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Sweet... Like candy.

Girl likes boy. Boy likes candy. Girl must fetch boy candy to win his heart. Can you clear all the rounds and find out true hearts desire? Avoid the ghosts and bats, and make your way to your man. Trick or Treat, overcoming each feat. Will you in return get something good to eat?

A heavily updated version of a game I made over a year ago for Hallow's Eve 2013, Girl's Graveyard, which features a slew of new content, and various fixes & changes.

Featuring original graphics & soundtrack. Developed under the thematic of survival-horror. A parody off the old 1984 game, Girl's Garden.



Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock. You're a bother.

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Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock...



Girl's Graveyard now has been out for a few days, so I thought I'd talk a little bit about this game, myself, and some future things I'm working on.

Girl's Graveyard was originally developed for RPGMaker.Net's Hallow's Eve 2013 Contest. It didn't place anywhere in the contest winners, sadly, but it was still a fun experience working on it. The overall development time was a little over 100 hours in the span of 5 days. The entire development of the game was streamed, I shall mention, as I usually do when working on smaller RPG Maker game projects.

While Girl's Graveyard is not the first game I worked on in RPG Maker, it's the first game in what I call a 'Series' internally. Without saying too much, my current RPG Maker game project, Nostalgica: An Old World Passes, and Girl's Graveyard, have various connections, though I've also been designing them to be able to be played by themselves and enjoyed just fine as is, but there be some extra understanding if you've played both of them. Nostalgica is also very likely not the last time I'll visit this, "Universe."

But, enough about the history and connections of the game, let's talk the Redux version, its changes, and about Girl's Graveyard itself.



Girl's Graveyard is a parody of a 1984 game known as "Girl's Garden". If you've never heard of Girl's Garden, you can see a video of the game here:




Back when I was deciding what to game to make for Hallow's Eve 2013, I wanted to make a very meta video game that was a parody of a real-world game from the past. Girl's Garden was the perfect choice not only to the fact of its obscurity and simple graphic style to semi-emulate, but also the narrative of the game fit perfectly to something I wanted to do. In Girl's Garden, you have a girl who collects her boyfriend flowers to retain their love. If you notice in the above video, your 'timer' is your boyfriend slowly edging his way to another girl. To win, you have to fetch him flowers and bring them back to his home so he will continue to love you. Outside of being extremely superficial, the whole situation is rather strange and raises a lot of questions. What sort of relationship do the three of them have exactly? Why is our main character so desperate for this boy's love if he naturally goes towards this other girl? It was with these questions that I kind of designed Girl's Graveyard, simplifying the gameplay (almost becoming more like Pac-Man than the original Girl's Garden), giving it a Halloween-skin, and putting in a pseudonarrative that develops as the game goes on.

The game was mostly over-looked, probably attributed to the fact the graphics for the game are super simple (you can't lie to me, RPG Maker players, I am one of you, nice graphics adds a lot of intrigue into a title!) and that the game looks like an Arcade game, not something most people looking for RPG Maker Horror Games are specifically looking for. On-top of that, while I meant to make the game challenging, the original release of Girl's Graveyard was hellish in its difficulty. I found most people never made it past Round 3 in the game, partially due to the fact in the original game you wouldn't get a save point until after you completed Round 3, so dying at Round 3 would send you all the way back to Round 1. So the couple of reviews you can find of Girl's Graveyard describe it as they played it, a hellishly hard Pac-Man type game. Of course, those who've played deeper into the game know that's not exactly what the game is...

However, I got into a bit of legal trouble with a musician I was in contact with who I had been paying to make music for another project of mine. I thought it'd be okay to use a couple of the scrapped music from that project in this game, as I had already paid for it. However, apparently that was not okay, we ultimately worked it out but I took down the game and made it no longer publicly available, as it's been for about a year now.



I had thought after taking it down by fixing up the game a little bit to make it less difficult as opposed to just replacing the music and slapping it back up there, but it wasn't until I got to work on Nostalgica that this idea came more forward to my mind, partially as I realized developing Nostalgica it had a lot of connections with Girl's Graveyard. As I became more aware that Nostalgica would have to be pushed back before I went on a Holiday trip for Christmas, I worked hard for an additional 22 hours on Girl's Graveyard over two days and finished and released the Redux version of the game you see before you!

