Hearts Like Clockwork
A downloadable game for Windows
-Notice-
Unfortunately, having lost contact with my artist for several months, I no longer have the money or resources to start anew, nor can I find any artists who can imitate her work and whose services I can afford.
As such, I have to face the music. I will be discontinuing the project indefinitely... I'm sorry to those who have been waiting... But I have been at wit's end and see no other way.
I wish it could have been different.
-Notice end-
Far in the future, a war between humans and machinery has left the island nation of Japan isolated.
Now, decades after the Japanese managed to reclaim their country and rebuild it, it seems normalcy has returned.
Hearts Like Clockwork follows the young Rin Kagamine as her ordinary daily life is about to become a lot more interesting,
...And a lot more dangerous.
In this game you play as Rin Kagamine, Crypton High School's first-year class president. On the day her life is about to change forever.
The adventure she will be dragged into will require her wit, strength, charm, and a good number of friends if she hopes to make it out alive.
Whether it's through friendship, Music, or brute force, Your actions may affect more lives than you initially thought.
This game will feature a simple relationship system where your choices and reactions will affect simple things like whether your friends, (Miku, Luka and Gumi) will pick up the phone or not when you call them. Or if they may even take you out on dates between all the action.
Cute fluff moments are planned for those who wait!
Download
Install instructions
To install, Use a program like winzip, Winrar or 7zip to extract the folder anywhere. It will be ready to play right away! (Most computers come with at least one of these)
On some computers the game may crash while saving when placed in the "C:/Program files" folder due to write permissions. If this happens, consider moving the game to a folder outside "program files"
Development log
- At long last, Work continues!Jan 12, 2022
Comments
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THIS WAS SOOOOOOO GOOD! The combat was surprisingly complex, as with the unique setting and story. Really sad it's now discontinued for now but if you plan on coming I'll happily wait as long as it takes.
Announcement:
Unfortunately, having lost contact with my artist for several months... I no longer have the money or resources to start anew, nor can I find any artists who can imitate her work and whose services I can afford.
As such, I have to face the music. I will be discontinuing the project indefinitely... I'm sorry to those who have been waiting... But I have been at wit's end and see no other way.
I wish it could have been different.
I'm tired... Depressed... and just want to rest...
Rest and recharge, you owe it to yourself. I will still have hope the things turn around and get back on track because you deserve to catch a break and have the success you keeps striving for!
Hi! You have done a lot together, I’m sure everyone who has already tried your game was very happy ( ◜‿◝ ). Even just remembering my first impressions of the game makes me smile.
I hope you all can have a good rest, don't worry about anything -ᄒᴥᄒ-
Hellowa :)
For first i want to say, i love the taste of asphalt and i was complete the game few minuts ago. Anyway imma here to give thank to ya. I love how many easter eggs you placed in it. Cool story, cool stuff, cool expirience. Ahah, I like what Gumi looks like Hachi`s panda hero. I hope you prouded for your work, cuz it can be cool one. ehe.
Aw, thank you!♡
I hope to get back into working on this project again soon when time allows! Glad you enjoyed what's there so far!
This was so much fun to play through!!!!! I hope there's more to come! x3
Eheeh! thank you! I did start on making more stuff but sadly ran into issues again, mostly my communication skills and me being afraid me asking on progress on my art is bothering/nagging my artist.*Sigh.* I got to get over that.
Ugh, I installed this yesterday, and it's so fun!~ But, in the battle where the Dominator takes over Miku-nee, you have no power against her? When I am close to winning, she literally kills me completely. Like, she kills me with 48 damage? How? Does anyone have tips?
Oh you playing on the "abstract nonsense" difficulty? you could probably grind a level or two on the roombas, but the most important thing would be to be sure to stun her whenever she charges.
Or get the weapon upgrade and destroy the dominator before she powers up that far! It's doable!
The "tough cookie" consumable also helps by boosting your defense.
oooh! This was so fun to play!
Am glad you like it! Things are sadly a little uncertain when it comes to artwork delays, hopefully things will settle and I can make lots of progress again!
I'm going to do the best I can to make Rin a jerk in this game.
Wahaha that's allowed, though it doesn't make things easier!
God, I realize that when I return to this...at some point I'm going to have to write way more dialogue.
Challenge accepted!
There's not that much it does in the current, demo release, I'll have to make sure that it does in the full release, so much dialogue left to write, so much snark to invent. Wish me luck!
Good luck.
THIS IS SO COOOOLLL
So after a long, Long hiatus, I have finally resumed work on the game! I still am not 100% confident I can finish it, but I will still try!
You can do it koga! :)
Message of note: I thank everyone who has played my friend's games. Sadly she has been unable to work on them due to RL issues. Not least of which depression. She has sent me all game files and development notes. If any critical issues arrive I will do my best to solve them. I cannot promise any major changes however.
