ALMOND RIDGE

CONTENT WARNING:

This game contains depictions of corpses, elder abuse, dementia, blood, cosmic horror, violence, fear of death, fear of entropy,  and other such terrors. This game is roughly 20 minutes long.

SAVE YOUR ELDERS.

Something is wrong at Almond Ridge, a small nursing/ hospice home nested in a Massachusetts almond orchard. The rooms are mostly empty, the halls are quiet, the staff is secluded, and the residents live in fear. Enter the role of an undercover social worker, and try to figure out the source of this place's strangeness before more lives are lost.

Disco Elysium-inspired skill system: Use your Acuity, Action, and Appeal in dice rolls and passive checks. Solve the mystery your own way.

Face the Consequences: Manage both your Stress and Suspicion jars to keep investigating. Don't let either jar fill up, or face dire consequences.

Responsive Characters: Meet the varied cast of Almond Ridge, and learn about how their stories. Each character is hiding something, some more than others.

Credits

Audrey White, Programmer
Robert Begg (@robertbegg_art), Character Artist
Yakoub Mousli, Writer
Anthony Maiolo, Team Lead and Designer
Choco (thatchocobo), Composer
Queque, Background Artist
D-raw, UI Artist

Sound Effects and Royalty Free music taken from https://www.zapsplat.com
Made using the  RenPy Visual Novel Engine
JMH Typewriter by Jorge Morón
PentaGram's Callygraphy by FULL MOON Design House
Clear Typewriter found at https://fontsgeek.com/clear-typewriter-font
X Typewriter by GGBotNet

Extras:

Almond Ridge OST:

Idea Graveyard:

During a jam, some ideas just don't make it into the final product. Here are a few:

• Space Station setting. It was just less attractive than the Nursing Home.
• Scene where all the residents played a game of basketball/dodgeball against you. Canceled due to time and the realization that a game of dodgeball would kill most of the residents.
• Simon as a fully sprited character, canceled due to fear of holding up the character sprite workload.
• Skateboarding mini-game. As funny as I think it was, it ruined the tone of later days.
• Item inventory. I just couldn't think of any way it could improve on game flow.
• Voice acting. This stung, we were planning on getting some VAs but the cancellation of the voice-casting event shifted our timetable. Hopefully, we will add VA some other time.
• More Backgrounds. Many backgrounds got cut, including Dr Lewis' office, the Shrine, the Police Station, the Bus, and the placebeyond_places. Our BG artist Queque already had a large amount on their plate, and the addition of more BGs would only sink our project.
• Chess Minigame. I wanted Lester and the player to actually play chess, but the additional work and invalidation of current skill systems would not have been worth it.