Frantic Franko (New SCREENSHOT, New release DATE)

[Igor Hardy]

Thanks, Grim. Actually this is the kind of feedback I'm looking for. I've received a lot of helpful comments concerning technical aspects of the demo, about how it looks and sounds, but very little propositions about what could be improved in the gameplay itself.

I treat Frantic Franko as sort of a sand box for experimenting with both game design and development which hopefully results in many ideas that are different and interesting to the players. However, naturally not everything is as accessible and immediately fun as I would like it to be.

I will keep improving the currently a bit overwhelming dialog system the best I can, but in the end I don't want to compromise the most important gameplay ideas just to tell the story. I don't want to work on them endlessly either. If this was a commercial game I'd approach things a bit differently, but this is an experimental game to the core, and I hope some people will appreciate also that aspect of it. Especially in the game's final shape.

EDIT: It's really cool that you found it worthwhile to to replay the demo. Not only once, but even twice.

[Igor Hardy]

A much updated version of the demo should appear in the middle of the night (GMT+01:00).

And one crazy dwarf shall speak with a voice for the first time...

[Igor Hardy]

I'm posting the new demo in the middle of the night just like I said, although 2 days later. Here's the download link

The amount of work required to just finish this update was quite unexpected I must say. In the end I had to remove the tutorial section with the special appearance by Franko's mother. It is yet too unfinished to show. But this absence might be beneficial to see if people will figure things out without the  tutorial.

Nevertheless, this version introduces a lot more animations, voice-overs for a couple of conversations, gameplay improvements based on previous comments etc.

The interface has been reinvented and as the game is still very much a WIP , I'd really like to hear opinions and suggestions about it. They're vital to make these unorthodox controls fully intuitive, as well as keep tweaking the gameplay.

[Cyrus]

I see you've reduced the number of items in "Bag of Junk". Why so?

[Igor Hardy]

Hi Cyrus,

Your question demands a longer answer as there were several very good reasons behind this change. I should write a bit more on this tomorrow.

In the meantime, would you tell me what do you think of the updated demo - the modified interface, new animations, the voices etc.?

[ThreeOhFour]

Hey hey,

First of all, it's pretty clear that you went into this project with a ton of interesting ideas you wanted to try. I was genuinely impressed by the creativity of the puzzles - very rarely are they standard fare.

Your decisions regarding the dialogue system are very interesting. I like the X stamp, and it's uses, I like the fact that we can get rid of dialogue pieces/items by using them in puzzles, and I think it's a really unique approach to the genre. I do not ever recall a game with multiple verbcoins. What concerns me is that we can become overwhelmed by having so many possibilities. Usually in an adventure game, there is only a single way to talk to a character. Here not only do we have multiple dialogs due to the nature of the junk dialog system, but each dialog item has three 'uses' as a dialog item, and possibly more as an actual item. If we have 10 dialog items, for example, this means that with a single character we have 30 possible actions with a single character, as well as the standard combinations with other items and hotspots. You've really managed to fill up the game, but as a player I'm sitting here looking at countless combinations and I can't help but feeling a bit lost.

I have to agree with Grim Reaper that this would really benefit from a bit of simplification. My concern is that we have a whole slew of non standard ideas thrown at us, one after the other. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it certainly shows your ability to come up with clever ideas for your game. But I was struck by the notion that Frantic Franko operates strictly on his own logic, and the entire game reflects this. The fourth wall is broken on the very first puzzle (Which I thought was quite good, except for the fact that one really has to guess what to do), we have a rule such as "Franko only speaks with his junk" established, and then broken later on (although this wasn't too bad, due to the way you limited the interactivity in this bit).

You've approached the genre with a very unique and interesting perspective. I want Frantic Franko to succeed because it showcases the often overlooked flexibility of the adventure game genre beautifully. I'm just a bit worried that it might not get the attention that such creativity warrants because it presents us with so much at once. Perhaps the tutorial you mentioned will make things easier - I certainly hope that it does.

In a sense, then, I basically agree with Grim Reaper - it'd be great to have all these elements introduced slowly. Sadly, this would probably mean sacrificing your vision to some extent, and also reworking. Ultimately the choice is yours - and if you want clarification on anything I've mentioned I'll be glad to try and elaborate! You've really done some things that show great promise - I'd love to see people discussing the ideas you have here in depth, because I think you're definitely onto something.

[Dualnames]

As an author of a complicated interface (though not as so), I say stick with it. What adventure games need is interactivity! If you hint the players properly, they'll know what to do, and will not fill overwhelmed  by the interface. At least that's what I'm doing. I try to sort of state the obvious (ON normal mode only), though not too much. That way, people can try and  get cool reactions from the game.

All I'm saying is that complexity on interface+hints properly done=perfect interactivity level.

[Igor Hardy]

Thanks for the comments, both of you.

The interface will be very simple at the beginning of the game and it will be growing more complex gradually. The point in the game where the WIP starts is like the second act and the place where the conversation interface is used for the first time.

One of the main points of the conversation interface is to end up with the traditional adventure game notion that conversations are a list of topics, where you have to try out all of them and in a pretty much linear fashion. In Franko you're supposed to experiment how to approach the characters you meet. That's the theory, but the conversations require a bit more tweaking to get closer to realizing it.

