Hodmedod

A short visual novel about summer, wheat fields, scarecrows, and fear.

Introduction

You are an American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) who has decided to land on the shoulder of a scarecrow standing sentry in a wheat field. The game contains scarecrows, reference to animal death (though none is depicted), and some mild existentialism.

Controls

• Use the arrow UI button or the Space or Enter keys to advance the conversation.
• When given multiple dialogue options, click to choose.

Notes

This game was inspired by the O2A2 (Only One of Any Asset) visual novel game jam (https://itch.io/jam/o2a2-2024), meaning it uses very few assets, has a rather short wordcount, and was made in just a few days. However, I didn't end up submitting it to that jam as I think I diverged too far from the restrictions to be allowed in, so I'm publishing it separately instead.

 This project's goal was primarily to get something (anything) out the door to deal with some recent development block! But it was also intended to let me play with pixelart, investigate Unity's options for decoupling through messaging systems, and prototype a visual novel on top of a custom 'script' language stored in a separate text file.

Credits

• Art, Writing, and Code by Matthew Marsland, using Unity and Procreate
• The font is 'Pixel UniCode' by anonymous-1000937 (https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/908795), used under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.
• The audio is 'Wheat in the Wind' by bdvictor (https://freesound.org/s/240914/), used under a Creative Commons 0 license.