itch.io

I tried to be vague, but that's Clodsire! Clodsire is inspired by some species of Japanese salamanders who can get very large and have a round face, they're strangely adorable.

Thank you for making this! May I suggest adding links to Israeli Tech Alternative pages where applicable? They have lists of companies based in Israel and offer possible alternatives if they exist, which is a great way to get folks to actionably divest.

I was finally able to fit the game on my monitors! I love how witty the descriptions and dialogue are, and the fact that none of the options are locked by body type is very nice. Overall incredible vibes, 10/10 would fall into a vat of concrete again.

Gah I'm so sorry I didn't respond earlier, I think itch.io ate my essay 😭😭 Not gonna type it up again but I really appreciate you taking your time with this one, and I'm glad the better endings were satisfying.

Gender really is a fuck, isn't it?

I also recently hit the big 3-0 myself and man... maybe we're not that old but my bones sure feel brittle these days ૮ ◞ ﻌ ◟ ა Back pain begone

Thank you for playing, and I'm glad you have a supportive group of friends who appreciate and cherish you. I was worried that I hadn't nailed the nuance well but I hope these kinds of experiences and conversations can be shared a little more often.

Hi Bez, thanks for playing! I hadn't considered submitting to ECTOCOMP because I feel like the "horror" as it were wouldn't really fit the typical definition of the genre, but maybe if I do another game I'll ask if it counts.

As for the endings, I just now published a minor update and guide here:

https://tofurocks.itch.io/it-sucks-to-be-us/devlog/1101452/endings-guide-faqs

Much appreciated ♡ Thank you for maintaining the collection!

Don't quote me on this, but if the site of injection has significant scar tissue, I believe it'll be harder for the needle to go through. I would definitely ask your doctor or nurse about this as they might know better.

Hi there, thanks for your feedback. Most of the team is taking a well-deserved break before diving back into heavy bugfixing, and we're aware of performance issues, script-flow bugs that can cause character scenarios to break, and the voice volume issues. We hope to address these with our next update.

If you have the time, would you be able to share the OS and specs of the device that you were playing on? I plan to implement a toggle that allows players to turn off the video animations and would like to gather information for a recommended minimum system requirements. Thank you again for playing!

Hey there, thanks for using the template! The Content Warnings screen will be located in extras.rpy towards the top of the file.

Hey Valmoxium, by repeating once do you mean it's reading the alternate text two times in total? I notice this behavior happens occasionally if I hover over a quickmenu button and the Self-Voicing will tell me what that button is, then it will start reading the dialogue again from the top. You seem to be doing everything correctly as far as I can tell from your code.

I'm unfortunately largely out of commission atm due as I'm recovering from my wisdom tooth extraction, but I pulled up the documentation on Self-Voicing as well as an indepth guide about it below. I hope that it provides some solution, and if if not I can ask around to see if anyone more familiar with Self-Voicing knows what's happening.

Official Documentation: https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/self_voicing.html

Additional Resource: https://orangecarnation.neocities.org/guides/renpy_tts

Very beautiful and pensive. The SFX really elevates this.

Hi DCS! Amado is a trans masc nonbinary man but the game does not depict a romantic relationship. He does lean homoromantic though, so not sure if it fits in any of the Trans Man in X Situations collections you curate. Thanks for asking!

Strong GOTY 2025 contender here, folks.

I've only managed to get two of the endings (World Devoured and Demon Summoning) but I absolutely love the dialogue and little secrets everyone has. I think we all deserve Big Snake in our lives.

Hi there, I'm the writer for Angel's route and I'm so happy you connected with xem! This truly makes me feel fulfilled as a game developer and writer. Making sure that Angel came across authentically was one of my key priorities while writing so I made sure to consult with folks with similar/adjacent lived experiences, and I'm glad it was worth it to let you feel seen.

Thank you so much for playing ♡

Good mystery and intrigue with brilliant banter, and absolutely gut-wrenching at the end. Love this.

Depending on if you've already customized your project or note, you can begin programming your GUI by using this as a base. I may recommend the other template I maintain as well if you want more features set up:
https://tofurocks.itch.io/renpy-gui-template

Otherwise, follow the instructions on this thread for just the code you want to use:

https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=48322

Hi there, what's the issue you're encountering? 