So what's different? Most of the fixes won't be evident unless you played the game, I fixed a few bugs and made a few slight changes to make the game more playable and a tad easier. Changes like making certain event areas larger, adding a few more gravestones/paths in the stages and less enemies, and adding additional save points (the original game had 6 save points that were long and far-between, the Redux version has 12 save points). Outside of this, some new content was added, and some parts of the game were changed. If you played the original, you'll notice probably that most of the dialogue has been almost completely re-worked. It's a bit less cryptic now than it once was, but also more readable with more rhythm and keeping a monologue-like tone that the original game sometimes, though still about as repetitive and strange as the original game. There also were a couple of completely brand new areas added late into the game, though they're just small additions. Some new music was added to the game, including a few tracks I composed, partially to replace the tracks that were in the game originally that I got in trouble with.

Speaking of which, you can listen to the game's whole soundtrack here, though I warn, it contains spoilers:




However, the biggest new changes come in the form of secrets, things hidden in the crevices in the game I bet most won't even find. I decided if I was re-working the game to add in a few fun secrets that players can discover. Some of them are rather well-hidden, so I'm not even sure if people will ever find a number of them. They're also designed so that they add to the original game as opposed to feel like a separate thing, so if you're playing they'll add something extra to the game and may not be identified as a secret unless you replayed the game and didn't trigger it this time. In addition, the game adds two new endings, that makes the game have multiple endings now. One ending in particular adds a lot to the game's narrative.

But I don't want to ruin all the surprises, while the game still has flaws and some purposeful jank to it, I hope it's a game you all enjoy well enough. Also it's a gateway into hopefully bigger and better things in the horizon of the strange games I create. All opinions, positive or negative, are welcome, and I hope you enjoyed or will come to enjoy the game~

Ooo-la-laa~

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unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Subscribed! This looks cute and fun :D
Mediafire link added. I'll add more links when I'm not busy with the holidays and away from home. Hope people enjoy.

Two notes.

Game is a parody of the 1984 game, Girl's Garden. I suggest just looking into the game a little bit before you play if you don't know it as some things about the game will make more sense.

Secondly, hopefully I made the game easier some. I meant to make the game challenging, but apparently the original game was so hard, most people didn't make it passed the first Four Rounds, which is just the tip of the iceberg of the game. Hopefully more people will be able to enjoy it now, it still has many flaws, but it was fun to work on. As a heads-up, the new version has multiple endings and a number of secrets, hopefully it's enjoyable enough.
Weird glitch uploading an image on mobile, keeps on uploading the same image though Inselect different ones, will upload more pics when I'm by a proper PC.
This looks cool. I'll always take any opportunity to read up on an old game!
Yup, Girl's Garden is a bit of an odd game. Outside of being an early game (as in, pre-dating Mario) and being the first game that Yuji Naka worked on (best known as the leader of Sonic Team in the 90s), just the game itself is weird. The gameplay consists of you trying to win over the love of your boyfriend by collecting him flowers, which is a bit odd and superficial, to say the least. And other odd quirks, like how the house has a Welcome sign on it, but it's misspelled as, "Wellcome." (Parodied in Girl's Graveyard with, "Helloo".)
Hmm I think LockeZ has also possibly made a parody/homage to Girl's Garden - "Flower Bubble Game", haha. Could be mistaken, but your description reminds me of his.

Anyway, that's interesting. I love researching old, strange games (although I have a feeling I've heard of this before, now that you've elaborated on the gameplay).

I'll get around to playing this at some stage! I like your graphics, btw.
Thank you, they were made a bit simplistic to match with the style that Girl's Garden had.

I actually didn't realize there was another (potential?) homage to Girl's Garden, that's interesting. The game is interesting, so I can understand why there might be, but it's also relatively obscure as it was Japanese-only and for a less popular console, so again, a bit surprising.

I want to say more about the game, but I do feel it's best experienced rather than told. All I will say is that there's a certain level of purposeful jank and difficulty to the game, though in the original version of the game the difficulty was so high, it became an in-joke with some friends who had tried the game. I also found most people never made it past the very beginning of the game.

BIT OF SPOILERS BELOW:
The beginning of the game is a bit of a mask, I want people to play and think it's a bit like Pacman or Girl's Garden, and it has a lot of jank to it and a weird feel to it all. However, as you get a bit deeper into it, it becomes immensely obvious there's something wrong here, and then begins to develop into something else entirely different. However, most people never got past the beginning, so most only got to see the game's mask and not what it actually is. In this sense, I did a good job at hiding what the game actually is, but on the flip side, most people have up before they got to see what this game actually is.
Yes, I haven't played Flower Bubble Game but it does sound very similar to this/Girl's Garden, which is kinda neat.