Hey there Kayako! As a Vocaloid fan myself, I say, you did a very good job on the sprites and animations. Hope your game grows! Peace!
-That one game reviewer
In all honesty. I haven't had much time, money, or energy to dedicate to working on the game the last few months. Real life issues have been keeping me down sadly. I will get back to work on it when things look up!
We are all having a year we won't forget. Hard to be positive, but I have found a creative outlet that has helped me. (simple tabletop rpg scatter objects and small woodworking projects.) I hope you've got something to help you out too!
How is the game development coming?
Is kokone in the game? She's a vocaloid too...
I focussed mostly on the more well-known ones I am familiar with. there's about 108 commercial vocaloid voice banks out. and that's not counting the voice synthesizers that don't refer to themselves as such.
I simply can't include them all as a solo dev, who does this as a hobby in her spare time. I do like Kokone's design though, so maybe I'll include her somewhere as a side-character!
I don't know if this is intentional or not, but during the Dominator miniboss, I tested out EMP Grenade and the result seems to contradict the item description, unless it's foreshadowing.
SPOILERS: https://imgur.com/a/KGJW4vb
This is rather odd indeed, since they do have resistance to the state. I may have broken something in the script. I'll have to test it more! Thanks for pointing this out!
Edit: I have no idea what can be doing it. I tried state rate 0% and state resist yet they are still getting it. This doesn't happen with bleed/oil spill, has to be due to the way the engine handles items.
I found a workaround, a bit dirty but it works,
So yes, as a bit of a spoiler, despite the intentional and unintentional 'hints' The main characters are not really robots~
Added another small fix:
-Selecting the option "Keep listening" during the boss dialogue will now correctly reset the boss to their maximum strength.
-Rin will no longer mention Yuuto when calling Luka after losing the third battle.
-Enemies will no longer disappear when you're overlevelled, instead the EXP gain will be slightly reduced to notify you it's time to move on to stronger foes.
I've been looking forward to playing this ever since I saw it, awhile after that I decided to play a few vocaloid songs one of them being Kokoro(Heart).
Its been a while since I played a game with bits of fighting so this was refreshing but I didn't expect Rin would learn how to fight from her club, usually its the other way around. Anyway I enjoyed playing this and I'm looking forward to more stuff.
Ah yes, Kokoro is a classic! As for Rin teaching others how to fight, couldn't have her be too perfect or the conflict would be over before it had well begun, Ehehe~
I'm glad you liked what was in the demo~ I'll keep working towards the main game!
Minor update:
Changed the smartphone button from Z to S
Freeing up the Z as another 'confirm' button.
Added a warning to Meltdown (hard) and Abstract Nonsense (suicidal) modes that these respective modes will not explain any gameplay mechanics.
This was a great demo!
Good luck with this project ^.^
Thank you for playing! I am glad you enjoyed it~!
I had to use two meat buns to survive against Hideki on Abstract Nonsense difficulty. This is really taking me back to Laetitia’s Hellish Yard mode where even nameless mooks were a threat. Hopefully a dedicated healer joins me soon
The smartphone is a good modern way to keep track of information, but mapping it to Z is bad for players who are used to using that key for confirmation. Is there a way for players to set their keys?
Oh dear, people are actually playing on abstract nonsense, the difficulty I added because people said my first game's "hellish yard" was too easy X3
And I'm afraid not, unless Z was the only key I could map it to that wouldn't cause trouble, If I mapped it to Space or Enter it broke gamepad compatibility. It also didn't allow me to map it to keys that didn't already exist. I may have to find a dedicated coder for this one.
-Edit Turns out that I long replaced the plugin that didn't have this flexibility. I can actually fix this! I guess "S" would be just as good a button for a "smartphone" as any.
Thanks for the fix.
For the second battle, I have a feeling the story is supposed to progress no matter who wins, but I won on my first try.
The third battle is indeed an optional victory battle. Even with the cookie, which can be used before a fight, I feel like the enemy's damage wasn't reduced that much and it took me several attempts to win. It's possible on the hardest difficulty with regen effects and Rin's speed buff. Sadly, Rin didn't confiscate the boss's weapon for her own use.
Edit: I beat the demo and did as many events for the party members as I could. Hopefully, this doesn't lead to a yandere ending if I try the same thing in the full release.
Wahaha, The yandere ending is something I only did for my first game, doing it twice would be a little much~! Glad you could finish it even on the hardest difficulty, tuning that one was a true headache~
Great game!
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it despite the final boss~!
Amazing job! Also Congratulations!!
Thank you for the amazing art~ Your busts really made it shine!
Great job! Congratulation on released your game!
Thank you~ I am so happy I was able to release it~
On to the full game~!
The demo has finally been released. A lot work, a lot of testing and implementing feedback. As well as many sleepless nights finally came with some payoff~! I hope you all will enjoy the game. I fear the main game will probably be a long while so please have this vertical slice and see if you may like what is to come!