Pippa and Your Phantasmal Problem
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android
★ Story
Ms Ester's beautiful and neat house has been mysteriously wrecked in the past few weeks and nobody knows why. Patches of dirt on the carpet, things gone missing, and all sorts of mess keeps happening around the house. The police was called to investigate, a priest was invited to bless the house, and a group of ghostbusters was hired (they were so expensive!) and none of them found anything. How useless!
If this problem isn't solved by the time Ms Ester returns from her short trip, she'll kick you out. You have to find someone who can help: anyone will do, even this unreliable looking, self-proclaimed witch you just randomly met.
"Pippa is going to save the day! Hehehe~"
Content Warning
This VN is very lighthearted and generally safe, but there's a small scene with a bug (cockroach) and another scene with a ghost.★ Features
- Around 15,000 words in total.
- 3 endings: 1 bad ending and 2 good endings.
- Choose what to feed Pippa: the food chosen affects Pippa's magical energy, which will influence the story.
- Cute character art and cute soundtracks.
- Cute dogs!
★ Credits
- story, art, programming: Konayachi
- soundtrack composer: Dalton Attig (special thanks to Bristol!)
- proofreaders: S.B.Hunter, ebi-hime, Wan-chan
- misc. programming help: an anonymous family member
- sfx: freesfx, pixabay
- background art references: pxhere, minikle
- tools: ActionEditor3, guiManipulate
- other software: Krita, VSCodium
- engine: Ren'Py
This VN is made in a month for Spooktober Visual Novel Jam 2024!
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Android version is now available!51 days ago
- Pippa and Your Phantasmal Problem is launched!54 days ago
Comments
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ohmygoodness this game is so cute, I wanted to ask permission to stream it?? just to be safe!! it looks very fun and I love the artstyle, if not I'll play it on my own time but I just wanted to check first and make sure it's cool <3
meow
Praises
After going through the whole VN. I have to say I really like Pippa as a character and I jokingly hope I never meet her in my life. But I quite like how she is and how she interacts with the other characters.
I also like this OST so much. It really brings the mood up when there's no voice acting.
I also like how much the characters and the camera moves. This is a solo-dev writer and artist? Wow! Specially the dogs. So much done and I'd really guess not so many original images were used. I also liked the bird!
That librarian was morbidly funny, to me. Just the way she moves her book reminds me of those strict women featured in movies.
Extra
I have no idea what ATL you had issues with. It went fully smooth for me, except a single animation while on the street where she immediately straightens up in a snap.
The way that homeless just happened to have her book and MC was self-aware of how ridiculous that was really hilarious!
Faults
I really like the concept of the money+magic mechanic but I think it was quite underutilized. It's too easy to have money left and the punishment for doing wrong choices is quite limited. I feel like having tighter money would make it more interesting to the point to, for example, buying steak and giving money to the homeless guy, you only have enough to buy the energy bar near the end and cannot feed her in the intermediate meal.
There are some interesting plot holes I was able to get into... For example, with Mapo tofu and going cheap, I could get high 30's $ left and MC still talks about lack of money.
Ending 2 is interesting because if it was longer, it could evolve into Ending 3 after MC receives his salary no? Or am I seeing something wrong? (I like it, regardless)
That's what staid on my mind after reading. I liked it a lot. Thank you for making this! It made me a very fun morning.
This is a 8.5 out of 10 to me.
Oooh, thank you for writing this thorough comment! :D I'm glad it made your morning fun!
Haha Pippa is a carefree airhead without a worry in her life. I have a lot of fun writing this kind of characters since (I don't know if you'd get this) it sometimes pleasantly surprises me how she would react to various things I would throw at her. I mean, I know I created her, but when I wrote her dialogues, I didn't plan anything, I just put her in various situations and let her react, hahaha...
The OSTs are amazing!! You should take a look at Dalton's page and see his other creations. Working with him was a joy!
OMG - you went to the library!! So many video playthroughs that I watched and no one went to the library hahaha >_< It was one of the least animated scene, but I loved it! The soundtrack is lovely and the librarian - as you mentioned - gave a hilarious dead-pan stare hahaha.
