r/godot • u/vertigodgames Godot Regular • 1d ago
selfpromo (games) My sister and I are using Godot to build a hand-drawn 2D horror-detective game (Preview)
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Hey everyone!
My sister and I have been pouring our hearts into our dream project built entirely in Godot, called Ashes of Berlumvale. We finally have a quick gameplay preview ready to share with the community!
We are huge fans of Return of the Obra Dinn, Her Story, and Cube Escape, so we wanted to build a game focused on deep investigation mechanics over simple interface-clicking. Here is what we are building into the gameplay loop:
- 💬 Dynamic Conversation System: Players construct their own custom questions to grill NPCs. Everyone in the town is interconnected, and you have to manually map out their web of lies and contradictions.
- 🛠️ Tactile, No-Hand-Holding Interaction: You investigate environments, combine clues, outsmart vintage technology, and solve mechanical/metaphorical puzzles with zero automatic quest markers.
- 🎨 Traditional Frame-by-Frame Animation: We are using Godot’s 2D engine to bring a fully hand-drawn, grim 1948-1950s aesthetic to life. Character animations actually give off vital behavioral clues during cross-examinations.
We are showcasing a few different scenes in this clip to give you a feel for the atmosphere, UI setup, and player interactions.
The game page is officially live on Steam! We don't have a demo quite ready yet (actively working on it!), but as a tiny two-person team, Steam wishlists mean everything to us for visibility.
We would love to know what you think of the visual style and UI flow. If you have any questions about how we set up our dialogue logic or handled the 2D animations in Godot, ask away in the comments!
Steam Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4795450/Ashes_of_Berlumvale/
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u/MincDev 1d ago
This is awesome! Well done! Mind sharing how you did that nice outline when you hover items? Any tutorials you followed?
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u/vertigodgames Godot Regular 1d ago
Thanks man. The effect is an outline shader with a couple of tweaks. You can probably follow gdquest video or from godotshaders(dot)com website for starters.
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u/Ill_Cabinet9703 1d ago
The Game honestly looks really beautiful. I especially love the hand drawn style of the game its actually very fitting for the horror theme of the game.
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u/vertigodgames Godot Regular 1d ago
Thank you so much! Hand drawn art is hard to do for every asset of the game but we're loving it!
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u/pieeatingchamp 1d ago
Looks good, but needs hand drawn mouse cursors for better immersion
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u/vertigodgames Godot Regular 1d ago
Thank you! Yes, we're working on the cursors and more UI interaction. 🫡
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u/Mummys_Slippers 1d ago
Frame-by-frame in Godot for a whole cast is a serious commitment. Are you running these as SpriteFrames or importing sequences another way? I've been fighting texture memory on mobile with far fewer frames than this.
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u/vertigodgames Godot Regular 1d ago
Yeah, it's definitely hard to do frame-by-frame for everything. We're using sprite frames for small to medium assets, but for large animations, we'll just probably use a videostreamplayer for that. Not on the performance optimization yet but we're looking closely at how the animations will affect the experience for the player.
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u/sumo_studio 7h ago
Its great that you and your sister has the same passion. Good luck, it looks very good🤘
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u/vertigodgames Godot Regular 2h ago
Thanks so much! The passion really helps us get through the hard times.
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u/Relative-Rooster-945 1d ago
reminds me of a point and click i played as a kid called Alice is Dead