Heroine's Quest: The Legend of Fair Spring (NEW DEMO!)

[misterskipperdoo]

No no. Really. This looks AWESOMELY good.

Show those commercial games what-for!

[Iv4n]

I dunno if the main screen (http://www.corbydesigns.com/team/logo2.gif) is appropriate. Maybe there should be some kind of tree with mountains background, instead of a black one. And maybe the heroine's head shoudn't always pointing at up.

[Chicky]

Or maybe not. This isnt the critics lounge and the title screen is perfect as it is.

[Floskfinger]

I dunno if the main screen (http://www.corbydesigns.com/team/logo2.gif) is appropriate. Maybe there should be some kind of tree with mountains background, instead of a black one. And maybe the heroine's head shoudn't always pointing at up.

This image is still in progress. There should be story related stuff in the  background to fill up some of the black.

[deadsuperhero]

This looks excellent. I was skeptical at first, seeing as that I didn't really enjoy the old old old old demo, but this looks very professional. I salute you, Corby and Co.

[Dmatrixone]

Thanks, Alliance!  We have a couple of very good artists on the team and they worked their butts off for this demo.

UPDATE: We've finally updated the main website with new screen shots as well as an update on the progress.

[splat44]

Dmatrixone,

It great you've updated your website with screenshots and progress.
However, you might want to remove old link leading old demos.

[Corby]

Ya, the links to the older demos are down, until I re-upload them. This was due to the website updating.

[Mordalles]

love it! finish it! i wanna play it! *applause*

[Klytos]

Looks great!

[Wellington]

Just played through the intro, then replayed it so I could comment more carefully.

It's looking very promising.

What's good:

The background graphics are spot-on; I really feel like I'm playing a new Quest for Glory game.

Mouseover text on objects. MOUSEOVER TEXT ON OBJECTS! YES! YES! WE NEED MORE GAMES WITH THAT!

This game is generous with details. Little things like the way Tim's feet kick a little when he's casting spells from the carriage, the mother's tears in the goodbye scene, and the door sounds add a lot.

What could use improvement:

Tim the enchanter. There can be a Monty Python reference, and there can be a Lord of the Rings reference, but placing them in a plot-central position breaks immersion. When he enters, I'm not playing a game with its own story anymore. I'm playing a LOTR spoof, or a generic fantasy. It's probably too late to change Tim all that much, but he should probably be more clearly defined as either a parodic LOTR reference or an interesting character in his own right.

The dialogue is terribly wordy. Cutting down the Father/Tim dialogue by 50-75% would be wise; telling the player so much in the opening keeps the game from building momentum. At the very least, the exposition could be spread out into the wagon ride a little more. It's an old axiom of writing: Show, don't tell.

(Would the early scenes of Fellowship of the Ring have worked quite as well if, instead of flinging the ring into the fire, lighting up the runes, and riding away, Gandalf had said, "This ring is far more powerful than you imagine, and possesses great secrets! I will tell you this: in fire it was born, and in fire it must be destroyed.")

Like the dialogue, the object descriptions tend to be a bit wordy. But the problem isn't as severe here.

The line about having heard "no rumors" of "an encroaching undead army" is perhaps funnier than it was meant to be.

("Hey, Tim! I heard that zombies just ate the next town over!" "Pshaw! Gossip!")

The music for the forest ride grows repetitive quickly, though this could just be a result of my having to sit through it during the last few teaser screens. The ability to skip cutscenes would be welcome.

The splash screen of the heroine calls to mind the QFG3 splash screen, in a good way, but it would work better if we could see the heroine's eyes. See comments by others, above.

The dialogue pictures vary strongly in quality. Mother is sketchy, while Father is excellent and Keira is passable-to-good. The contrast of the figures on black backgrounds is also a bit jarring; father's hair looks a bit weird that way.

Other comments:

Just as we know ET is being referenced if we see somebody fly in front of a full moon in a movie, the amulet-on-woman's-chest shot in an adventure game is a nice wink to people who've played Fate of Atlantis. It's good to know that adventure games are, like movies, building up a vocabulary of famous scenes.

I am a big QFG fan, and am very happy to see people trying to carry on the series legacy. Good luck.

[PsychicHeart]

incredible. what program did you use for the graphics?

[Mozesh]

Looks fantastic! Keep up the good work.

[Ozzie]

Yep. very professional graphics, there must be many work hours behind them.
Also like the idea of descriptions when the mouse hovers over hotspots. That's something I planned to include in my game, too.

[Dmatrixone]

Wellington - you can check our game forums for my response.  Thanks for posting!

Flukeblake - I believe that both our background artist and our sprite artist use Adobe Photoshop.

Mozesh & Ozzie - All I can say is thanks!!!  We're lucky to have two very talented artist on the team.

[Stefano]

Whoa! Can't wait to see how the RPG thing is going to work.
The heroine brought back the image of Elaine from the earlier Monkey Islands...

Keep up the excelent job.

Cheers,
Stefano

[IM NOT TEH SPAM]

Wow... out of all the QFG fangames I have ever seen, this is the only one with actual potential... no joke.  I checked hero6 once in 2001, now it's 2005 and it went no where.  (aside from a few pieces of concept art)

Really, truly great.  My only complaint is the character selection screen, the fighter animation could be better... perhaps a bolder grasp on the sword (she looks like she's thinking "What the hell am I supposed to do with this?!")

[Floskfinger]

the sprites are made in Image ready (most of them but some stuff in photoshop and some in MSpaint).Ã, 

The fighter animation (char select screen) will be redone.

[Corby]

Wow! Great comments!
The heroine should remind you of Zanthia actually.

[LucasFan]

The heroine should remind you of Zanthia actually.

Maybe a little bit too much. Try to change her face a little bit or people might think it's an Kyrandia sequel. Here are two examples.