As promised in the previous post,
here are the four major tasks we did in the previous months:

Gameplay - Scrolling-aside inventory and circle of actions you can choose to operate on hotspots.
You will be able to interact with characters and objects with full list of actions like you did in all of the classic point and click games: Talk, Look, Use, Pick up, Push, Pull, Open, Close.


But why using old-fashion interface style?
The Reason I chose to make full list and not just short one like in the modern adventure games which use three simple actions generally Look, Use and Talk (and in some games even less) is so we can make a unique and funny puzzles and not just have one 'use' action that you click on and wonder  "hmm... let's see what he is going to do.."
and after that "Wow he opened it? I didn't meant it" or "this thing can really opened?!"
We want you to play while you are mostly know what you are doing and not just trying random things.
In case the action context isn't making any sense for example: you can't OPEN a table it will be disabled.



Circle of actions (all actions enabled for demonstration)

Scroll-aside inventory

Animations - we made lots of frame-by-frame animations for the characters and environments.
Jase, our protagonist now can walk, talk, use and pick-up items.
We didn't comprise and made all of his animations in 8 angles!
Also he will have couple of body gestures to express his mood.
In the demo you will see three locations (only one of them will be actually playable):
Jail, Councilors chamber and Academy's library
All three locations have hand-painted animations for example moving animals , burning torches and and more..
We start making concept of 9 NPC's each one of them will have couple of animations.
Jase walk in 8 different angles


Puzzles - I know how the demo begin and how it's end.
So how I should write the puzzles?
If I had these two points lets call them A - demo beginning and B - demo ending that's means we have one big puzzle to solve, and now we need to break it into small pieces of puzzles and each puzzle that is still big enough will be splitted into smaller pieces too.. we iterate this procedure till we left only with the actions themselves.
We also mentioned that in the demo will be 9 NPC's, so each one of them will have his own dialogues with the hero, they're all connected to the full story written in the last 3 years, and now we are going deeper into their thoughts and feelings.

Game Modes - It's a start of thinking but the game may design like you can choose to play it in one of the TWO modes:
Typical druid - For beginners or those who just want to advance in the plot
Master of disaster - Be wise and powerful druid and accept all challenges in the game. Same plot but for those who want to experience all puzzles in the game.

Jase will have to face with the three severe-looking councilors. What they will decide to do with the young criminal? How Jase will react? Where it will lead him?


PS
I would like to hear your opinion about the full list of actions, the two modes option, feedback on the visual content or just raise your thumbs so we know you there, supporting and want to see this game coming to your screen.

PPS
Any like and\or share is matter!!
You can tell about the game to your friends, family, kids, neighbor, gardener, babysitter and even to your ex-boyfriend. we would like to know if people like what we are doing and if we doing it right, it will give us fuel to keep up the work.

Enjoy gameplay video shown in the link below


Comments

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    1. Thank you Nor Treblig for your detailed feedback,
      advices are always good for improving the gameplay experience
      so here is my answers:
      -Yes, two modes is Gilbertesque and we'll try to add it
      after we'll finish making all the game in the regular mode
      -Inventory size was planned like you can see items and most of
      the scene in order to ease the player's decision when looking on both in parallel
      Bigger inventory will give you more items but will cover more of the screen.
      I think 9 items without scrolling are quiet enough, but after testing we will
      have better clue whether we need to expand it to 12 items or not.
      -Regarding Open-Close you are right it's unlikely to have both on single hotspot
      so we will replace it with other action to maintain the circle.
      However, combining pull and push into 'move' it's a different thing, lets
      say we have lever with 3 modes - and you can pull or push it accordingly
      and if you have only 'move' it will limit the action.
      Here is another example, lets say we have someone hanging from a cliff
      and you can decide whether to pull and rescue him or to push and
      cause him to die than what 'move' will do?
      Magic you said? there is some cool feature we added for it
      we don't won't to spoil and that's why it's not shown in the video.
      but you absolutely right, the main characters (the druid and thief)
      will have special abilities accordingly.
      -Regarding keyboard shortcuts, generally I'm preferring more mouse actions than shortcuts keys, yet.. it's a point and click game..

      And another thing...
      There is a Three-headed monkey behind you :-)

      Delete
    2. I just remembered this post after some discussion on Thimbleweed Park forums!

      I'm afraid my original post is lost.

      Regarding verbs:
      When deciding to not use specific verbs (like push AND pull) you can always adapt your puzzle design accordingly.

      E.g. a 3-position lever could be replaced by 3 push buttons. Or if it's a lever to move a crane left/right you can use two push buttons or two push-only levers instead.
      A third way would be to have two hotspots for the lever: "right-side of lever" and "left-side of lever", and a move would result in a push from one side to the other (note: this could be confusing if the same hotspot name is used, for instance: the trampoline in TWP).

      Yes, without push you can't easily/clearly have a verb to push someone over a cliff. One alternative would be to make it a dialog scene with dialog options resulting in such actions.

      When using such multi-purpose verbs (e.g. represented with icons) it's great to have a sentence line so the player can see what the current action would actually do depending on the object.
      E.g. to show if move actually results in push or pull, or if a mouth icon means talk, eat, drink, lick, blow, suck...

      I remember push/pull being rather underused in TWP. If there is some seldom used verb I'd probably prefer a more interesting one instead. Like 'invoke the apocalypse', which will likely only be used once in a game :-) (OK, I couldn't think of a better example. Btw. Simon the Sorcerer had take on/off [clothes] as another verb.)

      But there is nothing completely wrong with push + pull, it's just an idea.


      Regarding keyboard shortcuts:
      That's how I have ever played adventure games and I'm glad LFG/LucasArts always supported those!

      Delete
    3. Sorry for my REALLY late reply. It appears all replies need to manually approved first and I didn't got any notification on it.

      I have decided to go with custom actions which can give interesting approach to solve puzzles, you can check it in demo:

      https://store.steampowered.com/app/1108170/Plot_of_the_Druid/

      Delete
  2. Hey, really like the fantasy world you have created for this game- do you have a composer on board yet?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry for my REALLY late reply. It appears all replies need to manually approved first and I didn't got any notification on it.

      Yes. we already have composer, you can check our demo here:

      https://store.steampowered.com/app/1108170/Plot_of_the_Druid/

      Delete

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