Aah I'm glad to hear that about the camera moves! I struggled so hard with it, I had a family member helped me figure out so many things with it since it frustrated me and I still had to do many other things. I don't know how to describe this without getting too long, but I had ATL issues of camera panning and zooming that keeps jumping around(?), I can describe more to you in DM if you're interested to know more though, but it's more or less okay now, I guess? Noone reported any bug so far haha (please keep it that way... lol...)
Aaah that money issue... Believe me, I was so worried about it! I only realised this huge plot hole (if I can say so?) at the end of the third week of Spooktober, as I started doing lots of coding and testing. I realised: "Wait a minute... I could spend all I want in food and I don't really have any consequences though??" and I panicked hahaha, like, no way - I only realised this now?? I looked back at the flowchart I made before and never did I care about heightening the urgency of MC's money, although I stressed in the beginning of the story about it's importance. It became a little bit weird if you overthink it... But with the Spooktober's time limit, I did my best to shoo that thought away and focus in polishing the build I was working on. ;-;(If you have ideas about improving this without significantly rewriting the story, if not at all, let me know please!)
Ending 3 is supposedly the true ending! Ending 2 could have been longer and it felt unfinished, yes, but alas, time limit prevented me to write it further.
Thank you so much for your time in writing this thorough review and letting me know about those points! I'll get back to this at some point in near future to rework on what can be done with as little rewriting as possible since I've already loved this VN so much as is! :D
I got some ideas about improving the money. May I PM? Is Discord OK?
Pippa is absolutely precious and I hope wherever she ends up next she gets tons of tasty food (and doesn't lose her wallet again!!!)
DonDon!! Thank you so much for the playthrough video!! I enjoyed watching it. :D I'm so glad you enjoyed it - and it was fun watching you went through the options. I think you covered pretty much everything! Yay!
Pippa will be fine! Reliable Kitty is with her, haha...
I'm so glad to hear this VN made you happy, it made me happy as well in return. :)) Once again, thank you very much!!
This is a very lovely and cute VN, it is so enjoyable from beginning to end, Pippa is so cute and so is everyone and everything else in this game, not only that but it has A LOT of unique CG's I was pleasantly surprised by that, A+ on the visuals, The music is also very nice and comforting; The game has a generous number of choices you can make and that adds quite a lot of replayability too.
I got 2 of the endings, the story is very wholesome and fluffy (And a bit sad too but it is what it is...) Overall not a dull moment when Pippa is close and feeding her is such a nice mechanic.
Keep up the good work!
Aaa I'm so glad you enjoyed this VN!! I watched your video and it was a joy going through this again with you reading it :D
I had tons of fun drawing for this project, I'm so glad that you enjoyed the art. And yes, the soundtrack is absolutely amazing and they're really fun, the music composer Dalton did awesome job composing them!
And aaw I understand it has a little bit melancholic tone, though I tried to keep the VN overall lighthearted haha.
Thank you very much for playing, I really really enjoyed the playthrough you did!
This was v cute~ <3 I liked Pippa a lot especially uwu
Thank you very much!! She'd be really happy to hear that hehe ;w;
*lifts up this game like the monkey lifts up Simba* it's time to brag the game and spread the moe attack /*w*)/
The power of moe moe kyun!! ;;w;;)//
Thank you very much for your kind help!! <3
I don't know how to add that +1 to your comment, so: you're very welcomeee~! it was always fun working with you :3
One day I'll snag you for a jam, Konayachi... It's such a fun read and I love all the cute sprites!!!
I want to eat your food drawings???I'm only a DM away, Azure :D Thank you very much for playing!!
it's so cute! i love all of the animated sprites and how lively everything looks! the ui is really precious too, it's such a sweet little vn!
Aaa thank youuu! Drawing sprites for this was really fun, coding took a long, long time hahaha but I wanted to see the charas expression a lot, so I'm glad to hear that it looks lively!
Omg Soooo cuteeee😆
Thank youuuu! >w<
Pippaaaa your sooo cuteeee, I would like to pinch her cheeks (๑˃́ꇴ˂̀๑)
Aaa thank you!! She'd be happy to hear that haha. >u<