“Ace in Another World”: A Hilariously Bad Fantasy Adventure

My entry for the “Worst Visual Novel Ever” Challenge 2024 game jam, Ace in Another World: That Time You Were Reincarnated In A Fantasy World Surrounded By Beautiful Women But Weren’t Interested In Any of Them!!, is available now on PC, Mac, and Linux.

Synopsis

You find yourself reincarnated in a fantasy world of magic and monsters, tasked with defeating the evil Demon Lord. Armed with powerful magic (that you know for no explicable reason), you set out on an epic quest to slay your foe – only to be interrupted again and again by beautiful women who need your help and won’t take “no” for an answer. Can you resist their distractions and save the world?

Developer’s Notes

I heard about this game jam on Tumblr and immediately leapt at the chance. I struggle a lot with perfectionism and thought this would be a good chance to make something fun and silly – and maybe even finish it! – without any pressure to do a good job. The idea for this game was actually the third or fourth idea I tried. I cared too much about the other ideas to make them bad, oops.

Ultimately, this game is inspired by all the isekai trash anime I’ve watched with my boyfriend, and all the times I wanted to tell the poor girls who throw themselves at the protagonist to get a grip because they deserve so much better.

This game’s got it all:

• Overpowered protagonist for no reason
• Completely inconsistent characterization
• Decisions that have no impact or consequences
• Anti-climactic final battle

The game is written in second person (“you”) and makes no references to the player’s gender, though I had a male protagonist in mind when I wrote it. The title is in reference to the story being written with an asexual protagonist in mind, and is inspired by my own thoughts and experiences as an asexual person, but the game makes no explicit references to the player’s sexuality.

I made all of the art for the sprites and backgrounds myself, though I relied heavily on references for the character sprites. I had to start over on the backgrounds three times because I kept trying to make them good! In the end, I ended up with a super messy painted style that doesn’t look as terrible as I feared it would. I mean, at least it’s better than stick figures.

Other than the original Memoirs of an Angel, this is the first game I’ve actually completed, so I’m pretty proud of myself. I had a lot more planned, like making my own (terrible) music, sound effects, and maybe even voice acting, but I had to remind myself that the whole point was to make something quick, fun, and low effort. I’d like to add some sort of music in a future update, though, just to give it a little extra polish.

Disclaimers

This game was created for the “Worst Visual Novel Ever” Challenge 2024 game jam, the goal of which is to have fun and make something terrible. That means it’s bad on purpose!

Ace in Another World: That Time You Were Reincarnated In A Fantasy World Surrounded By Beautiful Women But Weren’t Interested In Any of Them!! by Anigrams Productions is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

This means you can distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon this material in any medium or format, for commercial or non-commercial use, as long as attribution is given to Anigrams Productions.  

If you do create something actually good from this idea, let me know – I’d love to see it!

Finally, this is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real life entities, or other copyrighted works, is probably intentional purely coincidental.