Hello again!

Wolf in the Woods is my second solo game and my first solo entry into O2A2 and SunoFes! I thought I’d just put a few thoughts down about the game here. Thanks for reading! 😊

The concept

So the idea of doing a story based on the Big Bad Wolf actually came to me when my niece was watching a musical version of The Three Little Pigs. I started thinking about a story in which the Big Bad Wolf wasn’t the bad guy after all and it was all a case of judging a book by its cover.  It’s easy to believe that something or someone is bad when everyone around you if saying the same thing, this is the situation in which our main character Emma is in. She’s been told stories about how the Wolf will charm you but ultimately wants to kill and eat you.

The sacrifice element of the story was inspired by the party game, Werewolf, which I used to occasionally play at school. The idea of a wolf killing people one by one feels scarier than a wolf killing everybody in one go.  In Wolf in the Woods, it is the villagers who choose the villager that must die rather than the wolf choosing.

The art

As the game was inspired by fairytales, I wanted the aesthetic of the game to resemble the old pages of a storybook and so I chose an ink/watercolour style. For the wolf’s design particularly, I wanted the line art to be quite messy and loose. I’ve drawn other wolf characters before so I wanted to ensure that Ben (the wolf in Wolf in the Woods) looked different from those.

Due to the restrictions of the O2A2 jam I couldn’t show Emma as a sprite but you do see her on the main menu screen and itch.io thumbnail. Emma is a pig so I tried to make her design hint towards that. She wears a red cloak that is referred to as “The Bloody Shroud” in the game, which is of course a reference to Little Red Riding Hood.

The bad end (Spoilers)

So who shot Emma in the bad end? Well…I’m not going to say haha. I had my own answer when I wrote it, however, one unexpected thing I love from watching people play the game is finding out who they think it is. It’s been so cool hearing different people’s ideas on who it is and I consider them all canon haha. If I didn’t have the 1000 word limit I may have wrote who the killer was but in this case I think it works better that you don’t know.

Before I go….

Wolf in the Woods wasn’t the only game I worked on in this jam, I also produced the artwork for Dinner with a Deity. The game features one of the vampiric deities from the Royal Duality series. If you like sad, soft, snake men then give it a go! 

Finally a massive thank you to everyone who has played, rated or commented! I really appreciate it! Thank you!