Adventure Game Studio

The game is a mix of turn-based movement and real-time fights. The players wander around on a map, visiting lairs, towns and other locations. It's basically about fighting creatures and your opponents, with RPG elements like experience, skills and equipment.

While the gameplay is inspired by the old Amiga classic Moonstone, we improve things a lot. The AI controlled opponents are quite clever already and the fight system is more elaborate, meaning that you can't just accustom yourself to a simple technique in order to easily beat your enemies. Also, the map is larger and more varied, and reappearing lairs technically result in unlimited gameplay. While the fight between two knights basically works like a duel, it's a whole other experience to fight creatures like spiders and trolls as your movement speed and attack and defense moves will change.

Either play the alone and bring an epic story to a happy end or play against AI players or your friends via hotseat.


It's going to be commercial, but we haven't decided on a price yet.

---

Features:

• single-player storymode
  
• AI controlled players
  
• hotseat function for up to four players
  
• 800x600 32-bit graphics
  
• detailed hand-drawn backgrounds
  
• various landscapes, effecting backgrounds, movement and enemies
  
• a duel system and fighting techniques depending on the type of enemy
  
• a customizable difficulty level, effecting the reactions and behavior of the enemies
  
• very simple keyboard control, yet a variety of moves
  
  

---

Team:

- Programming / Ideas : Matti
- Art / Ideas : Nickel


(http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/6946/youtubew.png) (http://www.youtube.com/user/AnachronisticGames) (http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/4388/indiedb1.png) (http://www.indiedb.com/games/strider-of-feral-lands) (http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/8015/facebookfi.png) (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Strider-Of-Feral-Lands/165164276870429) (http://i.imgur.com/JtkOg.png)
(http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=16620.0)

---

Screenshots:


(http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/1901/scrnshot1sm.png) (http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/323/scrnshot1v.png)    (http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/493/stadtscreensm.png) (http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/6087/stadtscreen.png)

(http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/3348/wiscreesm.png) (http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/2397/wiscree.png)    (http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/9048/mapscreensm.png) (http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/810/mapscreen.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/SF6L2.png) (http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/9555/spidersh.png)    (http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/3878/thievessm.gif) (http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/8702/thieves02.png)

Sounds good and looks great.

My eye will be out for this one - and good luck with making it commercial as well :)

Cool... I've enjoyed Moonstone very much (to be honest, the intro the most :P).

I'm looking forward to this!



(and add a cool intro :D )

Oh my!

I dont think there is any one who played Moonstone as much as me and my friends.

If this is remotly like it, I will sure give it a try!

Are the character sprites gonna be made in 3D or handrawn 2D?

@ Ben: Thanks.

@ abstauber: Let's see about the intro... and the story. But I'm glad you enjoyed Moonstone.

@ karja: Everything will be handrawn in 2D. Hope you'll like it.

Mr Matti: I wanted to reply first. :'(

karja:
Characters will be handrawn 2D!
We really want to catch the atmosphere of old games like Moonstone.
The difference in the grafics will be that it's not pixelart anymore.

We made a Youtube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/AnachronisticGames) and uploaded two videos here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwY9nY5bPS8) and here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PhBAFfF13A).

Also, there's a new screenie in the first post.

Parts of this remind me a lot of Moonstone: A Hard Day's Knight, which can only mean good things!

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/153/Moonstone+-+A+Hard+Days+Knight.html

As mentioned in the first post, it is indeed inspired by Moonstone and yes, that should be considered a good thing  ;)

Quoteit is indeed inspired by Moonstone and yes, that should be considered a good thing

Since you want to sell this thing. You do know that Moonstone wasn't popular for it's game mechanics, right ;)

I think fighting games have evolved a lot since then, and I'm quite picky about this if I have to pay for it. But if you mix Warlords 2 with King of Fighters I shall empty my pockets at once ;D

I'd say that Moonstone was popular for its atmosphere, adrenaline kicks, sound, multiplayer support and the amount of gore. We wanna keep these things in mind but also add new stuff (random encounters, easter eggs, locations) and eliminate MS's serious flaws. These flaws were the following:

- The AI players randomly walked around the map without buying or fighting anything and were no threat at all for human players.

- The map was small, the game was short and you had no chance to save your game.

- You could easily beat every enemy if you sticked to a certain technique, thus the game was way too easy after some playing. Also, the enemies were boring due to their completely predictable behavior without the tiniest bit of randomization.

- Most of the (few) inventory items were rather pointless and you always awaited the point were you had enough money to buy the best armor or best sword. Afterwards you didn't really know what to do with you money and just slayed a growing amount of creatures.

Wow, very nice artwork - I thought I was looking at a photo!

Quote from: Mr Matti on Wed 13/01/2010 14:35:15

- The AI players were no threat at all for human players.

This is what you say after playing the game over and over again.  ;D

Quote from: Mr Matti on Wed 13/01/2010 14:35:15
- The map was small, the game was short and you had no chance to save your game.

