Press "Enter" to skip to content

Category: Projects Archive

Here’s Brainscraps Holiday Card no. 4

RKasa
December 4, 2018
Comments closed

Four - Holiday Card 2018Though some bouts of insomnia didn’t help, I have managed to complete this year’s Holiday Card. Thus, I am happy to announce that 2018’s Holiday Card, which is simply titled Four, is now available! Four is somewhat different from previous Cards, though it shares some of their underlying spirit.

I can’t say what inspired this year’s card, as I don’t entirely know; the idea just sort of popped into my head one day. However, I suspect it was a combination of factors, including certain current events. As stated on the game’s project page, my original idea was something quite different, both in terms of concept and execution. Regarding what Four is about, well… you’ll just have to see for yourself.

This year’s engine is Twine, the famed interactive fiction tool which uses a combination of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to enable the creation of text-based games which can be played in any browser. That said, for the first time, you can play this year’s Holiday Card without downloading anything! Here’s a direct link to the game; if, for whatever reason, you’re having trouble getting it to work, an official mirror is once again available via my itch.io page.

Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season, and here’s wishing you all a great 2019!

ETA (Dec. 5, 2018): A small bug fix was made to Four, which will likely affect save files. The older version of the game has been preserved here, via the project’s page, but not on itch.io. Please see this post on itch.io for more details.

Presenting Brainscraps Holiday Card no. 3

RKasa
December 13, 2017
Comments closed

Remember how, last year, I was unable to finish last year’s Holiday Card due to illness? After some treatment this year, I feel a bit better (though not completely well), and I picked up work on said Card again in the fall. This time around, I was able to complete my work. So, without further ado, this year’s (and technically last year’s) Holiday Card is General Princess!

General Princess - Holiday Card 2017For this third Holiday Card, I was inspired by something that feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian said in an interview: that she’d like to see a game where a captive princess rescues herself for a change. I’m paraphrasing here, as I can no longer find the exact quote, though I believe it was in the New York Times. Anyway, I somehow went from that to coming up with a plot where a princess keeps herself from being captured in the first place. The tower defense genre seemed like a natural fit for such a story, and so I began work last fall.

This time around, I used GameMaker:Studio, which I had picked up cheaply in a Humble Bundle. Coming from RPG Maker and Ren’py, it’s an intimidating program, but fortunately, there’s a wealth of information out there about its ins and outs, in the forms of ebook tutorials, the official forums, blog posts, and a Reddit page, amongst others. Other tools I used included the usual Sketchbook Pro, GarageBand, and Pixelmator, as well as Corel Painter and Audacity. In addition, Freesound, which I found via Sortingh.at, was helpful when it came to sound effects I couldn’t make myself.

General Princess can be found in the Projects section, as well as via the all-new Brainscraps itch.io page. And yes, my previous two Holiday Cards can now be found on itch.io as well.

As usual, please enjoy this latest jaunt into silliness, and Happy Holidays!

No Playable “Holiday Card” This Year

RKasa
November 11, 2016
Comments closed

I didn’t want to do this—I had an idea, a new-to-me engine to mess with, and had even started work on the thing—but the completion and release of year’s “Holiday Card” game project is being postponed to next winter. The reason for this is due to over a month of near-constant insomnia beginning in late September, making me too tired to continue playing certain games, never mind making one.

At first I thought it might’ve been the regular Autumn changes in the weather that was causing my sleeplessness, but I have a chronic illness in which insomnia is a side effect. I thought I could tough it out until my next specialist’s appointment, but by the beginning of this month, I hadn’t made much progress with this year’s game, nor gotten enough rest. I’ve seen said doctor since then, verified what the problem is, and have started to recover a little bit, but there’s no way I’d be able to finish the game in time. Therefore, the third Brainscraps Holiday Card—if all goes well—will come out in December 2017, instead of next month (and if you’ve somehow missed the first two, they live in the “Projects” category). I have a couple of end-of-year posts in the works, so you can look forward to those, at least. In the meantime, wish me luck with the sleep thing and I hope everyone has a good holiday season.

Presenting Brainscraps Holiday Card no. 2

RKasa
December 18, 2015
Comments closed

IGNORE ALL THE KOUHAIS.Last year’s Holiday Card was a ton of work. Despite this, I wanted to do something similar again. I didn’t come up with a good idea until the middle of the year, and an incredibly awesome Japan vacation interrupted production for about three weeks, but I managed to get it done more or less on time. The total production time was around two and a half months, on and off (not counting that Japan trip).

Thus, I present to you all this year’s Brainscraps Holiday Card: Senpai Simulator. The title pretty much says it all: play as Senpai and either notice or ignore underclassmen to your heart’s content. This year’s game engine of choice is the wonderful Ren’Py, and this time, all of the visual and sound assets were created by me, using a variety of tools including Sketchbook Pro, Clip Studio Paint, Pixelmator, and GarageBand.

As before, this Holiday Card can be found year-round under Projects. Please let me know as soon as possible if you run into any bugs or other issues, and I’ll fix them for a later release. As for future such Cards, I really can’t say what next year will bring, but in the meantime, look forward to one or more year-in-review type posts within the next week or two. Enjoy, and hope everyone has a great holiday and an even better 2016!

This Year’s Holiday Card

RKasa
December 16, 2014
Comments closed

One of my regular projects is an annual (usually; I’ve missed at least a couple of years) “Holiday Card”, typically a piece of Christmas/winter fanart for my online friends. I had plans to do one this year, and even had a couple of Persona 4-themed ideas stored away well in advance, but when the fall hit, I got a spark of inspiration for something else, which I started working on in November.

Legend of Cascadia This project, a short J-style RPG called Legend of Cascadia, is not holiday-themed, but is my replacement for this year’s Holiday Card. It is based on one of my favorite Peter Molydeux tweets, one which I briefly considered adapting for the first MolyJam, but lacked the time, experience, and overall foundation to do so. However, over this past month and a half (and especially the last four weeks), after finally getting a solid idea in my head, I put it together. The engine I used is RPG Maker VX Ace, which I’d only dabbled with before, and is both surprisingly robust and frustratingly limited. It was also the perfect tool to put together this sort of thing.

Anyway, hope you all enjoy this bit of silliness from me. Before I go, you may have noticed that Cascadia lives under a new menu section called “Projects”. I can’t promise that I’ll make more games in the future, but this is where any similar such works will live from now on. Thanks, have a good holiday season and here’s hoping we all have a great 2015!