another year, another ghost jam! this time I am writing my round-up ever so slightly closer to the event date compared to last year. once again, please check out the event results page here because I won’t be rehashing things like the rules and event totals and whatnot. just little blurbs on the ghosts submitted with my thoughts on them. I did submit a ghost for this year, and later on in this entry I wrote about the development process for caged fly, if that’s something you’re interested in.
Tiny Toy
Authors: idk
a little wind up toy for your desktop! it delights me to see ukagaka that move around your desktop, and it’s something I want to toy with eventually in my own projects. a good example of how an ukagaka doesn’t have to be anything complicated if you don’t want it to be.
Let's go get groceries!
Authors: SmokyCinnamonRoll
a ghost with a simple premise: you’re out shopping for groceries, but you don’t have a list, and so your companion will comment on things available in the store for purchase. at least, it sounds simple until you end up with things like “festive shaped tomato soup: no with real gaming cube” in your cart. great showcase of how large word pools can freshen up otherwise repetitive dialogue.
Doodle Daydreams
Authors: Galla, Kipali, Zichqec
a unique concept for a ghost of a poseable artist reference doll that comes with a variety of dressups and different dialogue pools for each of its three poses. impressive amount of content for a ghost made in 72 hours also. I really like the scribbly art style for the dressups, and that there are “sets” of clothing, but you can also mix and match at will. each of the dialogue pools is creative and varied.
Janet and Violet
Authors: Odie
a ghost using a freeshell of two faeries that live in your garden. they have a lot of fun banter, and I like hearing the snippets of worldbuilding that come through in their dialogue. very happy to see this freeshell being used since I know a lot of effort was put into it… the idle wing flapping looks great! also happy that this ghost uses my higher or lower code I put out a while back, www.
Mango Boys
Authors: idk
while I am not familiar with this piece of media, I thought these guys were cute! the ghost doesn’t have any randomtalk, so if you just want a little companion to sit on your desktop while you work this is the ghost for you. I like that this ghost snaps to the side of your screen; I don’t see a ton of ghosts that do that.
おかん
Authors: netai98
a ghost I can’t personally give a review of… I didn’t download it at the time of the jam, and the download has been taken down with no plans to distribute currently. thankfully, zichqec downloaded it and wrote a little blurb for me so everyone say Thank You Zi. followed is zi's blurb:
"This ghost is a very short linear experience. I have to use machine translation to read it, so my understanding is a bit rough, but it seems to be about a difficult family situation. It ends on a sweet note, though! Difficult but not bitter."
"There is no random dialogue nor menu. The moment you open the ghost you are thrust into the story, and the only pauses are where you have to click to advance the text. When the story concludes, the ghost uninstalls itself. The finite nature of it is very intriguing to me, since with most ghosts you can play with them (or add more content to them) forever. I enjoy these one-shot style ghosts a lot, they're a fun way to mix it up!"
Stranger On The Ground
Authors: logic.png
bubble wrap popping simulator but with a short story attached to it. I did find the story really charming, and honestly surprisingly deep for a self proclaimed semi-joke ghost. I think fidget type ghosts are fun, and while I do wish there were some popping noises for popping bubbles in the ghost, I can see why it was omitted for the jam. for sure worth a quick play!
Ice cream simulator 2000
Authors: SmokyCinnamonRoll
exactly what it says on the tin. well, not exactly - it’s an ice cream store simulator specifically. while it isn’t very expansive currently, the little proof of concept is interesting! I did get a chuckle out of a few of the customers also. excited to see how this one gets expanded! the art style is super cute!
A Labyrinth
Authors: The Nameless One
a ghost that is a tiny game. you’re stuck in a labyrinth and need to find your way out. there is a little bit of pixel art that I thought was really endearing, and the little tiny snippets of lore about the world that the labyrinth is in make me want to know more! I also hope that this ghost gets expanded or followed up on in some way - it’s a really creative usage of ukagaka.
Griever!
Authors: Okuajub
I am admittedly not familiar with the final fantasy this little guy comes from, so the word teaching is lost on me. really this ghost is just a lil guy to sit on your desktop and look cute, and I do like that! the little (optional) sound effects are really cute… and the art style with the crayon-like lines is charming (I feel like I say charming a lot in these blurbs but a lot of the ghosts are charming to me….)
