Starlight Nights
Created for Trans Joy Jam 2025
(and also created in a huge rush, it's janky)
You are Magical Girl Melody Starlight (?!)
By day, you're a Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton. By night, you fight mysterious nightmares with magical powers. You're just like any other normal magical girl, inasmuch as any magical girl can be considered normal. There's just one elephant in the room...
Two out of three endings are positive endings.
More a sidescroller than a visual novel.
The downloadable build is recommended; the browser version is built with almost no optimizations and is barely functional.
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Comments
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Finally had the time to sit down a play this! I enjoyed it overall.
The story was good, though as invadererik mentioned below, did feel a bit similar to See Who I Am. (I went into this expecting it to be a sequel to that one)
I know you mentioned the gameplay was a bit rushed, and while that's clear I still liked the new variation on combat.
If there was one thing I'd like to see updated with that it would be more forward-visibility when walking. I'd always be right up against the edge of the screen, and see attacks incoming way before I could see any enemies.
I'm not sure if I got all the endings? (Blue pill, and two slight variations on red pill?)
Glad to see more games coming from you, even as you've scaled back your game-dev presence. I'll be here for the next one, whenever you find the time!
Thanks for playing!
The camera and a lot of stuff happening offscreen is definitely an issue. I should have put the movement triggers closer to the middle, as you suggested, and probably moved the camera out a little.
I think you found all the endings. There are some slight variations in the last scene depending on earlier decisions, but these aren't distinct endings. I do wish I had time to put in something indicating which endings were found.
I guess the game part of it is mainly there to... not just be a VN ?
Its short and nice, if somewhat of a repeat of See Who I Am .
I guess I hope it ties into the other story line and
looking forward to the bigger meta developing.
Thanks for playing!
It's kind of a repeat of Shattered in that way, where I came up with the narrative first and then had to figure out some gameplay for it, though I actually started working on the gameplay first this time. It was definitely a bridge too far to do both with the resources I had and the gameplay really suffered, but I needed story for this jam, I did want some gameplay, and I really wasn't feeling like making cutscenes for all those critical story beats.
I've done way too many origin stories in general. I think literally every story-driven game I've made in the past few years that wasn't a sequel has been some form of origin stories. It's an easy narrative that's comfortable to me, but I'm definitely running out of variations on it and I really ought to do something else next time.