Flight from Podunk Station
In the dark of the night, somewhere in 1929, three gangsters set off in an old steamboat, looking to put their past behind them.
Flight from Podunk Station is a short RPG Maker game made for the Steamboat Willie Game Jam. It mainly focuses on a series of short combats with some focus on resource management and learning enemy patterns.
I didn't really get to cook on it as much as I wanted to, so it's largely half baked, but it is beatable and such. Oh, it's also the first gamejam game I've made, and also the first thing I've published publically, so yay :V
Content Warning for depictions of like, gun/police violence and blood (though the depictions are not terribly extreme, I know these things are relative), a loud sound or two. I've made an effort to keep flashing and such to a minimum (if it hurt my eyes after multiple rounds of testing, I cut it).
Oh also I set it up to be playable in browser, which I've never done before but hopefully nothing goes super wrong with it!
EDIT: Also, apparently it works in mobile too, but at least when I'm testing certain sounds and assets fail to load. I might do some testing so that when I release new projects they function similarly whether or not that browser is via mobile, but why some do and don't I have no clue on.
Download
Install instructions
I think all that's needed is to extract the file from the .rar and run the "FlightFromPodunkStation" application inside of it.
Comments
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Congrats on winning the award for Best Visuals in the Gaming Like It's 1928 jam! Let me know the best way to contact you for you to pick your prize.
Oh my! How exciting! Honestly I'm quite surprised, but also quite elated! :D
Feel free to reach out to me at my email and we can discuss this further and all!
Ah! Well thank you for giving it a go! If I reckoned anyone would make footage of it I woulda polished it up more, but c'est la vie, I suppose. Not that I mind XD
Again, appreciate ya taking a shot at it and all ^^
Wow! Dark and gritty, tough as nails! A real resource pinching playthrough. :D
Thank you for giving it a go! I wanted to make resource management kind of the tension point, there's other RPGs I've liked that have that kind of pressure, so I'm happy that comes through as intended ^^
VERY GOOD ART AND WRITING
Honestly the writing needed a lot more time in the oven. I had really wanted to give the scenes some heft to better convey the themes I wanted to include, but I didn't have time to develop the characters super well in my head, or like, script out the scenes properly, so most of the vibe is suggested instead of concrete. The La Croix of themes XD
I also sorta figured out too that like, at the pace the game moves at, trying to jam like these long wistful chewy dialog scenes between pretty quick fights and stuff would probably kill the pacing? Like when I was testing it the scenes felt like about as long as they could reasonably be, and I didn't really touch on much at all? So maybe it's best for what is there that we just get some small snippets of the characters' anxiety and light haunting, and leave it at that.
Mentally Perry had the most background work put in (he even gets TWO portraits! Wowie zowie!), and Duncan the least (though I like his portrait best. Willie's never looked quite right to me even with 2 takes). There's scenes I wanted for all of them that would give them depth, but just didn't materialize it. C'est la vie!
Amazing game! It’s playable on mobile as well. The character art is very well done. Good job on this. 👍🏼
Oh thank you! I'm happy to hear that, and also that it functions on mobile and stuff! I know it's kinda small potatoes, but I appreciate ya giving it a go :D
I think it being small is exactly right for a jam game. did you do all the art yourself?
Yeah, the like drawing and coloring part. Doodling characters and stuff is kind of the thing I enjoy most, so all the monster sprites and character portraits are mine, plus I drew like the intro background. I collect like free paper textures and patterns and stuff people post, which helped give all that the like, newsprinty quality I wanted and I modified those for the river's motion animation. I drew and animated the boat too, but it's just 3 frames anyway.
The like UI icons come from another creator (Caz, I think, they should be in the game credit page) though I modified the palette on them, and the few attack animations are stock to the engine, though I did bitcrush them for extra grit.
Pretty much the first thing I do in all my projects is make the like window boxes and pick a font, since it helps me keep in the right state of mind while I'm testing, so that's also like, my doodling plus some textures. The little finger cursor too was a very early thing I wanted to add and I thought it was a good addition.
Not that you needed the whole breakdown, necessarily, sorry for long answer! I wanted to do more expressions and stuff, but couldn't find the time. There was plans at least for some small panels for some of the scenes and stuff so the narrated bits could be supported by graphics instead of just the text too...
Oh, and the battle background is a heavily modified photograph from the library of congress, I should probably make sure that's properly attributed if I do a V2, but I don't think it's a super big deal in this case as a public asset :V
Thanks for the detailed answer. Really interesting to learn about your process. I also think it’s good to get a basic feel going early in development. It helps you to stay on track. The drawings are cool. If you enjoy something then it will mostly be good :)
So will you do a v2 update for Valentine’s Day?
I dunno if I'll tinker on this more for awhile yet; my inspiration for it kind of came and went (my head kind of sprints between fascinations) so I'd have to find the mojo to pick it back up. I am planning on tinkering with other things though!