デスクトップ耳かき
Authors: 笙はくさむのぶもり
Content warnings: Sexual content
literally “desktop ear pick”. a ghost that gives you an asmr audio experience of having your ears cleaned. once again, another creative concept for a ghost! there is a warning of sexual content (implied) but I don’t really think it’s needed…. the ghost has been updated since ghost jam to include new sounds and other tweaks. one of my favorite ghosts is a white noise machine (essentially) so I look forward to any ghost that uses relaxing sounds.
親愛なるファントムブルーより
Authors: マグロニウム/Maguronium
Content warnings: 犯罪および窃盗に関するトーク
another ghost from a series I am not super familiar with - cookie run! the art for this ghost mimics the official art style well - if it didn’t have the new assets only tag I would have assumed that it was official art. from what I gathered through a translator ghost, you are working as an assistant for a mystery writer, which is a premise I think is interesting! I look forward to this ghost getting expanded with more dialogue!
Little My
Authors: KFC
Content warnings: some swearing, rudeness and abrasiveness, talk of food and eating
I am not familiar with the moomin series, but little my has a menu with information about all the characters she talks about, so it’s not difficult to follow along. she has the ability to race around your screen, which makes her feel very energetic. lots of dialogue in this ghost as well, with two different “modes” to the ghost. overall a very developed ukagaka considering the time constraints.
The Eternal WIP
Authors: idk
Content warnings: unreality, potentially unsettling dialogue
a ghost I feel personally targeted by, considering the state of my art wips folder… a simple premise but a unique one. very cute shell - I love the slight animations to the ghost that make it feel more alive. it does make me feel a little bad about all my abandoned wips… and definitely sorry for the particular wip the ghost is representing.
Love and Dove
Authors: wizardernie, lucid
Content warnings: Mildly suggestive
cute boys doing cute things. their banter is nice and the shell is well drawn! it is endearing to hear the guys talk about their shared love for fashion and fitness… I hope that they get more shells or dressups in the future to give them more outfits! definitely feels like a more classic ukagaka where you just have two guys on your desktop chatting about random things.
Caged Fly
Authors: Vita/yuyudev, Deco
Content warnings: Religion, language, drug mentions, violence mentions. his outfit is suggestive but nothing explicit
wao!!! this is my ghost!! I will have a longer postmortem for this guy later in this post, but the basic premise is that the user is an urban exploration blogger who stumbles upon beelzebub in the basement of an abandoned house, who is currently trapped to a summoning circle due to an aborted summoning. you can make a contract to let him out… or you can just sit and listen to him talk for a while. deco did a great job on the shell art as per usual.
Mori and Hayden
Content warnings: Major themes of violence and death
can I call a ghost about death and violence cozy? mori has a fanciful style of speech that contrasts against hayden’s more blunt dialogue in an interesting way. I really enjoy the painterly art style of the ghost as well - like a cave drawing almost. the minigame that the ghost has is well polished, and I like the little insects that appear when you complete the maze. a well polished ghosts that I am eager to see more updates for!
Sylvie
Authors: WhatAPhantasia
Content warnings: Language, Terminal Illness
another ghost from phantasia set in the same universe as two of neir other ghosts. I like to see the different bits of worldbuilding that come through each set of characters and scenarios, and sylvie is no different. it’s a unique touch to have them facing away from the viewer, so that you can pretend they are watching whatever is on your screen. while the jam version of this ghost is just a demo, I am charmed by the relationship and am interested in seeing more in the future.
Hermes
Authors: Amanda
Content warnings: Mentions of kidnapping
a ghost for the greek mythology enthusiasts. travel to three different places with hermes, and listen to him talk about the various people and events related to that place. the background of the ghost changing for each place you go to is a nice touch. each area has a large pool of dialogue as well. you’ll learn a lot about greek mythos if you don’t know much already.