I wouldn't say it's a real flaw if you finish the game in two hours. It's a concept, wich has pros and cons. I also don't like games that are streched to the infinite while all you do is to upgrade your character, ship or what ever is apparently expressible in numbers.  :)

Wow, the fighting engine looks great! Seems very smooth, though I'm curious to see how responsive it is. But still very impressive, looking forward to this one.

Very interesting indeed. Good luck boys!

I loved Moonstone too... So I'll definitely give this game a go if it's anything like it!:)

Thanks for all the motivating comments!

abstauber: What do you mean exactly? That just a fight game would be to boring for you (and you prefer a genre mix), or that the fighting mechanics have to be "state of the art"? Or both?

Bump!

We've replaced the dummies with real sprites (who still need to be polished though) and added sound. Watch our new video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp-5bIBTV-4)!

(http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/2540/dkscreeniex.png)

This is looking awesome. I loved Moonstone! Will you be able to block in the final version? The guys in the video just seemed to try and avoid each other  :P

I'm afraid it was me avoiding the AI player. But seriously: Of course you can block. Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R8T6-3ktgU) is another video, with some more blocking.

We also replaced the last screenshot (spiders!).

It moves quite fluently, looks really nice. Hope its addicting as well. ;)

On a sidenote, MOREEEEE!! ;D

Those are some awesome looking backgrounds. You may have a hit on your hands.

Awesome. I'm really looking forward for this one. I myself had started a while back an RPG called Mystic Hall. Best of luck and I hope you give us a little demo before the release.

That really looks fantastic...sadly I never played the moonstone game but this looks great :) it reminds me of defender of the crown for some reason - lovely.

Thanks for the comments everyone!

@Dualnames: Me too.  ;D We will give you the inventory next (working on it right now).

@thecmlfactor: And a pain in the neck. On the other hand, it's the work of one and a half year (we got more, though).

@beomoud: We think about a tech demo, letting you test the duel. But before the release there will be a real demo anyway.

@Mark Borg: Moonstone is abandonware, you can get it from abandonia.com for example and play it with DOSBox or WinUAE.

BTW: We are youtube-noobs and recorded the sound to low, so remeber to push up the volume before you watch the videos.


//why is this nice smiley called 'cheesy'?

Here's a new screenshot, showing the character sheet and the witch who is waiting to mix and sell potions to the player.

We're going for a rather loose look of the inventory and limited RPG elements, similar to Moonstone as the main focus lies on action.

The items are WIP and the cursor is ripped from buckethead's new game and will be replaced in time.


(http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/2397/wiscree.png)

Well, ... I'd buy whatever she was selling.

She will sell our game... via internet...  ::)

weak

Take it with a grain of salt. ;) (http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/9095/witchmock.png)

hahaha

We worked a lot over the last months and accomplished quite a few things. We quadrupled the size of the map, so that it's now scrolling and the player can't see everything at once. As we still need to redraw the whole thing (as it's now just resized), we can't present any screenshot.

We also finally have a rough plot for the game and decided to have a single-player storymode next to the standard arcade mode. In storymode there'll be special encounters/events and dialogs with several characters like this harpy:

(http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/7859/harpyface.png)

Here's a mockup of a harpy in action:

(http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/8793/mockup09.gif)

We're also working on several battles, like this gang of rogues:

(http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/8702/thieves02.png)

Nice harpies design.

Apparently i have yet to comment, so... This looks fantastic guys! The hand painted style is full of charm.

Thanks guys.

Ascovel, we still haven't decided on how humanlike the harpy faces will be, but the overall design is set. We have some animations ready but didn't start to code the battle yet. Btw, the harpies will play a rather important role in the story, but I'm not going to spoil too much.

This looks rockin'!

Thanks, theo!

And here's a new video with a gang of rogues (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83_izPu1HhU)!

This is the first news I have about this game or about Moonstone (which is downloading right now), but this looks awesome. I love the concept and the videos are spectacular.
Is there going to be a health bar? Looks like there is none in the screens and video.

Looking great! I Love Moonstone, so this will be a must play!

Thank you.

Mati: There won't be a health bar. We don't want to make the game too arcade-like, instead a bit more realistic and intuitive. We're not sure yet, but most likely we won't even give away the stats of most of the equipment (like the sword damage). This may put off die-hard RPG fans, not the Moonstone fans though.

I'm revisiting the main character's sprite at the moment. The plan was to give it a proper head - the old one was just copied and pasted from the very first sketch - but I will change some more details and try to get a finished version. Just around one hundred frames to change.  :-\

(http://i.imgur.com/hgrja.png)(http://i.imgur.com/L79ud.png)

Looking better all the time.
Although I must say that there wasn't anything particularly wrong with the old one.
In caft, it would be great to see a variety of heads in game, since I always laugh/cry a little inside when I see something like this: http://i55.tinypic.com/16kaute.png (http://i55.tinypic.com/16kaute.png)

edit by darth - changed the [non-game-related] image to a link

Still excited about this, looking better each time an update is posted!