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An adventure, an RPG, a platformer, an interactive story — the story of a little girl whose family has gone missing at a ship breaking yard. Based on real events, Unraveled takes you through a child’s imagination as she seeks out her parents. Relive your childhood fantasies on a journey that will make you think, laugh and tear up (just a little bit).

So much to unravel.
Unraveled is a dialogue-free game (save for one or two sentences) that is purely "show, don’t tell". We’re telling the story of a little girl’s life by showing the way it affects her imagination. As you travel through the ship breaking yard the ghastly rotten environment transforms into various fantastical settings. Accompanied by flashbacks and exciting events, Unraveled subtly gives you all the pieces of a story.
There are also plenty of fearsome foes to fight off in thrilling battles, puzzles to solve, items to collect, and there’s even an 80s doll house that you can decorate for bonuses! The battle system features a completely unique "State Balance" system that is strategic, simple and fun at the same time!

Based on real events?
That is correct! Ship breaking yards and those who live around them are hardly ever covered by media and news. These families have to cope with horrible living conditions while facing the daily threat of their extinction. Though indeed supplying the civilians with work, the safety regulations are next to nonexistent and the pay is incredibly low. We wanted to cover this obscure aspect of our world and came up with the game that is Unraveled!

Features

Experience a deep and touching story in "show, don’t tell"-style that will tug at your heartstrings as you learn of a little girl’s melancholic past and her hopes for a better future.

Immerse yourself in a moving musical score hand-crafted by Japanese RPG veteran composers Hiroki Kikuta and Dale North.

Adventure through a wondrous, intricately detailed world that is filled with beautiful imaginary, dastardly platforming and enchanting events.

Engage in slick, strategic combat with your monstrously fluffy companion in a completely unique State Balance battle system that is fun and deep, yet easy to understand.

Relive your childhood fantasies as you travel through a little girl’s imagination, full of giant sand castles, dragons, magical items, 80s themed characters and classic puzzles.

Discover a bit about our world as the story of Unraveled is based on real events at a ship breaking yard — inspired by the documentary The Wire Nest!

History

In May 2014, Chancler Harrison brought the subject of ship breaking to our attention. Initially we were grasped by the bittersweet concept of it. These giant metal ships that once held so many memories are taken to these dirty, gritty shores to be deconstructed by workers under terrible circumstances. This mature subject with an underlying message ties into our overall theme as a game company.

After watching documentaries on the subject, doing thorough research and contacting several ship breaking aid campaigns, we realized that there is a huge lack of public awareness about this aspect of our world. This is mostly because the yard owners carefully keep the doors of their ship graveyards closed to media and NGOs. We decided to go for it and start production for Unraveled, not only to create an amazing game, but also to increase awareness and to share the subject in hopes of bringing about a change.

Ship breaking can be done better. Better for the environment, better for people living near the ship yard and better for the workers. We’re hoping our game brings this to the attention of the masses. You can personally help us and our world, by spreading word of Unraveled.

Latest Blog

We are funded! Stretch Goals!

We did it!

Thank you all so much for your continued support and loyalty! We promise to deliver you the best possible game and all the awesome goodies and rewards you’ve signed up for! (★^O^★)

Tomorrow will be exactly one year after the day Chancler and I got together and began work on Unraveled. After many obstacles, such as our first failed Kickstarter, we have finally arrived at our dream! I say arrived, because this is where our dream begins!

Help make our Stretch Goals happen!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/696564/unraveled-tale-of-the-shipbreakers-daughter/

  • Production
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  • 07/31/2014 09:27 AM
  • 05/01/2023 01:29 PM
  • 11/30/2015
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Posts

Pages: first 12 next last
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
Oh wow you brought this over here. This is a fun game, I'll look forward to the extended version.
author=nhubi
Oh wow you brought this over here. This is a fun game, I'll look forward to the extended version.


What's your username over at the other forum? I might recognize you. ^_^ And yeah, someone suggested it to me so I thought why not~. More exposure and feedback for improvement. :D
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
Oh same one as here.

Yeah this is a pretty good place for feedback, in fact if you don't mind a little for the game-page that is you might want to reduce the screen-shot size in your 'blog and description posts just a tiny bit, they're forcing a scroll bar at the bottom.

The second one for the Princess level (adore the Rapunzel hair) is in the clear but the rest are a smidgen too large.
I'm looking forward to the extended version! :)
This is without doubt one of the most beautiful RM game I've ever played. The setting and the atmosphere were masterfully conceived and executed, and I really enjoyed the wordless narration. The plot keys are a bit worn-out by now though - it seems that little girls with bleak pasts in a slightly creepy half-real half-imaginary world make up a good half of all recent RM games :P I enjoyed the enemy designs and the Limbo-style anaphora though.

I'm assuming that the comment by the stranger is prompting our poor orphan into a journey through her memories of how she landed there, which only becomes clear when we hear that comment again.


The battle system was rather interesting and required some thinking, although I don't think it would have stayed fresh much longer than the current duration of the game (it suffers a bit from the fact that all new skills are ever harder to reach and the one-dimensional nature of Focus vs Rage, which means that by the end I often got stuck in similar patterns again and again).
Also, having this faint light on places where one can climb/jump/etc was a brilliant idea. I'm not so fond of walking around in corridors or pseudo-mazes so the basic gameplay did it for me only because the backgrounds were so pretty, but that's totally fine for a one hour game.

Such a shame the secret ending requires going through all of it again, guess I'll never get it (I have some trouble adhering to the concept of having to replay an entire game when absolutely nothing changes between playthroughs, plus I got all the stars on the first one, not doing that again).

Overall, although I have some reservations on various matters of taste, this is really incredible for a game made in a month. A hat tip to you!
Nhubi, thank you for the tip. :) Will resize the images. I'm not used to this small format, haha.

