A Golden Wake - Available fom Humble, Steam, and GoG for Windows, Mac & Linux

Started by Grundislav, Thu 09/10/2014 18:04:04

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Grundislav

Grundislav Games in association with Wadjet Eye Games present:

The Story:
The Roaring Twenties. The Jazz Age. Prohibition.  For Alfie Banks, a young real estate salesman from New York recently relocated to Miami, it is a time of great opportunity. 

Set against the backdrop of the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, A Golden Wake is a story of an innocent man's descent into greed and corruption, and his eventual redemption. 

Based on actual events and featuring real life locations and historical figures, you must guide Alfie on his journey to reach the top of the real estate game as he deals with shady salesmen, cutthroat bootleggers, corrupt politicians, and much more, all while swept up in the events surrounding the inception of Coral Gables, The City Beautiful.

Screenshots:

Everyone is out to make a quick buck.


Enjoy a quiet drink behind closed doors with some unsavory characters .


Explore authentic historical locations from 1920s Miami.


Tool around in your very own Model T.


Nobody said real estate was easy.

The game is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

You can purchase it for $14.99 directly from Wadjet Eye, from Steam, or from GOG.

AprilSkies

Congratz for release!
The demo is wonderful! I'll purchase it for sure!

www.apemarina.altervista.org

ddq

All your hard work has finally paid off, time to party!

CaptainD

Congrats on the release!  Still haven't had time to play my review copy :( Will try to soon...
 

nads

Finished playing it earlier. Had a really good time with it. Loved the story and the voice acting was highly enjoyable which seems to be always the case with Wadjet Eye games :P. But I'm actually keen on coming back to this at some later stage and trying different approaches.

Spoiler
The only stage I got real stuck was the bookcase puzzle at the Speakeasy... I took that puzzle waaaaaay to seriously, thinking there must be some connection relating to 3 of the writers. But after walking around the room and talking to the someone in speak easy, after looking at the list of authors I had written down it finally clicked, to which I said.. I'm an idiot.
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Anyway, well done to everyone involved. Can't wait to see whats next on the cards for everyone.

Lasca

Congrats!! Will buy asap!

Grundislav


Andail

Forgot to put a congratulatory note here! Hope the launch has been smooth and sales good!

MillsJROSS

I purchases/played this a couple of weeks ago.

I finished it in one sitting (not accounting for bathroom breaks). I found the pacing was good, and the story was different (in a good way!). Big bonus...I didn't need to cheat. It was worth all the money I paid for it, and at the time it wasn't on sale :smiley:.

Looking forward to the next game, Grundi!






jwalt

Quote from: Grundislav on Sat 22/11/2014 02:46:31
If anyone reads this within the next 5 hours, A Golden Wake is on sale for $9.99 over at GOG.

Appreciate the post; it generated one additional sale for you and saved me some money. Thanks for an enjoyable game!

Minor nitpick: If the green car is a four door, the whole side of the car is opening. If the car is two doors, than the doors are too big.

Started on the always enjoyable commentary replay. Big chuckle out of the first Historical Comment by The Professor.


Grundislav


Grundislav


MiteWiseacreLives!


Lasca

What a deal! Bought and gifted! Btw, did you see the review in Swedish pcgamer?

Grundislav


Scavenger

So I completed A Golden Wake, and it left me a little cold, if I'm to be honest.

Spoiler
Regarding the story, I'm not entirely sure whether Alfie Banks is a sympathetic character, as even at his most innocent he seems to lack scruples, since the puzzles solutions show that he is not a very good person even right off the bat:

He approves a co-worker to be fired (there was no option, in his mind, to say "I wouldn't want either fired"), he blackmails a man into selling his land, he vandalises a hydroplane which loses a man his job, he bribes, deals in corporate espionage and theft based on what his new boss told him (how is Alfie to know that his competitor didn't come up with the design plans, and Merrick wants to steal them?), and in the beginning he helps out the Secretary expecting her to give him favors so that he can get a job. The mob stuff seems to be just par for the course rather than a progression.

The game says that he is a great salesman with initiative (with unbelievable amounts of sales), but it seems to be an informed trait, as he never actually takes any initiative, he just sits around waiting for his bosses to give him ridiculous promotions. Why did he ever expect to become Mayor? It seems rather sudden and paints him out to be incredibly entitled and bratty more than "shunned because of great talent". Was this deliberate? From the ending cutscene where his life is described as leaving a "golden wake", I'm... not convinced that it was. The only golden wake he ever left was selling houses well, he didn't actually do anything worthy of much praise. The game takes place over ten years and he accomplishes nothing. This might actually be a symptom of hewing closely to history, as there really is no room for Alfie Banks in the events that happened. This might have been an interesting take on the historical drama, but the game never really discusses it. He exists to view events as a passive entity, and aside from running errands that could have been done by anyone, he leaves no mark. He is the ghost ship that leaves no wake at all. He doesn't even get to kill Fatty Walsh, that's done for him.

Regarding the gameplay, I thought that the format used was quite dated and stilted - the game screeches to a halt while the player retrieves three items/does three tasks for a superior. It feels unnatural and lacks a certain veneer that would keep immersion. The car driving animations also held up the game, I'm not sure it was really necessary to show the player the character driving off every time. I would have preferred it just teleport you to the map once you've shown the driving animation once.

I wasn't really impressed with the game, overall, I was hoping for a hook that would never come. All through the game I was hoping for a twist, for a revelation that would make playing the game worthwhile. Was Merrick's Big Project the Pillars of Hastur or some great and terrible architecture, was he trying to become the mayor of Coral Gables himself and be a corrupt mayor? No? It was just bland real life event after real life event, which makes for very poor dramatic timing and pacing. Alfie Banks wasn't charismatic enough a character to carry this tale, and the real life events weren't interesting enough to weave a tale about.

I really wanted to like this game, but it felt like a step back from Ben Jordan.

On the plus side, the art is definitely an improvement, the music was great and fitting, and the rotoscoped animations were pretty impressive and numerous, though sometimes it did feel like more care needed to be put into places where the characters were doing nothing but standing stock still, such as Doc Dammers' stall with the tiny streetcar. But otherwise it was a well put together piece, no bugs, and the programming was quite impressive. The little background touches with the weather on background objects and moving trains and such were great additions. I'd want to see more adventures coming from you in the future. Don't ever stop creating.
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Grundislav

Scavenger:

Spoiler
First off, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the game. I knew going in that this was going to be a hard sell, especially since it's such a niche time period, and let's be honest: the Florida Land Boom isn't going to make everyone excited.  It was an experiment for me to tell a story that was just a tragedy about a regular guy who goes through his mundane life and doesn't really get anywhere, but also I just wanted to immerse the player in the time period and show off a bit of local history, which interests me quite a lot.

Alfie isn't meant to be a sympathetic character at all: in fact, he's an idiot. He's an extremely naive goody two-shoes who wants to get to the top and winds up becoming corrupted and burning all his bridges. He was going to survive at the end, originally, but I didn't think he deserved to. That being said, the reason he didn't kill Fatty was because I was hesitant to make Alfie become a murderer: I figured it would make the player hate him even more. In hindsight, maybe I should have taken that risk.

In any case, I know this game has its flaws, but I'm happy with it and am glad it's being played. Thanks for your feedback, it's extremely valuable for me to learn from my mistakes.
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The Fool

:)

The Fool

Finished it couple hours ago and loved it.
It has great writing, music and voice acting, lovely graphic and very nice flow.
Thanks for the great work and look forward to the next game :)
:)

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