Ye Olde Cursed Tower
Authors: Galla, Pommy, Zichqec
Content warnings: Dehumanization, user death
the shell of this ghost is super cool! I don’t see a lot of shells that use 3d models for the images, and the animations are super smooth. another unique concept for a ghost, and the two characters work well together. the ability to change the surfaces and the color of the balloon each character uses lets the user customize the ghost to their liking. the ukagaka also has different dialogue for when the two characters are close to each other vs far apart, which I don’t think I have seen before
Tenna
Authors: Venelona
it’s tenna! from tv! I had put this ghost off for a while because I had not played the newest deltarune chapters at the time he came out. he’s a ghost made to be a great companion, with the ability to “watch” whatever you’re doing on your computer and comment on it (please note he doesn’t actually look at your computer files, for anyone worried). the animations his shell has are spot on to the animations in-game. another really fleshed out ghost from this jam!
caged fly - a postmortem
so! caged fly! my one and only submission to ghost jam this year. I had decided early on that instead of doing a 72 hour ghost and a ghost for the rest of the jam I wanted to just do one ghost and polish it. and well…. caged fly (or as I refer to him, bubs) is more polished in some ways than my previous longer ghost jam project (lunar leporidae), but also unpolished in ways that I hadn't anticipated. let's start from the beginning.
I started planning for ghost jam about a week before it started. that was in part because I didn’t realize the (optional) theme for the jam had already been posted, so I would have planned earlier had I realized… I looped in deco to be the shell artist again (barring one small prop I drew myself). I spitballed a few ideas loosely inspired by the theme and landed on the idea of “demon you can make a contract with). I knew from the start that I wanted to have something slightly more mechanic intensive than my previous jam entries, and so bubs having two “states” where once you enter the second state you cannot return to the first (aside from resetting) was something I decided on early on. I also knew I wanted to make a ghost in aosora again because I wanted to experiment with it more after I had used it for my masquerade ghost. I didn’t think about the fact that there wasn’t a template for aosora out so bubs is missing some boilerplate things that are standard in ghosts written in yaya (because there are established templates out). if I had thought about that, I would have spent time before jam experimenting more with aosora so that I would have written all the boilerplate things for bubs in the jam timeframe, as opposed to just leaving them out for the jam.
before the jam I did sketch out some concepts for bubs to hand to deco as a springboard for the design. I like to give my artists (be it jam partners, or people I commission for art) the ability to take creative control on the visuals of a project, but for the short jam period I thought I would try to hammer down a design (or at least, give deco more of a concrete jumping off point than last time). I did also write a small outline for the ghost to settle on a premise (user is an urban explorer who encounters beelzebub trapped in a summoning circle after an aborted ritual) along with general topic ideas and other demons that bubs would know/reference.
when the jam started, the very first thing I got finished was the “make a contract” mechanic which locks you out of bubs’ normal dialogue pool and opens up a new dialogue pool. the boot/end dialogue is different in each phase as well, along with the menu (although the menu in the second phase barely counts as a menu…). simultaneously, deco worked on getting the base sprite finished, and we had a little bit of design iteration where I suggested adding cowlicks that mimic fly antenna to bubs, and deco added decorative summoning circles behind his head. here are some bubs concepts done during the jam
for the markings on bubs’ arms, I wanted to have him add a new tattoo/marking to himself for each cult that summoned him. the markings are some alchemical/occult symbols, but also some original sigils that are for fictional cults that were dedicated to bubs. maybe I’ll expand on some of them more in future updates…
I did get the emotion list to deco fairly late in the jam (emotion list being a list of emoticons I wanted expressions drawn for bubs based on what I had written so far) but he graciously didn’t complain and gave me a lot of pieces for expressions that I then cobbled together in different combinations to make different emotions. I was writing pretty much all through the jam, but I was struggling a bit with aosora through the jam which ate up some of my time and, more importantly, motivation. so I didn’t write as much as I wanted to (but isn’t that always the case with these jams…).
in the end, I did run pretty close to the deadline with finishing up bubs… I had a lot of tiny bits to polish on the final day. he was submitted though! mostly with everything I wanted! of course, there were some post-jam bugs I still needed to iron out, and I have since written more to add to him, but overall I am satisfied with how it turned out for the jam. and of course, another jam under my belt means I have more experience for the next one!
I had deco write a short comment about his experience on the jam:
“It was fun working on this design! Ty to vita for giving me full creative range! They gave me a reference drawing + key concepts and I just went crazy from there :)”
onward to more ghosting!