Signal Hill
The world went to shit long before you were born- what happened, nobody's sure. Whatever it was, it left a mess. The horrors of the blasted wasteland, the things that roam outside of city walls, the static that buzzes in your ear like an old TV... not to mention the violent fuckers out there who'd rather they have what you've got.
But a job with a caravan travelling across the wastes means you can finally start a new life in the neon-lit utopia of Signal Hill. That is, until you're ambushed outside the city, your cargo stolen and your guards dead. The bright lights and the ever-present hum of the radio are starting to feel like more of a nightmare than a dream...
Signal Hill is a post apocalyptic interactive fiction RPG set in on off-kilter world brimming with personality. Heavily inspired by Apocalypse World, Fallout: New Vegas, and Disco Elysium, it places the player into a rich text-based open world full of people to meet, things to do, and leads to follow. Authored, choice-based quests will guide you along a non-linear story as you decide who to stick with and who you're going to be.
EXPLORE THE APOCALYPSE |
MAKE YOUR PLACE |
PLAY WITH IDENTITY |
|---|---|---|
Roam the richly detailed world of Signal Hill, learning about the place you are and the place you come from. Each area is a snapshot of city life, from the luxury of The Heights to the poverty-stricken slums of Skid Row. |
Meet a colourful cast of freaks with their own agendas, all eager to use you to further them. Decide which of three factions to align yourself with and find your place in the conflict brewing at the heart of Signal Hill. |
Beyond just skills, explore what makes your character unique and choose their identity. Become a hedonist, worship a mysterious Northern death saint, take up arms as a mercenary. Shape your past and future. |
This is a demo, meaning it's a representative portion of the final game at only about 83,000 words. Things will change, some of them a lot. The world will gain more nooks and crannies to explore, you'll be able to follow every lead down long and winding paths, and you'll gain access to even more abilities and items. The game will be receiving constant support and frequent updates for the foreseeable future.
Bug Reports
The nature of an early preview release is that there may be bugs, typos, or errors that beta testers simply haven't spotted yet. If you encounter a bug, please send me an email at [email protected] with "Bug Report" in the subject line. If you have feedback, you can send it to that email or send an ask over on my blog, signalhill-if.tumblr.com.
Please note that bug reports in the comment section will be deleted 24 hours afte the bug has been fixed.
CREDITS
- Twine was created by Chris Klimas
- The Sugarcube format and Tweego was created by T. M. Edwards
- Various macros created by ChapelR, HiEv, cyrusfirheir, and SjoerdHekking
- The template that I frankensteined was originally created by manonamora
- If a text-based interactive fiction game can be Powered By The Apocalypse, this one would be it. Apocalypse World was made by D. Vincent and Meguey Baker
- Clothing icons were created by Blair Adams from Noun Project
KEYBOARD CONTROLS | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-9 | Select links on screen |
L |
Open the leads menu |
| Space | Roll the dice |
I | Open the ID menu |
| S | Open the save menu |
G | Open the gear menu |
| C | Open the config menu |
? | Open the help menu |
Development log
- Signal Hill's Demo is OUT!4 days ago
Comments
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Just tested out the demo! it was great, and I enjoyed the storyline and the customization options so far! I only have one issue... there's still a few errors here and there while playing that can be frustrating but I'm sure it'll be fixed in the future with more updates. Keep up the good work! I look forward to the full game!
Interesting little demo! I appreciated all the options in character creation. I was wondering if the markings, etc. or clothing choice would tie into anything other than just describing the character. I didn't happen upon anything that did so I'm curious how that'll pan out in future releases. Just in general it seems like there were a whole lot of mechanics and ideas getting set up that didn't seem like they had time to pay off in the demo. I almost started to feel a little lost with all the locations and characters getting introduced so quickly. The snappy opening was good. Quick and dirty context that doesn't deny the player character didn't already exist. I think maybe that opening narration sequence went a little long though maybe. I noticed a few times, in and out of the opening, where where I would get two options to “continue,” more or less, and after picking one a character or the narration would seem like it was responding to the other one? If I might throw a couple of, hopefully useful, bits of constructive criticism. I felt like as the player things were mostly happening to me or at me rather than me feeling like I was going and actively engaging with things. I felt a bit lacking in agency for a lot of it. I guess too in terms of character voice many characters sounded fairly similar to me as well as similar to the narrative voice. Interested to see where the project goes! Good luck with it!
