After the hard disk failure that caused me to lose my years worth of work on my Quest For Glory game, I began a brand new project.Ã, I present OZ - Dorothy Returns (still a working title, dunno if it will be called that when finished).
PLOT
The game takes place 5 years after 'The Wizard of Oz' movie that most everyone on earth has seen.Ã, This game assumes that all the other books Frank L Baum and others have written in the series were never done.Ã, As stated in the game's disclaimer, this means that the events in the game won't hold up to scrutiny by true fans of the series.
This is a very adult-based and dark view of Dorothy and Oz.Ã, Dorothy has been talking of Oz and her friends there for the past five years.Ã, Auntie Em and Uncle Henry have basically come to the conclusion that she has gone insane.Ã, They take her to an Asylum for Teaching Young Women Household Work (or a Loony Bin).Ã,Â
She finds out after being beaten by the orderlies at the request of a nurse, that this is not the place she wants to be.Ã, The game begins with you locked in your 'room' (more of a jail cell than anything), and you are having morbid and psychotic visions and hallucinations.Ã, You realize something is wrong, and you must escape the Asylum.
In escaping (only a few puzzles to get out), you somehow arrive back in Oz (surprise!) and come to find that everything has changed.Ã, The munchkins are... no longer munchkins...Ã, The yellow brick road has been destroyed.Ã, Glinda, the good witch, and her evil counterpart are now slaves to an evil force taking over the land.Ã,Â
You will be tasked with defeating the evil force which took over Oz, freeing the witches from their enslavement, and basically restoring peace and tranquility to Oz.Ã, At the same time, you are on a quest to discover if you are truly insane or not.
This is a very adult game, very twisted..Ã, Kind of how American McGee re-did the Alice in Wonderland game a few years back.
The game is full of characters rendered in Blender, complete with full animations (surprised/scared gestures, climbing, diving - see screenshot -, being attacked, etc, etc).
The game is going to be huge when complete.
PS: As of these screenshots, I am using the colorized version of dorothy's sprites.Ã, Just as in the movie, it will be black and white until Oz, then go to color.
SCREENSHOTS
Title Screen
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/mainscreen.JPG)
Disclaimer
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/discl.jpg)
Warning Screen
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/wrn.jpg)
Some of the Sprites
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/spre.jpg)
Assylum Sign
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/sgn.jpg)
Dorothy's House
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/house.JPG)
Morbid Vision of the Tinman
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/tmn.jpg)
Morbid Vision of the Scarecrow
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/scrw.jpg)
Dorothy Attacking an Orderly
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/attack.JPG)
Ok, i think you have a good spin on a classic story. I like it... (seems all very twisted..perhaps a bit morbid)
on the screenshots however... i dont know... they seem.. well... strange! I dont really dont know some of the images seem out of place. But hey if thats part of the feel of the game.
Look weird but very interesting. Are those characters Sims-Sprites?
Quote from: Sinister on Sat 04/06/2005 02:26:24
Ok, i think you have a good spin on a classic story. I like it... (seems all very twisted..perhaps a bit morbid)
on the screenshots however... i dont know... they seem.. well... strange! I dont really dont know some of the images seem out of place. But hey if thats part of the feel of the game.
It is supposed to be like that. Those are overlays of various disturbing/morbid visions that Dorothy has. There are a bunch more, but those are the ones I showed because they have the Tin Man and Scarecrow in them. It is supposed to look out of place, because they are technically happening in her head.
Quote from: Totoro on Sat 04/06/2005 02:26:24
Look weird but very interesting. Are those characters Sims-Sprites?
Nope. I made/rendered them in Blender (www.blender.org) and exported the animation as .png files, and then imported them into AGS.
Interesting. Have you seen the film "Return to Oz"? Your plot sounds kind of similar - a darker vision, Dorothy going to an asylum because everyone thinks she's crazy, an Oz enslaved by someone. A good film, although nobody has ever heard of it.
In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing how this ends up. I grew up on L. Frank Baum's books as a kid.
Nobody's ever heard of it? My good man, it's sitting on my DVD shelf ^_^ One of my favourite movies of all time.
I won't comment too much until I play the game, because - warning - I'm a real fan of the Oz series (not the stupid movie, the books). I'm always skeptical of "dark" things like this because so many seem really full of themselves, as if it's an original concept (bloody fucking American McGee). So, good luck on the game, I'm happy to see Oz making an appearance, and I -don't- expect this to be true to the books, thankyou for the disclaimer ^_-
If I could make a suggestion (I don't know what you have planned)... throw in plenty of traditional Oz references. Return to Oz worked brilliantly because even though it didn't follow the books perfectly, it kept a real "theme" going with the emerald-coloured objects and objects/characters reflected in both worlds.
QuoteAfter the hard disk failure that caused me to lose my years worth of work on my Quest For Glory game, I began a brand new project.
I love posts that begin with this sort of disclaimer/proclamation!
Nevertheless, the premise of the games sounds interesting! I laud your efforts, and wish you luck on the project!
Bt
hahahahahahahaha, oh this game is hilarious. Maybe that smartass tincan robot will be killed off.
