Restless Hounds
Game Details
- Type: Puzzle
- Genre: Puzzle, Slice-of-Life, Explore
- Engine: RPG Maker 2003
- Released: February 16, 2026
Restless Hounds
Seventh game from little ol' me, and the second of game jams I've participated in to completion. Dive in the dreams of an aged an eccentric hound by the name of Puppy Wave and see what it takes to get back to the waking world along the way!
See the Cookie Cutter RM2k3 Jam game jam this was submitted to here.
This game is set within the Modern Fantasy character universe. If you wish to know more, that colored text will direct you to an in-progress version of a wiki documenting my works altogether.
Spoilers Beyond this Point
Game Features
As per the rules of the Cookie Cutter RM2k3 Jam game jam, the maps themselves had their tiles and respective textures left alone. What I altered instead, with it being allowed in the rules, where the events placed in each map, the music choices, and one map's parallax background.
Light puzzles throughout the game, each one tested and made to not be too complicated nor boring.
The entire game is played without any combat at all, nor any inventory management. You're strictly going from place to place, chatting up the locals within chunks of the protagonist's dream, solving the mostly text-focused puzzles they send your way, and having a generally chill time. Not to say there aren't heavy moments here and there..
Four minor side quests are playable, with varying quest endings to play out in half of them.
For the entire cast, the characters are my own, I drew their sprites, and I've also drawn their portraits within dialogue boxes.
Coding and writing was handled by me, past that the map's tileset was using the default textures included in regular RPG Maker 2003. No external addons were used aside from the EasyRPG Player to allow for simple playing on modern computers. See the downloadable zip file above for a read me with this and any further information.
Characters Featured
- Puppy Wave (Playable Protagonist and Main Cast)
- Elaine Dmitri (Ending Character)
- Tera Fiwalla (Ending Character)
Clicking any of the listed names will bring you to their respective Toyhouse pages, which contains the characters' art gallery and any linked short stories they appear in.
General Locations Featured
- The Dreams of Puppy Wave (Primary Setting)
- Breckenridge, Scorsborro (Ending Setting)
Trivia
The minigame involving safely transporting band members to a music venue without any fights breaking out basically takes a very old logic puzzle involving a fox, grain, chicken and a bridge and gives it a fresh coat of paint.
Excerpts from multiple short stories involving Puppy Wave are expanded upon in this game as well as called back to.
The cover art for the game (and smaller variant used in-game as the main menu title screen) explicitly is color-coded to match both the lesbian flag and the non-binary flag. This is simply because those two things are what the protagonist Puppy Wave is themself!
The memory-focused puzzle involving a long story followed by quiz questions was inspired by a similar mechanic in the game 1 Trait Escape.
The text adventure-focused minigame basically comes from my experience of having played a lot of text adventures from folks over the years and seeing that a lot like to use castle and dungeon settings. No hate nor no foul in doing so, consider it a homage to a setting that generally just works for independent small games!
The minigames in the Hopeful Hideaway location in-game had to be retooled a lot before releasing the game. One scrapped minigame involved trying to figure out a certain year through a list of fictional events and simple math equations. Unfortunately the many attempts at setting it up either winded up being too complicated or dreadfully boring. Another scrapped minigame that barely got off the ground involved being told the number of employees at a business / servants in a kingdom and having to deduce from their role counts how many of these people were left without any roles. Again, too complicated and boring much like the other scrapped minigame! In the end, both got replaced by the rock band-focused logic puzzle instead.
The side quests on the world map section had to be retooled here and there as well. One scrapped concept involved venturing into a cave, slowly seeing how far you dived in before finding something at the end. That was scrapped due to seeming like an odd setting choice considering the unrelated cave map(s) literally next to it. It's concept would be retooled partially into the statue side quest (in regards to how many times the player decided to interact with a thing) as well as the ticking shack side quest (in regards to trying to progress deeper into a place through interactions). There was also an idea for a river-focused puzzle, but it didn't get off the ground due to mostly just being a 'sit and mash text boxes' experience too similar to the crowd side quest in the final game.
I very much wanted to include a timer / countdown-focused puzzle in the game, but could not for the life of me figure out how the timer scripts work in RPG Maker 2003. I'll research that more in the future, since this game is finished, released, and will NOT be getting any updates!
There was brief consideration for a post-game after the ending, but I scrapped it since it felt far too forced and took away from the sentimental feeling of the ending. Also, logically it wouldn't make sense to keep playing after the ending since Puppy Wave wakes up from their dream canonically!
There was a scrapped concept for the text adventure minigame involving escaping from an undead town / region. Locations in this scrapped minigame drew their inspiration from Oldschool Runescape's Morytania region. However, the minigame would be heavily retooled due to the scripting being a nightmare. In the end, the final castle / dungeon escape minigame that shipped in the game was a lot more rewarding for me to code and write for. I think the player will also appreciate that the retooled minigame isn't complicated at all!