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An amboeboid landscape threatens to engulf civilization and all its plastic bottles. Disembodied mouths live in the walls of municipal buildings like household pests. Packs of human-headed dogs rove the lands between formless space and concrete reality. A king bureaucrat who's image is everywhere but his body no-where

Gingiva features seven playable characters, five hours plus of gameplay, over 100 fully animated creature portraits, multiple paths and varied endings.

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Where They Cremate the Roadkill



A thread of three lives confront the personification of appearances as it grows from larva to adult.

At the dead-end of the future a telepath assists the embodiment of insanity and is marooned in the mind of a flea.

In the primeval past one quadruped forages for food as a sentient cancer swallows the last of Earth’s living tissue.

Between the present’s many crossroads a jobless coolie that cannot die kills for rebellion and revenge.

All this as a desire for sleep returns in the heart of existence.

Where They Cremate the Roadkill is an experimental action-oriented RPG now available on Steam:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/705610/Where_They_Cremate_The_Roadkill/
  • Completed
  • myformerselves
  • RPG Maker XP
  • RPG
  • 09/18/2012 01:49 PM
  • 06/30/2022 03:05 PM
  • 09/06/2013
  • 232320
  • 66
  • 10030

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BurningTyger
Hm i Wonder if i can pul somethi goff here/
1289
Um. Well, this looks interesting.
Subbed.
If only fraps wasn't a bitch when it comes to recording XP games :<
purplex
WHERE'S MY SUBMISSION?
158
This is thinking outside the box. I dig it. Break your television.
I'm sensing a pattern of gratuitous surrealism in your projects.
i am really most/only interested in how this *differs* from Middens
grats on getting funded. knock em dead
Subscribed, I really like your other games, and this looks interesting.
You really should get some (more) people to playtest your games before you release your games. I imagine there are plenty of people willing.
I remember there being a lot of new releases with Middens, same thing that is now happening here. Some bugs were apparently even gamebreaking (I haven't encountered any yet, but I've encountered a number of small ones).
It kinda takes away from the experience, which is otherwise fantastic by the way, when there are a number of bugs in the game.
shayoko
We do not condone harassing other members by PM.
515
The art style reminds me of a game with a talking gun i think it was called something like misery/misere
author=shayoko
The art style reminds me of a game with a talking gun i think it was called something like misery/misere


Can't tell if trolling... :)

In any case, there are two games you're thinking about. One is SnowOwl's "Miserere". The other is "Middens", which has the talking gun.
Simply fantastic. I love the sounds. I love the music and the motions. No qualms. I particularly love the crying character, very, very inspiring.
Amazing! I love this game so much, it's just so... interesting.
I had a few issues getting the game to start up. First I just got this:
Script 'Game_Temp' line 0: Errno::EACCES occurred.

Permission denied - C:\windows\Fonts\Batang.TTF

Then I ran it as an administrator and that seemed to bypass the error message, but then the game refused to respond and I had to terminate it. Then I ran it as an administrator again and it worked fine. So, uh, I don't know. Anyone else experience anything like this?

I'm starting it now, regardless. Surreal stuff usually isn't exactly my cup of tea, but I'll see where this takes me.

Edit: Played a little bit. I really think you should get a beta reader of some kind to check for typos and grammar errors -- they are rather frequent, which is unfortunate since they make it rather difficult to immerse myself in the atmosphere. I also have to say that your metaphors might be a bit heavy-handed from what I've seen so far, but I don't want to judge a book by its cover, so I'll see how things turn out.

Edit 2: I have to say that the game mechanics are about as clear as mud. Yes, I know, surrealism, but it's kind of hard to play an RPG when I don't even know what my stats do, or even if they do anything at all. The manual isn't at all helpful in this regard. I think I can presume that "lethality" is attack power and the other two are either defense, magic defense, or magic attack, but the other four stats I'm completely clueless on. The status effects are very confusing, too -- the dentures and the manual both say that negative status effects should look like ghosts with bat wings but aside from Fuddle they, uh, don't. I can presume that Daft is the one that "prohibits use of higher faculties", but I have no idea about the others. In particular, "Smitten" doesn't seem to do anything from what I can tell. The skill descriptions are confusing as well -- Middens was fairly straightforward with them, but here I really have no idea what most of them do until I use them in battle. And even then...

Also, a bug: in the area to the right of the Bhudda, there are glowy orb things that chase me as if they're enemies, but they don't trigger a battle when they hit me. There's also that "STOP" guy who it looks like is supposed to block me, since there's an invisible wall in front of him? But if I head to the bottom of the screen I can get past it. Am I supposed to be able to do that?
-"It's a poor teacher who explains all"-an old proverb
I believe feeling out the internal logic of a game is part of the experience. Therefore not every detail of Gingiva is explicitly explained.

-Surrealism isn't a style or genre; it's a method. There is no such thing as a "surrealist game". There is such a thing as a game where Surrealism is used.

-The 'Stop Guy' is no more intended to block you than a 'no trespassing' sign would. This is deliberate. The other curiosities you mentioned are also inherent to this design.


-"It's a poor teacher who explains all"-an old proverb
I believe feeling out the internal logic of a game is part of the experience. Therefore not every detail of Gingiva is explicitly explained.


Fair enough. However, I am worried you might be taking it a bit too far. I'm a long way into the game and I don't believe I'm any further towards figuring out the game mechanics than I was at the start. Encouraging inquisitive thinking in players is good and normally I do enjoy figuring out obscure game mechanics, but in Gingiva I just feel completely lost. The game isn't very clear at showing me the effects of my actions, so it's difficult to experiment. Drolleries not showing all of their effects in the equipment screen is a good example of this -- it took me a long time to figure out that the four main stats were being modified, and even once I did, it was still unclear exactly what their effects were, especially since I had no idea what any of the stats did.

Maybe I'm just not good at this, but I feel I simply don't have enough information to even begin to figure it out. Given that we're talking about the game mechanics, I feel that's rather important... If progressing through the game is difficult is confusing, I'm not going to be able to experience it. It's somewhat akin to reading a book written entirely in a bizarre syntax, or in code. I might be able to power through it given enough time and effort, but it's going to be tedious and likely exhaust my interest. Unless you were intending for that kind of "uphill battle" experience, in which case well done I suppose?

I feel that Middens did a good job of balancing strangeness and obfuscation in the gameplay mechanics while still making them clear enough to progress, but I worry that Gingiva may have made things a bit too obfuscated. It's possible my thinking style just isn't meshing with the game, though.

Sorry for the wall of text, I'm wordy. :(
If at anytime you become truly stuck PM me and I will clarify any uncertainties you may have. Although many subliminal factors influence game play I believe that the typical player will be able to progress even without the traditional explications.
Loved middens, cant wait to play this!
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