I want to pretend that I didn't read that spoiler, but I did XD. That sounds cool, I like those sort of subversions of expectations.

Honestly, obscure Japanese-only games are my favourite to read about. And there are so goddamn many of them.
(This post contains some minor spoilers for Girl's Graveyard. May ruin some surprises if you haven't played past Round 5.)

Yup, I like obscure-type games too, it's a fun niche you can dig a lot into. For me, I love the horror genre, so there's a lot to dig into there.

To be honest, I'm a bit nervous to see what people think of Girl's Graveyard. There are some purposely janky elements, and then the graphics are super simple, there's a few flaws in it's execution, but I do think this game has it's moments, especially later into it. But I think at least it's very different than other RPG Maker Horror games out there, I'm curious if the flaws will drag down the entire package for people or if the elements I at least think are interesting shine above that for people, or maybe if those elements resonate with players as I hope it does. To be seen.

Blank Slate, Close Your Eyes, and Belong I all made in less than 2 days and released, and knew of their flaws. Now with the new content/fixes and original development time, I've worked on Girl's Graveyard for 7 days, which makes it the longest worked on project I've released thus far (when Nostalgica: An Old World Passes releases, that'll take the spot easily, and later on when Complete Isolation finally releases, that will be it by a long stretch). So maybe I feel a bit more invested into it.

Also, I'm curious if people playing will find the hidden content in the game or not. A lot of the new content is stuffed away in secrets that are easily missable, I've decided I was not going to tell a single one of them and let people uncover them themselves, but I get curious if people will find some of them or not. Without saying too much, some of my favorite parts of this game are hidden away.
I know there are players/devs here who appreciate obscure mechanics and strange and infuriating difficulty curves, I guess I'm one of them.

I should really just play this game!




If you choose too, you can be the first person I've gotten feedback from. It's not insanely long. When I speed run the game to test for bugs and such, my playtime is usually 20-30 minutes, though friends who played the original reported 2-4 hours long, part of that having to do with the difficulty. XD; This version is easier, but has some new content that extends some things, so is what it is.

I bet it won't take 2-4 hours though, one thing that amplified the difficulty in the original game was how unforgiving save points were, they were long and far between. The original game had six save points, this Redux has 12.
I'd love to give you feedback! I can write a review, if you like. I have terrible motivation so it'll take me a week or so to play the game, not too long to write some stuff about it.
Of course, positive or negative, feedback is welcome and helps me consider things for future projects.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
I gave this game a play, and I was pleasantly surprised. Very fun, and you've done well to capture the arcade feel. I feel like it gets overly difficult around round 3 or so, but that could be me just not being good at this type of game rather than a fault of the game itself.

I'll keep playing. You've got something special here :D
Oh my, thank you for the kind words. Round 3 is when the difficulty ups itself a bit, the game also has a twist coming in Round 4.

For Round 3, a tip is that the candy is very close to the left side of the house, and that the stages loop. The only problem is the ghost that is immediately to the left, but with some wall hugging you can easily trick and dupe it to the right side of the house so nothing but bats are blocking you from getting the candy on the left side.

Be interested hearing more thoughts when you get a bit further in.
I couldn't extract the game properly because it says it's missing the "gothic VL font". Any idea what's wrong? (I downloaded the file from the 26th, was I supposed to download the other one?)
Gothic VL font? Strange as this game doesn't use a custom font of any kind.

Just google'd, found out it's because the Redux version of the game includes a bit of Japanese text and/or compressing the data in it. For why the Redux version has Japanese text, I'll say nothing. You can download the font here though and read more information from here, I'll fix when I get home from my trip:
http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/26752-custom-font-script-vl-gothic/
If you're curious to how someone manages to play your game and if there's any problems encountered in your latest version: I made a let's play of your game.

Let's play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW9WYlaIbPU

The let's play is done in two parts and both those videos are up. I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed your game and I'll look forward to playing any other games you have available.
Thank you Gliz, that actually provided a lot of feedback, which is useful for things to keep in mind when developing in the future. Also affirms avoiding one-hit kill enemies for the next game I'm working on was the right decision.

The other two endings I'm not expecting people to find for a while, I will say one of them is an extended ending of the ending you got that goes a bit beyond the ending point on the normal ending, a single event you can trigger at a certain point in the game, but a bit devious where that event is.

The other ending is something else entirely, but that ending may not be found for a while. I may make it easier when I get back home and patch a few things, the ending is a multi-step process and incredibly cryptic.y only clue I will give though is... Do you like candy?
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