts so it sounds like something within your skills.

All in all it was a short but sweet experience for me which is good but felt like there was a lot left to be told.

 

[Espon]

Yeah that ending was thrown together in about 2 hours so I could finish the game by the deadline.

I have sort of a list of things I'd like to fix or add if I was to work on this again.

• Finish up animations for Adelyn and other characters.
  
• Replace all the placeholder sprites.
  
• Redo the “current” ending for Chapter 1 since it was done in 2 hours to get the project completed on time.
  
• Making a tileset of my own instead of just tossing the whole thing through an image filter to meet the deadline.
  
• Fix the bad lag when outside.
  
• Re-add the puzzles and items that I was forced to cut. There was actually puzzles planned with dealing with the not-supposed-to-be-dead-yet bird and carnivorous plants.
  
• Create Chapters 2 – 4 so that the game is actually complete.
  

 

[GS_]

I'm translating your game to Portuguese-Brazilian

Can I publish it in some Brazilian forums?

Thanks

GS

 

[Espon]

Sure.  Just make sure I'm credited for making the game give me a link to it later.

 

[GS_]

can you give me the PSD of the "Painted Red" logo, or, tell me the font? thnx

 

[Espon]

I can't remember what I used.  I actually made it on Flaming Text.

 

[Creative Ed]

Well it sure looks good, let's see how it plays

BTW, the art looks awesome, Allways respect those who venture away from the rtp

EDIT: Ok, wasn't able to play. VL Gothic font's missing.

 

[GS_]

Can you re-make the logo for me?

I really can't do it.

I hoje if you can.

See ya later. Gs.

 

[Espon]

VL-Gothic is the font that comes with VX Ace.

I tried to remake the logo but to no success either.  I would probably change it anyways since I don't particularly like it.