The Colorless Sylph (MAGS Entry August '09)

[Tijne]

The Colorless Sylph (~13.5MB)
Everyone's heard of the mythical, mischievous, little air-fairies called "Sylphs".  Sylphs are responsible for the atmosphere in a room; does the room feel tense?  Maybe there's a Black Sylph lurking around.   Does that passing wind bring a burning passion for Romance?  Maybe there's a Red Sylph dancing nearby...  Sylph's are characterized by the sparks of color that surround their body; colors that reflect many, many different shades and many many different moods.

But..  one little Sylph was born with a strange spark.. a spark drained of all color -- a White Colorless Spark.  This Sylph must undertake a daunting task in an attempt to 'cure' herself from this alleged 'sickness of a white spark'...  She must find the mythical Wind's Stone, rumored to have the Forgotten Colors of the Wind sealed within.  As she is told, only releasing these sealed colors will cure her 'sickness'..





NOTE:
-The controls for the game are a little odd at first, but they (should at least hopefully) get more fluent after a few minutes of playing around with it.
-The rule for this Month’s MAGS was "Episode 1".  Don't expect a conclusion from this game





If you liked this game, or if you even if you didn’t,  go try some of the other games for this Month’s MAGS competition!
"Celtic Chaos: episode one - cold mead" By Helme
"The Secret Plan 1- Running to stand still" By tzachs


After trying all the games, go vote for your favourite at the MAGS site!

Voting ends on August 30th so cast your vote quickly!

[Dualnames]

Really exemplary competition attitude there Tijne, by the way, I really like the graphics and the title of the game, and yes the interface needs a little bit of time for someone to get used to it, but it fits the game well. Quite an entry there.

[Crimson Wizard]

Game is big fun (some episodes made me laugh) and have much of originality, and surprisingly I haven't found controls inconvenient (they remind me some other non-adventure game that I cannot recall though).
Only thing that I didn't like are colours of main menu buttons, they make button captions difficult to read.

[cat]

That's a very cute game! I had to get used to the cursor but I figured it out very quickly and the gui totally fits the game. I hope, there will be another episode that will continue the story.

[DrWhite]

Played it through and I liked it a lot. Especially the controls, which totally fit the setting.
Though I sometimes didn´t know what to do ... some more hints in the beginning could have been useful.

...and the music was also great btw.

[Helme]

I enjoyed your game. The controls were quite confusing for me at the beginning, but I got used to it.
I thought some puzzles were a bit unlogical and it needed a few more days for adding some hints. So at sometimes I just solved puzzles by trying everything. But there are lots of good puzzles and some nice humor, too.

The end-cutscene is great. Cool cliffhanger, I defently want to play the next episode.

[tzachs]

Hi, overall the game was fun, I liked it a lot, well done!

The good:
* The story was nice, I really loved the ending, it left me wanting to see more.
* The graphics was also good and really fit the atmosphere of the game.
* The puzzles were (mostly) fun & logical.

The not so good:
* The GUI! I really didn't enjoy these controls. The worse part about it is that in the look mode you can see the hotspots but in the walk mode you can't, so I had to constantly switch between them. It was an interesting try to move the character with the mouse in walk mode but in the end it didn't really work for me. Another thing about the GUI that irritated me is that you can take an item from the inventory both in look & walk mode, and if there was a difference between the two then I didn't get it...
* The hints.

Spoiler

I noticed two problems here.
1. When I got the book I could only read the contents of it once, which is a problem for me, since usually when I have something to read in my inventory, I read it once briefly, and only after that I read it again more carefully...
2. The hints in the room with the fountain were not available to see when I was in the room with the mirror and the table, and I really didn't remember what was in them. This could be solved with a notebook in which you write notes after reading the hints...

[close]

* The part in the jail:

Spoiler

In the jail cell, I got the key, put in the lock, broke it but then got freed. Was there another solution to this puzzle? If there isn't then I don't see any point in that, if there is then probably the hero saying something about it would have helped avoiding any confusions...

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[Tijne]

Yeah, the controls were definitely an acquired taste; I'm not even fond of them myself >.<.  A few others seem to have enjoyed it; but overall I think it at least fit the theme of the game.

Honestly, I'm not a fan of seeing hotspots at all.  I think it simpifies the game too much, heh.  Letting them be visible in 'look' mode was kind of a compromise; it made the 'look' action more useful rather than just restating what's (hopefully) obviously drawn, and helped people find things they may have missed otherwise.

Using an inventory item was the same regardless of what mode you were in; but if you were in walk mode, your sylph would still walk everywhere, and if you were in look mode the hotspots would still be displayed.  I was considering limiting it to one of the two seeing as it complicates things, but I couldn't decide which one...  So I just made them both work. ^^;  (The different between the two inventory-modes was really briefly mentioned in a Display Box near the begining of the game.. or at least should have been. x.x;)




For the few hints...

Spoiler

1. The book didn't actually contain any useful/needed information for the game; it -should- have repeated the only important part about the book that was needed to know (That it was hallowed out at the back) as not to spam the player with text.  (And that part really wasn't important either, lol!).
2. The only hints that were related to the room with the mirror and the saw were that of using the Decoder with the Strange Decoration.  It basically only says that there will be a puzzle based on a word-play later.
For that note, the entire puzzle is actually based off the english-word riddle:

Spoiler

"How do you get out of a room with no windows or doors, but a mirror and a table?"  "I would look in the mirror, see what I saw, take the saw, cut the table in half; half and half make a whole; and I would crawl out that hole!"

[close]

Though I don't think the hint is very crucial, I do think making it available at this point could be helpful potentially.  I'll make it so once you use the Decoder, it stores the message for future reference. ^_^

[close]

About the Jail..

Spoiler

The entire situation was design'd to confuse you. >;x
It would all be explained, though, if I ever find the time (and drive) to make another episode.  Same with why that sleeping blue sylph was "turned off" and why there was -that- object near the fountain statue--  I created a large expanding story and only designed the first part of it into a game for the MAGS so there's bunchs of things in there that aren't exactly explained yet.  A few things might have been referenced by some of the other sylphs, though it was just briefly mentioned...

[close]