Amazeface. It's a game about a face in a maze.

To me it sounds like a game about a maze what is also a face. But the important elements are there, and "amaze" reminds me of "amazing", so title approved!

@Bric-à-brac Thanks for your support dear Twine fellow !
Your pseudo let me think you're francophone too, are you a fan of Gotlib's Rubrique-à-brac ?

I'm actually Italian! Rubrique-à-brac seems interesting though.

I'm curious now, how do you cope with being a non-native English writer on Twine? Is your co-writer a native speaker?
(I personally try to write everything in English and then have a native friend proofread for me, but sometimes it feels so frustrating. It seems like I'm never good enough and aaagh why do I speak a language nobody cares about ;_;).

When we started working on our game, we were just three - me and two artists. We know each other well and we don't live far from each other, so we managed to met often and talk about our work.
Now our little team is growing, and it's both a good and a bad thing: we have a musician and three other writers now, but they all live much farther than us.
I'm trying to find a way to organize our work. For now we're just trying to keep all the important stuff on Drive, so everybody can easily access the core design/lore documents. Surely there are other tricks we could apply to streamline the process and keep everything organized.
Do you have any tips and advices? Useful programs/sites for this kind of stuff? Our project is just starting getting big, and I think it's really important to estabilish a good workflow before it's too late.

The editor looks super neat! Will it be available for users/modders too? It would be so convenient to build an object and pop it into the world, instead of building it "by hand" with your character.

Yay, a fellow Twine user! Good luck with your project, it sounds interesting.

Woah.

(Do you need any help with the writing?)

[Pathologic]

I don't know if Pathologic is russian, but sure it feels really russian.

Following! Nice to see another rpgmaker user ^^ your art is very nice!

[Out there - omega edition]

I'm playing Out there - omega edition.
I really really want to like it, but it's too random to really require any sort of strategy. It's like a lite-FTL with no combat: you just click on a planet and hope you'll find the right resources. There are just 4-5 different types of planets, which makes the experience quickly dull.
What a pity! The writing and the atmosphere really had potential.

My condolences :D

I take it you cant use one of those languages built for transpiling to javascript like typescript?

I don't think so D: I'm working with Rpgmaker MV, the damned program switched from Ruby programming to JS in its lastest version. I need a bit of JavaScript to modify the basic menus and stuff like that.
Shouldn't be too hard. Luckly for me, the community is pretty active and I found many useful scripts around, even free to use for commercial games!

For a team without a full-fledged programmer, I dare to say we're faring well so far.

I'm so scared right now. Politicians in my country (Italy) are already saying "see, the UK decided to leave, so we can exit the EU too!"
They're not absolutely thinking about how this would absolutely fuck our economy, our future. It's just all about bigotry and hate and oh God what the fuck is happening.

I'm grumpy because I have to learn JavaScript but I really dislike its syntax. It's not giving me difficulties, it's just... Ugly.

I also think some basic handrawn animations maybe only a few frames would be needed similar to those in visual novels?

Yeah, surely! In my ideal scenario, there's no "patience" bar for the merchants while bartering: they change expression according to their feelings.
For now we have to keep the frames at minimum, but we'll add more as soon as we have more time and money.
(My character artist will kill me sooner or later.)

Reading "The Man In the High Castle" at the moment. I'm a bit in. Third thing I've read form PDK so far and possibly my favorite of those 3.

what were the other two?

man in the high castle is amazing. im kinda apprehensive about watching the series tbh, because i feel like it might "ruin" the book for me and trailers were not that promising.

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and "A Scanner Darkly". I still have quite a few more to go.

Philip Dick was a genius. I highly recommend Flow my tears, the policemen said, Ubik and Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb.

I'm reading The Satanic Bible because I was curious. Those satanists actually seem very nice and reasonable fellows.

[Devlog #2 - Apples and oranges]

Devlog #2 - Apples and oranges

Hi everyone! Time for another update. This is what we've done over the last few weeks:


GAMEPLAY
The bartering system taking shape so we decided to share it with the world. After all, it's the core of our gameplay!
Here's a screenshot with BAD PLACEHOLDER ART EVERYWHERE:



Whenever you are buying or selling something, you can choose to barter with the other merchant. The aim of bartering is to find a price you both agree on before someone's patience runs low.
While bartering, you can:

    > Change your offer. Raise or lower the amount of cash you're offering.

    > Give an item. Low on cash? Try offering some of your goods.

    > Give a favour. Offer benefits like useful information or a free ride in your cart.