That Asylum sign is just a little..blunt..I guess, for a lack of better vocabulary..try something like, "Vacinity of the Domestic Arts(or Vacinity of Domestic Education)". Just something about that sign bugs me.
Looking foward to playing this game, I love that Scarecrow/midget/(chimp?).
Actually, I only skimmed your storyline before but now that I've read it... seriously, that's almost exactly the plot of Return to Oz. I take it you haven't seen it? I'ts the exact same thing. Dorothy is taken to an asylum and gets disturbed by many things. Before they can mess with her brain, she escapes and ends up back in Oz where things have gone bad (including Ozma and the munchkins enslaved and the yellow brick road destroyed).
Hmm.. Nope. Never heard of Return to Oz. I'll check into it. If it is what I am doing, I'll either change it to be based on the movie, or scrap the project.
Was it a mainstream movie? Or an indie flick? Google here I come :)
Mainstream, it's available on DVD now. It was one of my big childhood movies so I know it quite well but there are a lot of people who wouldn't have heard of it.
I don't think you'd need to scrap the project though (really, who's gonna care that much), but it might be worth seeing the movie just to see if you have any serious idea clashes :) Also, it's just a FANTASTIC movie worth seeing.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089908/
Nice to hear that someone else has read those books, Kinoko! I was at my little cousin's Bat Mitzvah over the weekend, and it turns out that all my childhood Oz books found their way into her possession. My aunt asked me if I wanted to take some back, and I was sorely tempted, but I decided to leave them in the hands of the next generation. :) Good times.
"Return to Oz" is an interesting flick. It's a sequel to the original movie, but its visual style is based on the original books' illustrations.
I don't know...The Wizard of Oz is a kid's movie. Some kid's going to go online, download your game, and tell all hois little friends about it, their parents will be horrified, and you'll get a bad rap in the adventure game sosciety.
I like the idea of the game...just don't make it so morbid. Ick.
American McGee did the same thing with "Alice" and nobody complained. At least, if they did nobody cared.
Quote from: Dave Gilbert on Mon 20/06/2005 19:24:49
American McGee did the same thing with "Alice" and nobody complained. At least, if they did nobody cared.
Yeah, but the Alice cartoon was freaky-ass anyway
I never liked Alice in Wonderland as akid, so there
But I did like American Magee's Alice because
1. It was a commercial game, so kids couldn't get their hands on it easily and
2. Alice in Wonderland sucked anyway, it was great to see a super-dark version of it and finally
3. That Tom Petty Music Video "Don't Come Around Here No More" Added to the freakishness of Alice in Wonderland.
Have you ever read The Wizard of Oz, Webspider?
How about Alice in Wonderland? Tom Petty added nothing to Alice in Wonderland and neither did American McGee, if anything American McGee took away from Alice in Wonderland...
They aren't only the Disney versions of what you saw when you were a kid.
Anyway, the game looks curious and I wish you the best of luck with it!
Have you ever read Wicked?
Quote from: Webspider on Mon 20/06/2005 19:05:22
I don't know...The Wizard of Oz is a kid's movie. Some kid's going to go online, download your game, and tell all hois little friends about it, their parents will be horrified, and you'll get a bad rap in the adventure game sosciety.
I like the idea of the game...just don't make it so morbid. Ick.
I think it's really cool to put a dark spin on such a cheery and sickeningly bright tale, it makes it all the more interesting.
As much as I love Oz , I love Alice In Wonderland more.
I don't get why people are so against certain games and stuff though. I love stories no matter how bright or dark , disney or American McGee , a slightly twisted Oz for kids and an even more twisted Oz for adults to enjoy reading about or playing in , ect.
It's all good.
Did you all know there's a series of figurines called "Twisted Land of Oz"?
http://www.spawntoys.com/index.php?cPath=3_12
http://www.spawntoys.com/product_info.php?cPath=3_12&products_id=170
Also , there's a "goth" version of Oz at otakuworld.com somewhere in the "KISS" ( kisekae aka electronic paper dolls ) section.
And like somebody else said , there's already been a movie about dorothy being sent to an asylum but it definately didn't have any brief nudity and stuff in it. *laughs*
( In my opinion American McGee's Alice should've been an RPG or adventure thing not a first person puzzler / doom-like crap ...the art and music are fantastic but the in game art at times were crap and the game was super slow...ok I only tried the demo...but still... )
I don't have a problem with people putting a "spin" on these old stories. The only thing I hate is when they're like American Magee and all, "omg *guffaw* I made it all dark and gothy, I'm such a genius" (which I'm not saying the OP is!). As long as people recognise it's been done a thousand times before with these stories, fair enough. Also, that the original stories (as has been said, the 'Wizard of Oz' movie and Disney's 'Alice in Wonderland' were VERY cleaned up/kiddy versions of these books) had very adult/dark tones of their own.
My main thing is that, since Oz is something I love so much, I'd like to see the game do it justice with lots of good references and stuff. That's just my opinion and it'd be a hell of a lot stronger if this is a commercial game. The OP can do whatever the hell they like though :) That's the law of an independant game. (Well, aside from all those other laws of copywrite that applies to remakes and whatnot).
Oh and just for a chuckle and to see what not to do in your game:
http://www.oldmanmurray.com/longreviews/56.html