Pirate Theme Park: A Short Adventure

[FocusHillGames]

A point & click adventure game in the style of the classic LucasArts adventure games. It's a comedy inspired by the ending of Monkey Island 2... a boy wanders through a pirate theme park, under a mysterious spell. Help him break the spell and escape the theme park!
Play time is roughly 1-2 hours.

Itch page -
https://focushillgames.itch.io/pirate-theme-park

Trailer -

[heltenjon]

Congratulations on the release! Please also add it to the database: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/add/

I will give it a go soon!

EDIT: And as it's a commercial game, it's twice as important to add it to the database for increased visibility. No upload here, you add a link to your itch page.

[FocusHillGames]

I've tried to add it to the database a couple of times now, but each time the page goes blank and the game then doesn't seem to be added, not sure what's going wrong...

EDIT: I figured it out (was putting in full youtube link instead of youtube ID), so it's in the database now!

[bitmuchmate]

This looks fantastic! And I love the sound design.

[FocusHillGames]

Thanks!
I wrote the music as MIDI and used a Roland MT-32 emulator for the sounds.

[heltenjon]

I've been playing this for a bit. It's a fun game, looking beautiful and sounding wonderfully Monkeyish Islandish, which I believe is the point. So far it's been fun and easy, until I had to search every location for some object I'd missed. But that's on me, i guess. I could wish for some more intricate puzzles, but no other complaints here.

If you're not in the market for shelling out, check the youtube video to see if you want to nominate it for music or art for the upcoming AGS awards.

[heltenjon]

I'm also nominating "Guy Person dressed as a cup" as one of my favourite characters this year!   

[heltenjon]

@FocusHillGames - I noticed that you credit yourself with "art direction". What assets are you using?

[FocusHillGames]

Thanks for the kind words about my game!
I hadn't checked this thread in a while, sorry for the delay in replying...

So far it's been fun and easy, until I had to search every location for some object I'd missed. But that's on me, i guess. I could wish for some more intricate puzzles, but no other complaints here.

The next game I'm making I'm either going to put in some kind of "hotspot highlighting" function or just make things a bit clearer, as several people had the same issue.
Also I'll be doing twice as many puzzles and they'll be a little bit trickier in places, but should be the same price.

I noticed that you credit yourself with "art direction". What assets are you using?

The main backgrounds are done using Stable Diffusion, the characters are a combination of that and my own pixel art done in Affinity Photo.
Also the animations and signs I did using Affinity.

People who played it mentioned they would like background animations in future games, so I've been learning to add fire/smoke assets from Itch, as well as birds/fireflies, etc. that I animate myself.

I'm also nominating "Guy Person dressed as a cup" as one of my favourite characters this year!

Thanks! Could be a potential spin-off character for a new game!

[RootBound]

@FocusHillGames would you be willing to talk in more detail about your process of using Stable Diffusion? I have a LOT of feelings about AI-assisted art, but I'm interested in learning how people have used it successfully (which is to say, your backgrounds look great). I don't feel super comfortable using it for my own art, but I find it fascinating.

Did you have detailed ideas for each background ahead of time? What kinds of prompts did you use? How much would you say you were able to get it to look the way you wanted? How much did you need to modify afterward? How did you decide what styles to tell it to use?

I hope that's not too many questions.

[FocusHillGames]

Did you have detailed ideas for each background ahead of time? What kinds of prompts did you use? How much would you say you were able to get it to look the way you wanted? How much did you need to modify afterward? How did you decide what styles to tell it to use?

I had pretty detailed ideas, though occasionally the AI would give me more ideas and take things in different directions.

The prompts took quite a bit of trial and error, knowing what terms to use to get different locations. Eg. shack/hut/hovel all give different types of building and you kind of have to learn what it understands by each term to get what you want. Same with the art styles, learning what it knows from each term.

Most of the backgrounds were either exactly what I wanted or very close, once I had modified them.
There were quite a few modifications needed, though "generative fill" solves most of them, to either remove something or add something specific, or to expand a scene. Though text in signs usually needed doing by hand.

With the art styles, a lot of it is doing the research into general art styles and the types of paints/media.
A big thing to take into account is what sort of locations you want and what kind of style will represent that best. Eg. if the game is set in an office building, it's probably not going to work in a landscape painting sort of style.

[RootBound]

@FocusHillGames That's all really interesting, thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to answer.

[FocusHillGames]

Pirate Theme Park is currently on sale on Itch for $3.95 (which is 34% off) for the next couple of weeks, if anyone wants to check it out for a cheaper price!

https://focushillgames.itch.io/pirate-theme-park