I just got an error in the armoury thing and now I can’t continue the game no matter how hard I try, how do I fix it?! The game is really fun and great otherwise I’m just a bit confused how to get back to playing the game
Apologies, sometimes things like that get missed in testing. It should be fixed now!
This is amazing! Aside from getting stuck at one point, I love the atmosphere and vibe. I can't wait for the full version!!!
Thank you! If you don't mind me asking, what section did you get stuck at?
I got stuck whenever I clicked an option that was red, because they weren't connected to another twine passage.
It happened with the option "Stop to chat with Pistol" that appears if you're friendly to him when you first interact and come back again later. This also appears in the Lamplighter HQ Market: The option "Approach the armoury" leads to an error too.
Something else I noticed: responding "You fucking owe me" at the beginning of Tracking Number gave me "You gestured to your You lifted up your patchwork shirt, showing off your You gestured to your You gestured to your You gestured to your You gestured to your bandaged midsection." and then proceeds normally.
Oh my! Not sure how that got missed. Thank you for the report, I'll fix it as soon as I'm back at my computer :)
All of these issues should be fixed now. Thank you!
Hey for some reason I get an error when I try to save and I was wondering if you know anything. I really love the game and I can't save my progress.
Hey! Without knowing the exact error I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, but Twine saves your progress using your browser's cache, so things that block that (like some ad blockers or cookie blockers) will prevent it from saving properly. If you have any extensions, try disbling them temporarily to see if that's the issue. You can also save to disk, which will save the data as a file on your computer instead. If using the itch.io app, try enabling autoname.
Hey! Congrats on the game demo coming out, it looks great!
A little side note, I've been looking to getting into making a Text adventure leaning on the RPG side of things mechanic wise, and was thinking of using Twine?
I was wondering if you could give me any tips, hint or recommendations you've learnt along the development road, I know a bit of programming but would probably have to learn the Sugarcube format syntax (I'd prefer the more flexibility with making mechanics such as your dice rolling!)
This was a bit of a monologue so thank you for sticking with it! Any help would be incredible, so thank you!
Hey! I'd love to help you out! It can be a little intimidating at first, but once you've gotten the hang of it you can do pretty much anything with Twine!
My biggest general advice is to figure out what you want to do first, and then work backwards. For example, I didn't know how to accomplish the clothing system, I just decided what I wanted it to be like and figured out how to do it from there. You learn more from needing to do something to accomplish a goal than from reading about how to do something in the abstract.
My two other big pieces of advice are to find and use other people's macros (there's no point reinventing the wheel, if somebody's already made a superior inventory system, go with that!) and use widgets very liberally. The widget macro basically lets you run the same big block of Twine code using just one line, and with a big RPG style thing like this, it really comes in handy. When a scene ends, instead of manually typing in or copy and pasting all of the necessary code, I can just slap in "<<completelead>>" and all of that is done for me. Be thrifty, conserve your time.
If you ever need any specific help, please feel free to send me a message or an ask over on my tumblr!
Thank you ever so much! All of this will be suppperrr helpful, and I might ping you a message on Tumblr at somepoint if I do get really stuck with anything hehe
It looks not that bad from the outside, but I think learning the lingo and mechanics might take a while.
But yeah, all of this is great advice! Again, thank you!
Glad to be of help!
this is so cool!
love it can't wait to see whats next
This is so interesting ✨ I'm quite excited for more!!
I have been following you for a while on Tumblr, and to say the least, you did not disappoint! Excited to see where this will go :)
This is really, really cool! Hope to see more<3
Thank you so much!
I loved this, can't wait to see this flourish
So glad you liked it! Thank you!
love it. can't wait for more
Thank you! More is in the works... hopefully soon! 👀
This is looking good, interesting story
Thank you!!