Tag: crown-of-thorns

Crown of Thorns released

tangledwebgames

Well. It’s been a journey. This project, started on a whim in 2017, picked up and put down many times, is now live on Itch (and “Coming Soon” on Steam) and Steam!

https://tangledwebgames.itch.io/crown-of-thorns

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2212810/Crown_of_Thorns

Crown of Thorns is a dark, atmospheric adventure game, full of bleak environments, scraps of lore and scripture, and glitch art. There is no combat, just exploration, mystery, puzzles, and a slowly evolving story. A walkthrough is also available for download in case you get stuck.

After some deliberation, I decided to charge $3 for Crown of Thorns. Not because I expect to make a profit, but because I don’t want to cheapen the work of other indie devs who need the money more than I do. I doubt I’ll even break even on art commissions, to say nothing of the hundreds of hours I put into this project, and yet I know there will be some who think “An RPGMaker game by a no-name dev that has you can play through in a couple hours? And you’re charging money for it??”

I dunno. This may be a silly hill to die on. I’m not a capitalist, and I don’t think money is the best way for a culture to express its values. And maybe voluntary payments and platforms like Patreon are a better model for independent artists anyway. But still, I don’t like the expectation that some players have that indie devs’ time and effort aren’t worth anything.

In any case, there are free copies available on Itch for anyone for whom the $3 is a barrier at all.

-Louis

Glitch Art in Crown of Thorns

tangledwebgames

In Crown of Thorns (see this post for details on the project), some areas are infected with a malicious distortion.  I’ve illustrated this through glitch art, and I’m pretty pleased with the overall effect.  Here are some examples of animations I made:

A statue
A table with a book

They look like a hot mess on their own, but the effect in context is something like this:

crown_of_thorns_glitch1
The Library of Grace Ma’al, afflicted with distortion.

crown_of_thorns_glitch2
The Church of Grace Daru, afflicted with distortion.

I made these through a mix of glitching techniques called databending: opening a media file in incorrect formats to mess with the data.  In this case, I opened image files as text files in a text editor and as audio files in Audacity (open source sound-editing program), manipulated them by changing the text or applying audio filters, then converting them back into images (though, in all honesty, there was a good dose of good old fashion GIMP image filtering too).  It’s mostly a trial and error process, though sometimes you can get fairly targeted effects.  For instance, the horizontal striations in the static filter on the screen in the above examples came from opening the static images in Audacity and applying the wahwah audio filter, and where the striations appear and how wide they are corresponds directly to what portions of the “audio” data I applied the filter to.  In the object animations, when whole parts of the objects are jumbled around, that probably comes from copying and pasting portions of the raw data to other parts of the file.  If you’re interested, Google “databending” and you’ll find more informative tutorials than I can give.

On some level, I wish I could have procedurally caused visual artifacts in real-time during play rather than preparing a bunch of glitched assets.  Programmatically glitching visuals in-game seems more in the spirit of video game glitch art.  Still, it was pretty fun including these techniques in a game.

Speaking of the game, this project is currently in testing, and needs a lot of music and sound design, but should be ready for release soon!

-Louis

New Project: Crown of Thorns

tangledwebgames

A side project I’m bringing to the front burner to try to get done, Crown of Thorns is a darkly atmospheric fantasy adventure game.

Players assume the role of Brunhilde, a mysterious and silent knight with an unknown mission at an empty castle.  Using magical portals, she goes back and forth between two versions of the castle: one pristine, the other decrepit and ruined, but both mysteriously deserted.  A foreboding presence pervades the ruined castle, causing strange distortions in the world.

Brunhilde must overcome various obstacles to clear the distortions, break through magical seals, and eventually reach the center of the castle, and its mystery.

The primary gameplay of Crown of Thorns is exploration and puzzles, where players must use both versions of the castle to overcome obstacles, in the vein of light world / dark world or past / present type puzzles seen in Zelda games and similar works.  There is no combat in Crown of Thorns, just mystery and exploration.

crown_of_thorns3

There is a lot of religious iconography in Crown of Thorns (in case the name didn’t tip you off).  Throughout the world, you will find (fictional) scriptural passages.  These texts tell of a religion that worships angelic figures called Graces, who brought divine gifts and moral guidance to humankind.  To you, their words serve as a backdrop to the slowly unraveling narrative, and as riddles that tell you how to get past various obstacles in the game.

More on this project as it comes along.

-Louis