@Hasvers: Thank you for checking out the game! I realize that a "little girl with a bleak past in a half imaginary world" is popular nowadays (see Listen) but in this case it's not some random idea and actually makes sense with the message we want to convey.

As for the battle system, you're right, it would lose it's freshness after a while with only 2 characters and a certain set of skills. The battle system is an experimental idea we're trying out here for a future, longer game (Lunafall). In Lunafall each character will have a set of equippable skills as well as some additional functions (a cool-down, doubling the damage of the next skill, inverting your state, locking the enemy in its current state, changing an ally's state, etc.) to avoid seeming repetitive, but with a short game such as this we don't want to focus on the RPG elements too much.

We might add one additional cheap skill for both characters later, though. I'm trying to stay on the fine line between keeping the game simple and keeping the game interesting and strategic. x3 Oh, also the extended version will feature fights against multiple enemies, so that should spice things up a bit as well. :)

In the extended version there'll be a customizable doll house that grants you bonuses in battles. On your second play-through all enemies will be more difficult but you can equip 4-times more bonuses and your furniture from the first play-through carry over, which makes it a different experience from the first time. ^_^ But of course we had no time to do this in just one month, haha.
This game makes my heart stir. I didn't think anything could top Oneshot but congratulations on proving me wrong.

How many artists do you have on your team? I'm quite amazed you were able to complete all these gorgeous environments in the span of a month. It took us several months to complete Labyrinthine Dreams and those areas weren't nearly as detailed as these!
Ooh, you made Labyrinthine Dreams? That's amazing! I didn't realize that was by you. Our games are a lot closer than you may think. Quite literally. Especially in the month "July".

And thank you so much for the compliment. :) I did all the environments and character sprites myself, Bailey Gautier did 95% of the enemies and Chancler did 95% of the maps. I worked pretty fast with that deadline, haha.
Yea I think it's true what they say about work expanding to the time available. Anyway congrats on crafting such an amazing experience! I plan on playing through it again with a more critical eye so I can write up a review.
I guess this game shows it really helps to have a team to work on something. I like the game, it's really nice. I see it as easily beating my game in the non-RPG genre, not to put myself down or anything :P
author=outcry312
I guess this game shows it really helps to have a team to work on something. I like the game, it's really nice. I see it as easily beating my game in the non-RPG genre, not to put myself down or anything :P

You mean if it was in the non-RPG section, right? Because I submitted it as an RPG. :) And Perspective is still awesome. <3

Oh I didn't actually have a "team" work on this, though. The work was mostly 66/33 between me and Chancler while Bailey did a couple of enemy sprites on the side. ^_^
Oh, yeah, of course, I don't know why I said non-RPG XD. Either way, it helps to have... help. I had a mapper and testers so I guess it was even :P.

Either way, nice work on this one ;)
So yeah. This is the best game in the contest. I can keep saying it, because it's true!
The music, the setting, the graphics. All so very well done! And the story told entirely without a single word? Perfectly bittersweet and emotional. If you're reading this you really need to stop and just download this game.
Looking VERY forward to the updated release with all the new stuff!
Tried this game and enjoyed it very much ! The graphics are just amazing and the amount of detail and effects will sweep you off your feet.This game is very artistic and beautiful.And the gameplay is very interesting,I could not stop until I completed it ;) MY only problem was that the sensation of this game lasted too short :P

Im looking forward to a extended full version of this game.
I have no doubt in my mind that the future extended version will kick ass.

Graphics
Very artistic and beautiful. If you want to see graphics that are very different
from the mainstream and the rtp THIS IS IT !! Every map is designed very different
from the other and intrigues your mind. A lot of detail and effort has been
put into the effects and it is masterly executed.

*I think (im not sure) that i found a little graphical glitch.

Should not be able to stand there right ?

*When the character sinks to the bottom of the ocean, really looked professional*


Graphics 5/5

Gameplay
This game has very good gameplay.You are always curious to what comes next.
And by the way you can climb jump and collect orbs to progress, which is
executed in a very interesting manner. I just loved the battle system.
You have to keep control/balance over the focus and rage bar to do
optimal damage. Also the animations in the battle looks really really good.
And who doesnt love that fluffy cute companion following her. Brilliant !
This game is so symbolic and poetic all that achieved without no texts
or voices.The game is such a beautiful piece.

*The huge forest area, I think its the biggest one. I havent collected all the orbs yet and I could just walk through a wall of thorns.It didnt look right.Tought I should mention it since I hadnt collected all the orbs yet for that area and still were able to continue into the next map with orbs.Made me think there must be something wrong with that wall of thorns,that maybe you should not be able to go through the thorns without them gone?*

Gameplay 4/5

Audio
The music and effects in this game is sounding very professional.
The sound effects seem very believeable and just adds a ton to the atmosphere!
The music fits very well with the game. Just brilliant, pure poetry....

Audio 4.5/5

CONCLUSION
This has to be the most beautiful,most professional rpgmaker xp game
I've ever played.I really loved this game.This has to be one of the games
here on RMN that really stands out.What are you waiting for !?
If you havent already, start playing THIS GAME.
You will not regret it.

Final Score 4.5/5 GIMME MORE!
This is a really good game, unfortunately overlooked by many.
Beautiful game! i'm on the forest part but it looks amazing so far *W*
i have only one question because i'm dumb// how do we save?
Hey guys!

Sorry for my absence. We've been really busy working on setting up a Kickstarter to raise funds for a mobile port.

Unraveled recently got Greenlit on Steam, which means we'll be able to publish it there ourselves. :)

The current version is a lot different from what is available here! More polished, more areas. We listened to all your feedback and have improved a lot.

@PGK: Just hit Escape (or your other cancel button) and go to Save. ^_^
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