    > Use a skill from the skill wheel.


Skills have very simple effects like raising your opponent's patience or willingness to lower the price. You choose a skill from a wheel divided into four slices.
Each slice of the wheel contains the same 12 skills; what you change is the delivery of them.
You can choose between four different dispositions:

    > Charming. Wink, smile, be fascinating.

    > Friendly. Be a nice and honest fellow.

    > Stern. Rigid, precise, professional.

    > Threatening. Raise your voice and demand things.

For example, if you ask the other merchant to stay calm you can give him: a friendly pat on the shoulder or threateningly grab their shoulder. Both the same gesture but with different attitudes.

Each merchant likes some dispositions better than others. Approach them correctly and you'll have better chances of sealing the deal before their patience runs dry.
For example, take Pacha, the cloth trader of the Green city:



He's a cool, calm and very honest person so enjoys friendly and austere colleagues. He will react badly to Charming or Threatening actions because he is already a husband and father.


PLOT AND QUESTS
The bartering system already works – it's wonky and full of numbers to balance, but it works. The ambitious part will be making the merchants remember the way you treat them. We don't want a simple “friendship bar” for the NPCs but instead for them to remember your attitude and act accordingly.
For example, if you make business in a friendly or stern manner with Pacha, he will offer to buy and sell goods. You won't receive business proposals from him if you're Charming, but he'll shyly ask for tips to improve his marriage.
Very simple mechanics to program but a living hell to write.
We believe it'll be worth it.


GRAPHICS
We're a little bummed out after our animator left due to their internship and finding a replacement is proving very difficult. We've thought about two different solutions but would like to hear your opinion:

> Draw characters by hand and animate them with Toonboom. We've not used the program before but it should be a good alternative to traditional hand-drawn animations.

> 3D models; we can create and easily animate them but fear the watercolour backgrounds + 3D characters would not blend well. We want to avoid the goofy look of old Final Fantasy games, but are unsure how.

 Any ideas or advice would be incredibly useful at this point. Thanks in advance!

Price the materials that make up goods to some kind of standard (100/pound of wood, 200/pound of steel, etc.), multiply it by weight, a labor modifier (difficulty to make the good) and supply or demand modifier (how common the good is, how much other people want the good), and maybe factor in a tax.

So P (price of item) =  W (weight of materials) x C (cost of material) x L (labor modifier) x [D (demand) / S(supply)] x T (tax rate).

The numbers from there on are arbitrary, but be consistent in how you plot the variables.

THIS. This was exactly the kind of advice I needed. Thank you!
Many thanks to everybody else for the useful tips - I was already setting regional prices, it's nice to know it sounds like a good idea for you too.

Following! I'm glad you got founded. This game looks so stilish - I don't have money to pledge at the moment, but will surely check the game once it's out!
Good luck with everything :3

I like it! Seems like a platform version of Touhou, with less lolis and more glowing orbs.

I'm working on a game about being a travelling merchant, so the gameplay revolves around buying and selling stuff.
The problem is, I know shit about math. I even fleed away from Science High School when I was younger! I need a way to balance the price of everything, and I don't really know where to start.
Anyone has tutorials, useful tips or advices? I read a few articles about balancing the economy of an RPG, but they all boiled down to "it doesn't have to be realistic". Some general rules to keep in mind would surely simplify my work.

Any chance you will make the bi-monthly updates an email newsletter? I would definitely subscribe.

A newsletter? Nice idea! But first, I'd like to find a native English speaker willing to help me polish my grammar. Anyone interested can apply here! We have a native proofreader for the game itself, but she's working full-time and I'd prefer not to bother her with this kind of stuff.
(I'm really frustrated by my ability to scatter little grammar errors everywhere. I swear to you, I'm a great writer... In another language.)

I had a question about gameplay, do you plan to add the ability to rent a store area in a city so that you can possibly sell goods while out and about? Or perhaps the ability to hire scavengers to find resources in the wild?

I long thought about this, and ultimately decided against adding such features. Crafting and shops, while entirely reasonable in context, would loosen the game's focus.
You are a traveling merchant. Your purpose is to go around, visit strange places and talk to new people. With a fixed selling point, I know some players would find a convenient trade route and always follow the same routine, preferring easy money to the thrills of exploration.
And I do not like that.

I won't exclude minigames about selling goods, though! Selling food and drinks during a festival or a sport event could be a nice diversion, and better fit with the whole "traveling merchant" theme.