Hello elduator,

 PRINCESS INTERNET CAFé and I discussed this last year and this was the ruling we determined:

Thanks for your patience, we've discussed it and have come to this verdict.

For an "icon" in settings where a electronic device is used to communicate via text, the following is allowed as GUI for the visual portion:

- Individual letters, words, and characters (such as in languages like Chinese or Japanese) in any language, stylized within engine

- Standardized Emoji Sets

There is a creative workaround I used in my own entry, HRT Simulator 2023, however. The icons below the "video" portion are actually cropped squares from the background. This is what the Ren'Py code looks like:

image icon_chair = Crop((350, 400, 100, 100), "sprites/background.png")
image icon_cowboy = Crop((570, 280, 100, 100), "small:sprites/background.png")
image icon_tsun = Crop((200, 200, 100, 100), "sprites/background.png")
image icon_frog = Crop((1670, 790, 100, 100), "sprites/background.png")
screen member_list():
    text "Members — 4" align (0.225,0.65)
    vbox:
        align (0.025,0.95)
        spacing 100
        
        hbox:
            spacing 50
            hbox:
                spacing 20
                add "icon_chair"
                text "72CollectiveChairs" yoffset 30
            hbox: 
                spacing 20
                add "icon_cowboy"
                text "CowboysKissing69" yoffset 30
        
        hbox:
            spacing 50
            hbox:
                spacing 20
                add "icon_tsun"
                text "IcedCoff33Tsunami" yoffset 30
            hbox:
                spacing 20
                add "icon_frog"
                text "UrFavoriteFr0g" yoffset 30

Hope this provides some inspiration!

From what I understand of the rule, it's to prevent someone from making objects move in the background?

That's the correct reason, yup.

Weltschmerz had some very light point and click elements in it and was made in Ren'Py, and those screens are assembled using Imagebuttons:

transform explore_size:
    zoom 0.78
    xoffset -1941
    yoffset -110
transform explore_zeke:
    xoffset -950
    yoffset -100
    zoom 0.78
transform train_effect:
    parallel:
        linear 0.7 xoffset 2
        linear 0.7 xoffset -2
        repeat
    parallel:
        linear 0.7 yoffset 2
        linear 0.7 yoffset -2
        repeat
screen explore_1():    
    imagebutton idle "mg" action Call("anywhere_1") at explore_size, train_effect
    imagebutton idle "fg" action Call("anywhere_1") at explore_size, train_effect
    imagebutton idle "door_p" action Call("door_check_1") focus_mask True at explore_size, train_effect
    imagebutton idle "zeke side" action Jump("proceed_1") focus_mask True at explore_zeke, train_effect


screen explore_2():
    imagebutton idle "mg" action Call("anywhere_2") at explore_size, train_effect
    imagebutton idle "fg" action Call("anywhere_2") at explore_size, train_effect
    imagebutton idle "door_p" action Call("door_check_2") focus_mask True at explore_size, train_effect
    imagebutton idle "zeke side" action Jump("proceed_2") focus_mask True at explore_zeke, train_effect

If you're using a different engine, then you can use whichever method is easiest for you. Good luck!

Hi Snarxgamer, thanks for your feedback! We just wanted to get back to you and confirm that NSFW content will not be a part of Blood & Play, either in the main story or as DLC, as several members of the team are not able to work on such games. We apologize for the late reply and inconvenience, but hope you will enjoy the game nonetheless.

If Julien has million haters, then I'm one of them.

If Julien has one hater, then I'm THAT ONE.

If Julien has no haters, then we're entwined in each others' arms in a homoerotic embrace.

Fuck Lazarus but also, fuck Lazarus, all my homies are gonna fuck him (up)

Thank you based hosts, nearly all of my team members have either fallen sick or been going through a lot in late Jan to early Feb (including myself) so the extra days will help us relax a bit. We'll still be submitting a demo, but we can take a little extra time to tackle some odd bits and ends!

I too attend 馬鹿外人高等学校

Oh wow, thank you so much for reading it aloud! Your voice is so lovely and you got most of the intended intonations right for each stanza. We didn't expect anyone to do any LPs of this game since it's rather short and a bit hard to swallow, but we're grateful nonetheless. 

Thank you for catching that error with the build! We've updated the build to reflect the OS.

As for Ending 4, follow these steps:

For the Potion, choose the ingredient at the bottom of the screen for each of the 3 rounds. These should be: Ashgreens, Seablossom, Pure Light.

