A Place to Grow (Demo)
A downloadable visual novel for Windows and macOS
STORY
You found a job listing online for a manual labour job in a remote town, room and board included.
The town is smaller than you expected. Only a few residents, no internet access and most local businesses completely boarded up.
But who knows, maybe you could really grow some roots here.
CONTENT WARNINGS
Common Route: Animal Death, Swearing
Joseph's Route: Alcoholism, Non-consensual kissing, Forced feminine gender roles, References to religion, Suicidal ideation, Violence, Visible injuries, Death
ABOUT
A Place to Grow is a work in progress horror dating sim set in Northern Ontario, made by a solo dev.
The first route was built for Nanoreno 2024 and features the following...
- 5 endings
- ~8.5K wordcount - est. 30 min playtime
- 4 CGs (with variants)
- 1 Romanceable love interest (hopefully more to come?)
- Playable character is gender neutral, but there are currently feminine comparisons/pronoun usage (to be updated later)
- References to Canadiana
UPDATE ROADMAP
May 1st - Amare Games Festival:
- Character Sprites for other existing characters
- Gallery and an endings tracker
- More MC character customization(?)
July 1st - Josei Game Jam:
- Additional character route(s?)
- More interactions between existing characters
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
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I really enjoyed the game! I love the art style and especially all the unhinged expressions Joseph has.
I do have a question though. I know this game isn't finished but:
*spoilers*
I noticed the comfort him choice just leads to the same end as if you chose to punish and kiss him. I assume it's because the game is still in progress. Will there be an ending to save him? I love how endearing yet pathetic he is in a way and it's refreshing to see a game where you can say turn table or get some sort of revenge in a game with a yandere love interest.
I'm glad you enjoyed the game!
Hmm, as for saving him... Tbh I don't know! I guess I have to think about what that means and what someone like Joseph would even consider being saved? Much to consider!
I played the game and felt like making a review or something.
I was very triggered by the screen shake and offended that there was no warning for it. /j
The narrative was disjointed and the decisions were arbitrary. I guess Joseph being smitten that quickly makes sense since the MC reminds him of a past lover, but the intensity of it seems fairly unrealistic.
The main character suffered from a lack of depth and the "Jody" persona was underdeveloped and didn't have a satisfying arc, at least to me. He feels fairly one dimensional.
I liked the part where Joseph gets all masochistic about punishment A LITTLE BIT, but it still feels illogical for him to act that way. Or maybe he just really is batshit insane.
I only reached one of the endings, in which the MC pummels Joseph to death and doesn't face any repercussions. It felt kind of weird and un-natural in a way I can't explain.
I liked the art style, with the colors and whatnot. I felt that the backgrounds and general art could have gotten more detail, but as an artist myself I understand cutting corners where need be, especially in a whole video game.
I hope that my constructive criticism can help with your future projects, even if just a little bit.
Hey! Appreciate you taking the time to write a review. Even if you didn't enjoy the experience, you still took the time to make an account just to leave a review, which means something to me.
The game is an unfinished project, so definitely understand it feeling incomplete. I do think by only achieving one ending you might have cut yourself off from some information that would have added some context? But I can't promise even if you did play more endings that you would enjoy yourself, sometimes things just aren't to people's tastes!
Regarding the backgrounds though... I'm not super good at drawing backgrounds to begin with, so them feeling rough is fair, but it's also a bit of a stylistic choice. Since the game takes place in Northern Ontario, they're meant to be a bit reminiscent of The Group Of Seven, a group of landscape artists who painted a lot of Ontario Scenery. Again, I'm a pretty shoddy background artist, so that might not come across, but the visible brown peaking out is meant to mimic the wood that they sometimes painted on and left visible, and the chunky paint strokes are kind of a feature as well!
This isn't meant to change your opinion or anything, just some of the general thinking behind stylistic choices that I thought were interesting to share in general.
THAT WAS SO COOL. I really liked it from the beginning, the colors of background AND THE TASTIEST juiciest artstyle, oh how I just love how Joseph's sprite looks like, I was so happy to see every new sprite, they're all so so so delicious, I could stare at them for a long time .
I guess I got every ending possible (but I'm not sure, I wasn't counting actually, forgot to), and I was feeling uncomfortable in every one lol . but I have my favorite ending anyway
I just wish for a happy life for this man, ehhh, I hope he'll get it eventually (payin' for his therapy rn)
I hope we'll see more of this game, characters and endings, I'm looking forward to play this novel in the future
in my past, I once experienced similar vibes (as this novel), and it's just ... so scary, uncomfortable, eerie, but at the same time somehow cozy
amazing
Wow! This is a super kind comment.
I also hope to keep updating this game, although I'm moving a bit slower now that there's no jam to light a fire under me.
I'm hoping to figure out how to make an ending tracker so hopefully keeping track of something like that won't be as difficult in the future. But! Still figuring it out!
I wish you the best of luck with your work! honestly, I still think about your novel sometimes. it's been a long time since I've had one of those occasions where I think about a novel for a long time . . .
(I'm still in awe of the drawing style. it's too beautiful. can we expect more content with Joseph during the development of the novel in the future? or will you only be working on other characters?)
As much as I would like to say my dreams for this VN are huge. The scope of the game in my mind is planned to be pretty small... since for now my goal is just to focus on other character's routes
Then when it's done I'll work on adding more stuff, maybe?
Like I really would like to add in more interactions between characters to make it feel like these are people who actually know each other and have relationships... New scenes/endings where if you visit more than one person maybe they'll feel some type of way about it and stuff.
That's more for the future though, so I don't wanna promise anything! But thank u so much for being excited!
that's a good plan. I think it's a good decision to create the basics first, and then apply new layers on top of that. just do what you like, because that's what matters!
I also just want to say that thanks to your novel I learned about yandere game jam and now I'm working on my first novel. thank you so much for your work!
Hey ho! Really well made, art AND writing! It feels like the small town I used to have (But it wasn't a farm town, more so a fishers town where the old sailor tells little ol' you that a siren will grab you if you get too close to the strong waves.) and all but,
There is an error that occurs? Around day 6 or something, when you choose to not punish Joseph/Jody, you get the message that the code had an issue running, have the error!
I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.
While running game code:
File "game/script.rpy", line 2402, in script
"He says it one evening, while you're enjoying each other's company."
Exception: DynamicImage 'BG/Farm_LivingRoom_[time].png': could not find image. ('BG/Farm_LivingRoom_Day.png')
Oh jeez, thank you so much for flagging that, and also for your super nice comment!
I missed some images in my folder, but have fixed that now. You'll have to redownload the folder on itch.io! The file you would need is in the game/image/BG folder.
No problem dude!!! I hope to see this game continue and grow!! That seems to be the only bug I ran into after replaying it several times for EVERY possible scenario, as said great game, writing and art !!
I like the drawing style and Joseph is quite cute. At the same time, all his smiles, even harmless ones, give off madness, but in a time of calm he directly exudes an aura of inner confidence.
Thank you! I appreciate you playing and taking the time to comment.
In my mind he's someone who was quite well liked and popular back when the town was more populated. So him having some confidence makes sense :)