What do you think of the Inventory two-way access dependent on how you move the cursor? I thought this will be also a controversial aspect of the interface. I'm not fully happy with it yet - takes too much time to get used to.

[Dualnames]

What do you think of the Inventory two-way access dependent on how you move the cursor? I thought this will be also a controversial aspect of the interface. I'm not fully happy with it yet - takes too much time to get used to.

Indeed. That was the most complex part of the interface.

[Igor Hardy]

Ben, I'm curious - did you manage to finish the demo without looking in the walkthrough?

[ThreeOhFour]

Sadly I did not - I usually try to avoid hints, but became stuck at the following spot:

Spoiler

When Franko becomes infected with some green horror, and runs around exasperated. Combining the flag and polish wasn't something I picked up on, sadly. I also accidentally peeked at the solution for the darts challenge/getting the balloons (as this is where I was stuck, I thought it'd be the right spot to find the hint in the walkthrough), but feel I would have solved this without the walkthrough anyway.

The puzzle with the moon took me quite a while to solve, but seemed fair enough to me upon completing it.

[close]

[Igor Hardy]

Ok. Here are the reasons for reducing the bag of junk, which I promised to write about (Are you reading this, Cyrus?):

When first designing the game I thought it would be fun if the player discovered a whole plethora of different items hidden in his inventory, instead of the cliched walking around and picking it all up one by one. However, the feedback I got from players was more like that the sudden large amount and strangeness of the items in the inventory was confusing.

Upon opening the bag you originally did receive: a white flag, a rubber chicken, a fake mustache, an X-shaped stamp, a Smell-Me-First Manual, a pig toy, and a jar of wooden maggots (now, a mug of wooden nickels). Each of the items had a special function described in the in-game manual (e.g. white flag = surrender, rubber chicken = making gags).

Now, the roles of the mustache and the pig toy were assigned in a way too arbitrary manner and really needed reading that in-game manual to understand how to make use of (which was not good for the gameplay, though I still think the manual was funny). I got rid of these 2 items altogether in the end and modified their respective puzzles so that they wouldn't be needed. Also, the jar of wooden maggots might have been an overly crazy item as its role was to simply symbolize begging, so I've redrawn it and renamed it into something more plain instead.

Anyway, I figured out you've got to be very careful when you mix symbols and surreal ideas or it quickly gets too complex. The meaning of the items was possible to get the hang of, but for some of them it could only be derived from the in-game text, while it could have been made more apparent and left for the player to figure.

[Snake]

Hey, just played. So far it's pretty amusing. Good job on the animations, simple, yet they fit perfectly. The voice acting is good too

After a bit, I got used to the inventory, but was quite confusing for me in the beginning. I like the idea of being able to cycle through the items within your inventory without actually opening it, great idea.

I haven't completed the demo yet since I am stuck. I must admit I don't know what I am supposed to be doing. I guess I'm supposed to open his talking bag, but I don't know how...

I haven't tried shining the axe up yet, but will do later. Good demo so far!

[Igor Hardy]

This bit at the beginning needs updating to make the important hint get noticed by more people (my fault I haven't done it yet, I know).

Just imagine there's some flashy, eye-catching animation when you click on Franko for the first time, which would make you pay close attention to what he is saying at that moment.

[Cyrus]

It may seem strange, but some of the music tunes actually remind me of Larry 7 

[Igor Hardy]

There's some jazz in Larry 7, so that's probably why. Although I mostly remember it going into the lounge music direction.

[Igor Hardy]

Hey guys! Small status update time (courtesy of Ben saying a lot of nice things about the demo in another thread)!

I haven't really worked too much on Franko since the time me and Baron started working on Snakes of Avalon in April, but I have done quite a bit of unpublished work prior to that - at that time I was greatly motivated by a desperate plan to quickly release a Frantic Franko Part 1 of 2 as my first completed game title. Now I'm back to wanting to release the entire Franko adventure all at once, but I'm giving priority to another short-length game project of mine. I expect to fully focus on Franko again well into 2011 and deliver the full game for Christmas 2011.

Anyway, for now here's a new screenie showing "a location" from Franko's eyes (unusual for the game). It shows a character that is already fully animated and interactive and will provide a tense conversation (or two). I'll probably add some better (any) shading to that yellowy hand in the future and ease up on the "total darkness", but I'm fairly pleased with what I have here.



Also, huge thanks for giving the demo the Best Demo of 2009 Award! How come I never mentioned that here.

Oh, and, Ben, the entire game will be full of crazy, unusual (and maybe a bit hardcore) puzzles - I want Franko to become my "designer's playground" (but with some passing thought given to the expectations of that playground's other visitors of course).  

[markbilly]

Glad to hear you're making some progress with this one, Igor. I was a little worried it would get left behind after all the fame and success Snakes brought you!

[Igor Hardy]

Glad to hear you're making some progress with this one, Igor. I was a little worried it would get left behind after all the fame and success Snakes brought you!

Fortunately, I believe Franko can bring me only even more fame and success, so I'm not planning to give up on him.  

[ThreeOhFour]

I think it is admirable in the fact that you're treating it as a "designer's playground". What this does for player accessibility is another story, but as an exercise in creative, out of the box puzzle design it certainly serves as an inspiration.

With "art games" and the like all over the place, though, I don't see why this couldn't be considered an "art of puzzles" game rather than an "focus on a philosophical concept" game.

Will be watching this.