For the choices:

1. Sage must be dealing with something difficult.
2. "How are you feeling?"
3. Distract them
4. Distract them

Thank you for playing!

That's intentional and indeed the end of the game! Thank you for playing 🙏

I love you big big sea snake man

Hi there ashleecraft, thanks for asking! We can confirm that the name label/speaker names indeed does not count towards the word limit. In the future, please be sure to direct all your questions to the main FAQ thread so we can keep track of who we've already answered. Happy jamming!

Making stuff is hard as is, and sometimes store page customization slip our minds right before launch! Don't skip out on it though: a good thumbnail and page design can get more people to interact with your content. Here's a few scattered tips to help you make your life easier and pages look nice~

Stop Re-Uploading Your Entire Projects To Fix One (1) Typo!

Get familiar with butler, itchio's command line tool for uploading projects more efficiently (it works a bit like pushing updates to GitHub)! Here's a nice Youtube tutorial by Skyride Studios about how to install butler for those who need some visual help.

If command line is a bit intimidating, you can try Sean S. LeBlanc's GUI Butler tool to see if it works for you.

butler's very handy if your internet upload speeds aren't where they should be or you're in a game jam with a tight time limit. To do this, make a page and set it to Draft or Restricted so it exists. Then, if you upload a base file of your game via butler, you can save a lot of time on the next upload as butler will recognize reused code and only push differences on the respective channel. As a bonus, players who download your game via the itch app will automatically get all the updates as they go live.

Customize Your Page Assets!

Are you uploading enough screenshots and filling in the information for the Metadata of your project? While you can release a project on itch.io without messing with that stuff, it definitely will help your project look more professional. See Easy Releasy by Jannik Boysen or Itch Game Page Image Guide & Templates by Star West for some tips on this.

Having trouble getting images down to 3MB each? Compress and optimize .webp, .png, and .jpg images using TinyPNG, and your .gif animations with ezgif.

If you're fancy and know your way around CSS, you can email itch.io support telling them how you plan to customize your page using CSS and they'll be able to activate it for you. Be sure to follow the best practices! There's even a handy live editor on CodePen to play around with it.

As far as thumbnails/cover images go, there's been multiple informal studies/tests that show that having a thumbnail that clearly shows a character's face and a legible logo gives a boost to CTR percentages. .gif thumbnails do even better with this. Ones that loop cleanly are pretty nice.

List Your Content Warnings!

Due to the nature of this bundle, some projects might have sensitive content that people might like to know before they go in so they can mentally prepare themselves. It can be a little hard to figure out what all to list though, so take a look at this article by Sisters in Crime. Remember: depiction is not always endorsement.

---

Got any other tips for everyone else? Feel free to leave them below!

Got a project that you're not sure fits the theme? Here's a thread where you can ask us if you're not sure about it. The last thing we want you to do is self-reject when you'd benefit from participating!

Examples of well-known games that we might not accept into the bundle:

• Stardew Valley has mines that contain fantasy enemies, but the game as a whole isn't necessarily Horror or Halloween-y.
• Any Final Fantasy game has lots of fantasy enemies, but the game as a whole isn't necessarily Horror or Halloween-y.
• Rune Factory has fantasy enemies and magic, but the game as a whole isn't necessarily Horror or Halloween-y.
• Dragon Age features an expansive magic system and world, but the mages and the Fade is not the main focus of the game.
• Undertale is a game comprised of mostly monsters, but the main vibe isn't very spooky itself.

Alternatively, you can send an email to projectenso.publishing@gmail.com with the subject title [QHSB2023 Theme] [YOUR_PROJECT_NAME] to ask us if your game fits!

Hi there, unfortunately Meitu uses training data based on stolen artwork so this would not be allowed. Additionally, there may be slight shifts in the selfies even if unintentional. We encourage you to find Creative Commons assets for your sprites or find another way to photomanipulate a photo of yourself.

Hi there! This sounds like that'd be a CG, which would take up your BG and character/sprite slot. Was there a specific kind of context that might alter the way its depicted?

Hey, I know it's been a while but it was so nice to meet you at GDC! I finally found the time to play your bitsy game and wow, the way you tell the story through the different levels is really incredible and poignant. I'm looking forward to trying out the rest of your games soon as well!