Hey gang! I’m gonna be super-gauche and drop in here to let everyone know that the demo for Mayor May Knott is now available on Steam, for PC, Mac (!!!), and it even works on Steam Deck.
This is the game I’ve been working on for more years than I care to admit, and it’s a “creepy cozy” adventure game about a shy girl who accidentally becomes mayor of a haunted ghost town.
The biggest inspirations were Chulip and Moon (Remix RPG), and this is probably the only place I can say that and people will have any idea of what I’m talking about.
Anyway, please give it a whirl, and let me know what you think, and also please fill out the feedback questionnaire. There’s a part for filling out before you play, and the rest of it is for filling out after you play.
Nice to see you again, luvcraft! I’m intrigued by your game—I’ll definitely wishlist at a minimum. Your title is phonetically the same as a Homestuck track I used to inflict on anybody foolish enough to accept a carpool from me. Looking forward to checking out the demo!
I just finished the demo! I really liked giving people houses and helping out ghosts. I wish I could do that in real life. This is a real power fantasy of mine. I loved the records, townsfolk and unusual puns. I’m definitely going to chow down once this comes out complete from the oven.
Maybe once I get out from under Mayor May Knott I’ll put Crosstown on Steam. It’s a little tricky because I wrote it in XNA, which is no longer supported, and there are alternatives like MonoGame but I’ve had weird problems with them.
Awesome! Thanks! This is actually one of the “mission statements” of the game:
Design of the game must adhere to the following guidelines:
Generosity - While many other games are fantasies about having lethal prowess, this game’s fantasy is about generosity, having the ability and opportunity to give and help people, and recipients who generally appreciate it.
No Violence - There is no violence in the game. Since there is cooking in the game, but some of the characters are animals, this even extends to food: all meat dishes substitute meat-like mushrooms that a character finds in the forest.
No Money - There is no money in the game. This is a major theme of the game, as May is freeing characters from a wage-slave existence in the city by moving them to her town.
Avoid Tedium - Although this game shares many mechanics with farming sims and similar games, it is specifically designed not to feel “tedious” and to avoid mechanics that only serve to make the game longer at the expense of fun. Design decisions that are specifically chosen to avoid drudgery and interrupting gameplay with banalities include giving the player an unlimited inventory, and not having a “stamina” system. Some mildly-tedious mechanics may be present, but are optional, and become automated as the player progresses through the game.
Auto-Save Frequently - This game naturally has a leisurely pace to it, as you slowly grow the town and interact with the various characters. Games like this can be easily ruined, however, by not saving frequently enough, and making the player redo hours of progress, which will suddenly turn a “leisurely pace” into a “dreary slog”.
I just ran into what I assume is this same bug - when you try to enter Glitzberg and are denied and autorun away, you run straight into Dick Tater’s booth and can’t wiggle out. Saving & quitting doesn’t fix it because you load back in exactly where you were!
I love this though, I love the vibe and the writing and the fun variety of simple little tasks. You are definitely accomplishing all your stated goals.
For like the first 10 or 15 minutes it kind of ran like butt on my PC, distractingly choppy, but then it magically resolved itself and played smooth. Who knows what that’s about.
the new build with this fix and some other improvements is now live in the beta channel on steam. If you wanna try it out let me know and I’ll show you how to switch over.
Ok finally got around to playing this again post bugfix and finished the demo. I love it! The 10yo watched me for a bit and got interested too, said he wanted to try it. He literally said “it seems chill” so that is definitely coming through.
The records all having actual bespoke songs is a scream. My favorite part.
I don’t know how deep assigning houses to people is but there are a few hints so far (like the shrimp man accepting a house without stairs but saying he prefers a place near the water). The only design feedback I have is putting info like that in the character screen, like currently it says “lives in x house”, it’d be cool to add “would prefer to live near water”. I don’t know if you can even reassign houses or if giving people their preference has any mechanical effect but. The game is already pretty good at making a record of all the info you find, it’d be nice to close that loop.
currently there’s only one resident for whom there’s a benefit for putting him in his favorite house (and you can’t interact with him or reach his perfect house in the demo). You can reassign houses, and currently the only way to give most people their perfect houses is brute force, and / or guesswork (like Durango’s favorite house been Caboose House). I hope I’ll have enough time to add more clues about perfect houses and more benefits of perfect houses – when a resident moves into their perfect house, it’ll get custom decorations, so the most straightforward benefit would be for them to have an item you need in their custom perfect house decor.
I’m very happy you love the records. I had so much fun writing and recording the 30+ (!!) songs on them.
And thanks for giving it another try after running into that soft lock! I’m REALLY glad the fix fixed it for you.
