The Witch's Lullaby

[Honza]

Famed for its mushrooming business and idyllic countryside, the land of Fungham has seen better days. A child has gone missing, a demonic witch haunts the woods and if you're not careful, gnomes will take your socks. Also, there is a pig king... don't ask. But why have all these creatures suddenly appeared? Where did the witch come from and what does she want? Could the answer to everything lie behind the ancient gate in the nearby mountains?

The Witch's Lullaby is a classical point and click adventure, somewhat reminiscent of games like King's Quest or Legend of Kyrandia. It was made in two weeks for AdvJam 2022 and it ended up ranking #1 in the jam.

Windowed mode recommended if you have a low tolerance for blurry pixels .

Check it out here:
ITCH | AGS database

Credits:

Written, drawn and coded by Jan Vávra

Music by Paco Diago

Sound by Maxim Grachev / freesound.org

Lullaby lyrics by Kasia "Hitohai" Wasylak

There is also a full-length, high-res (or, rather, somewhat-higher-res ) remake in the works. Here's a small preview:


Enjoy!

[arj0n]

Nice job, gratz on the release!

[heltenjon]

Here's what I wrote about the game in the jam thread when it came out:

I played Honza's The Witch's Lullaby, the overall winner of the Jam. This is an amazing short/medium game. The graphics, story, music, story and characters are all top notch. I also think this one has the best pixel hunt mechanic I've ever seen. Highly recommended!

I still stand by this. 

Edit: Even though I squared the "story".

[glurex]

I loved the game when I played it in the Jam. So I'm looking forward for the remake!

[Shadow1000]

I played this game last night.

- Top-notch, professional-grade storybook backgrounds and characters. Well designed maps and no effort was spared to design an explorable world with so much to look at.
- Great story and interesting characters. The story unfolds at the perfect pace to draw the player into the game and make you want to keep playing.
- I found the puzzles to be delightful to solve and got a lot of satisfaction out of how my mind was moving constantly, putting together all the different things to do to get through the puzzles. I never found any of the puzzles frustrating. I will say that despite all this, they were on the easier side, and were solved quite intuitively. My absolute FAVOURITE puzzle was:

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The pig-head tracking. I think I may have seen something like this in the past but it is DEFINITELY a creative way to give hints as to where to look

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Overall, exceptional work and congrats.

[Honza]

Thanks everyone for the nice feedback! If you decide to also leave a rating/comment on the game's page, that's always appreciated . Meanwhile, here's another look at how the remake is coming along:

[HyperAnimated]

Copy-pasting this from the actual game page, because it deserves to be said more than once:

This was absolutely gorgeous, well designed, well executed, just a brilliant short adventure.

The story was wonderful, and the mood was borderline-storybook-scary without ever veering into actual horror, which I appreciated.

The dialogue was excellent, always driving driving plot forward and showing depth to the characters.

Art and animation were beautiful, I can't wait to see the full graphical remake.

The one bit with the clever game mechanic - you'll know when you see it - OH MY GOD I loved that so much.  Like every other puzzle in this, it wasn't too hard, juuust sneaky enough that when you catch on to it, you still feel satisfied for figuring it out.

Even the last couple sentences of the closing made me smile.

Jan, you've outdone yourself, which is really saying something with the quality of everything you make.

[ThreeOhFour]

Hey man, cool game! LOTS of scenes to walk in for two weeks work, very impressive. And the kind of settings I like, with weirdo statues and fungi and things. Also you had an interesting idea behind your story which I always appreciate. Great stuff all around. 

[Honza]

Copy-pasting this from the actual game page, because it deserves to be said more than once:

This was absolutely gorgeous, well designed, well executed, just a brilliant short adventure.

Hey man, cool game! LOTS of scenes to walk in for two weeks work, very impressive. And the kind of settings I like, with weirdo statues and fungi and things. Also you had an interesting idea behind your story which I always appreciate. Great stuff all around. 

Thanks guys, really happy you enjoyed the game!

Art and animation were beautiful, I can't wait to see the full graphical remake.

Thanks again good sir . The basic remake of the jam version is finished, now the plan is to keep adding more content until it can pass for a full (albeit probably still shorter) game. I've been posting screenshots on Twitter if anyone wants to check them out: https://twitter.com/hnzvavra. Here's one of those:

[DBoyWheeler]

I briefly saw a playthrough of this on Future Vintage Gaming on YouTube.

