Breadwalk

Inspiration

This is a game about the life of a civilian during wartime. Since I live in Ukraine, you can probably guess that it is mostly inspired by things I see and experience in my life.

What it does

It shows the side of the war that almost nobody is talking about. There are no bravery, heroism, or sacrifice that you would expect from a tale about war - just people who are trying to survive and piece together what remains of their lives. It is a tale of the Forgotten Ones, people whose names and stories you would otherwise never know.

Also, since the game was made during Spooktober, I just had to include a hidden endings with a certain supernatural, Halloween-themed twist!

How we built it

With tears, sleepless nights, and a lot of help from AI's provided by the Chroma Awards sponsors. The AI tools were used to create the VO, sound effects, music, character portraits, art, and animations for cutscenes and final titles. Since I am a writer and, due to my mental condition, am unable to learn either the technical skills or the visual ones, those tools are a lifesaver, allowing me to create assets that I otherwise could not create and raise the quality of my game to the level that was previously impossible for my budget and skills while being focused on the thing I can do best - telling a story.
And now I can do that in a more impactful way than I ever could before.

Challenges we ran into

Mostly - completing everything in time. I wanted it to be a high-value production game despite the short length, so I wanted it to have a lot of things like full VO, cutscenes, animated titles - and everything needed to be perfect. I also wanted to make the word to feel alive, so I added extra dialogue to some of the side characters, easter eggs and even secret endings for the players who would want to experience a bit more than just main story. But doing all that required a lot of time and effort, so I had to work day and night to get things done, and create something that I could be proud of.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Amazing VO and sound effects produced with help of ElevenLabs

• High quality and style consistency of AI-generated art and cutscene animations, especially outro during the final titles.

• Custom music to create a proper atmosphere, and ending song.

• Story that I wanted to tell for quite some time, a tale about something many foreigners have no idea about when they think of war in my country. Or any other war in the world. This contest finally gave me the motivation to translate those thoughts and ideas into a video game, that, hopefully, will help people understand some of the things people from war-torn countries are going through, even if they are far away from the front lines.

• Hidden endings, each of them bearing specific theme.

• Combining all of the above into experience, that, hopefully, will leave lasting impression.

What we learned

Mostly - better ways to work with different AI's.

What's next for Breadwalk

Hopefully, leaving the Chroma Awards judging team impressed. I always wanted to show what I can do as a game writer since it is my special interest and means everything to me, and now I have the chance to do that, while also sharing some details about life in war-torn country to those who want to know.

After that... who knows? I might expand it a bit, since the 30-minute length required by this contest felt a bit limiting to me. I will also definitely make a Ukrainian language translation, which I could not complete due to time constraints. If I will gather enough funds to do that - I might release it at Steam as a free-to-play game, so more people will get to experience this story. Because to be honest, most of all I just want it to be seen, so people can understand that even those who were not killed or maimed in the war still have to bear a mental toll that might change their lives forever. And that it is mostly placed upon people who never wanted or deserved anything like that. Most of us only wants peace.

Built With

• dreamina
• elevenlabs
• fuser
• google
• grok
• kling
• lucy
• luma
• rpgmaker
• saga
• suno