Just the first few sightings of the Veiled Lady alone had me thinking "Where's our paranormal hero Trilby when you need him?"

Anyway, hats off to this game's creator.

[Crimson Wizard]

Played this now.

I do believe that this art style deserves a higher game resolution; otherwise it have to be "downgraded": to be more pixely and look less smudged in low-res.
But what bothered me most in the art is the lack of shadows! Maybe this is because of the time constraints (i understood this was made for a game jam). Your other game "Shards of God" seem to have shadowed areas, judging by the screenshots (I plan to play it next).

The game itself is pretty well built, has a good and consistent pacing, and rather well developed characters despite story being short.

The uncommon use of inventory item as a compass was quite fun to see, I believe this was already mentioned few times in this thread.

The theme of the "ancient machine" in the "ancient ruins" felt way too random, but I suppose this could be another forced decision due to a time constraints?

[Honza]

Played this now.

I do believe that this art style deserves a higher game resolution; otherwise it have to be "downgraded": to be more pixely and look less smudged in low-res.
But what bothered me most in the art is the lack of shadows! Maybe this is because of the time constraints (i understood this was made for a game jam). Your other game "Shards of God" seem to have shadowed areas, judging by the screenshots (I plan to play it next).

The game itself is pretty well built, has a good and consistent pacing, and rather well developed characters despite story being short.

The uncommon use of inventory item as a compass was quite fun to see, I believe this was already mentioned few times in this thread.

The theme of the "ancient machine" in the "ancient ruins" felt way too random, but I suppose this could be another forced decision due to a time constraints?

Thanks for playing! The smudginess is mostly time constraints (I wanted to try to make a big world quickly, and barely managed as it is), plus inexperience - it was my first time drawing in very low res. I got used to the look of it after a while and didn't expect it would stand out this much, but now it's always the number one complaint about the game and the reason I'm a bit embarrassed to show it to people in this state - it needs to be played in the two-week jam challenge context. About the shadows, you mean a lack of shadows in the drawings, or the fact that there are no regions where the character would be darker?

Point taken about the ruins, some more world-building is probably necessary there for the full version to make the whole ancient civilization thing fit into the world more naturally.

Let me know what you think once you've played Shards!

[Crimson Wizard]

About the shadows, you mean a lack of shadows in the drawings, or the fact that there are no regions where the character would be darker?

The former, lack of shaded areas on backgrounds.

[Honza]

The former, lack of shaded areas on backgrounds.

Oh, ok. Well, the backgrounds *are* shaded, but I guess the shading is pretty light and there aren't realistic shadows cast by objects. It could be better for sure, but this doesn't personally bother me that much, it works for me with the cartoony storybook look. Maybe it's one of those things where I'll see it only once I learn to do it better, and won't believe how I could have drawn it this way afterwards .

[Creamy]

Lovely new art.

If I were to upscale a game, I think I'd go all the way and choose a high resolution - maybe with help from ESRGAN to speed up the process like they did in Broken Sword.

Output with realesrnet-x4plus :

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Output  with real ESRGAN

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[Honza]

Lovely new art.

If I were to upscale a game in this style, I think I'd go all the way and choose a high resolution - maybe with help from ESRGAN to speed up the process like they did in Broken Sword.

Output with realesrnet-x4plus :

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Output  with real ESRGAN

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Thank you for the suggestion! But to be honest, I think the 640*400 version looks much better than the AI upscaling, that would just make it bland and smudgy all over again. And I've already poured hundreds of hours into this version of the game, so I'm not going to redraw it again now.

[Creamy]

Don't worry, I didn't expect you to change your mind on a whim. I was just curious about your opinion on the matter.

[Honza]

Don't worry, I didn't expect you to change your mind on a whim. I was just curious about your opinion on the matter.

Sure thing! Unfortunately high-res would be much more time-consuming if I wanted to do it properly, 640x400 is still pretty forgiving when it comes to drawing details. So the retro look isn't just an artistic choice - I like it, but it's also faster to do . I was actually counting at some point and here's how long some of these backgrounds took to redraw. And that's just basic images, without the morning/sunset/night versions, animations and everything... can't imagine doing all of it in high-res.