The Journey of Iesir *Demo*

Started by Daniel Thomas, Tue 27/09/2016 22:02:45

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cat

Awesome work! The background graphics are absolutely beautiful and the animations could appear in any Disney movie. I loved all that little animations for various facial expressions, they give so much life and personality to the characters. And each of the characters has a unique personality and is relevant to the story.
The puzzles fit nicely in the story and I like that the whole setting is a bit dynamic with locations only being accessible and characters appearing when appropriate.
The writing is generally funny, although it sometimes tends to be too verbose.
The parallax scrolling is smooth and adds a lot of depths.
The cinematics and timing of the intro video are excellent.

The music and sounds are very fitting to the scenes. However, at the main square, it was very annoying to have "live music" and background music at the same time. Even tough the music faded in volume, at the place where most action happened (i.e. talking to the bird-hat guy) both levels were about the same and I had to turn off the speakers. Having no background music in the room would have been the much better option.
I couldn't quite get to like the UI. The icon changing to fit the action was ok, but in combination with the right-click-look it was weird (especially when the left action was look as well). I'd have preferred either a verbcoin or just a single-click interface. In the bug-box puzzle there are no mouse-over-hotspot indications. The puzzle is somewhat confusing because of this. I know that this is not automatically supported in AGS to have this for GUI elements, but it can be implemented.

All in all, very professional game. I was really disappointed when I entered the cave and it suddenly was over :~(

Daniel Thomas

Thanks cat, glad you enjoyed it!

Yes, the voice-box puzzle wasn't actually in the pitch demo, we added it later on for prototyping and it was left in the release - which was kind of a mistake as it was in prototype state.
Check out The Journey of Iesir Demo | Freelance artist, check out my Portfolio

Blondbraid

Just finished playing the demo, and I must say that it's one of the most impressive things I've seen made in AGS,
the art and graphics are on par with classic Disney movies, an engaging and fun story  and most of the puzzles were good.
My only complaint is that it all just stops when they go into the cave, if it's the end of the demo it would have been nice to
have a message telling me so, or at least access to a menu to quit the game.

I think that this demo is top notch, and the overall quality is even better than that of many commercial adventure games,
and I feel a bit sad to see that there won't be a full game, if it was I'd definitely buy it, for games with such a beautiful 2D art-style are rare.


Ryan Timothy B

Wow. That was indeed quite the blast from the past. It surprised me at how fresh everything felt with the lengthy amount of time that I had been away from it. At the time I remember having looked at everything with bored eyes after having seen and read everything a thousand and more times; which is what you hear often from developers who get bored of their work and lose sight of how amazing it actually is. Dave and Daniel (and everyone else), thank you for reminding me of how fantastic this really and truly was. The art is fantastic, and the writing I truly smiled and laughed with. Many scenes with an "Oh I forgot all about this!" and seeing again many of the ideas I had that you guys both finely crafted and brought to life. :P

I'll admit it starts to fall apart a little after about the halfway point with multiple things missing in dialogs that you expect to be there, some hints that are missing and some hints that are too obvious, and other such issues (which could easily be remedied if the project were to be continued). But overall: one hell of a demo! The music and sound effects were also quite fantastic.

I apologize for having gone though a bad period in my life back then (got terminated shortly after the family business was sold, and other stuff). My mind went into a dark period. I'm sorry for having stagnated my later involvement to the point of requiring a replacement. That is certainly something I look upon now with some disappointment. Anyway, thanks for letting me play this again. I truly appreciated it.

Snarky

With the AGS Awards, I spent a lot of time looking at the title as part of file names, folders, graphics, etc., and it made me wonder... How they heck are you supposed to pronounce "Iesir", anyway?

"EYE-seer"? "Yes sir"? "YEAH-seer"? "YeSEER"? "EEsur"? ... ??? :X

CaptainD

@Ryan - your work on the game isn't forgotten buddy, yes things could have gone better back then but it's all in the past, and if I remember rightly it was you that got the tricky head sprite animating separately thingy working properly.  Eric and Dan S's work on the music and SFX were top quality as you say!  Hope things are going better for you now.

@Snarky - IIRC, it's "Eye-Sir".  Dan was always emphasising that it was "The Journey of Iesir" and I repeatedly forgot anyway. 

Thanks to everyone who nominated us for the AGS awards, and winning Best Demo is a nice accolade to all of the work that went into this.  I feel very sad for Dan that he didn't win in the Background Graphics category as (with absolutely no disprespect to Ben who is an amazing artist) I feel the backgrounds to JoI are among the most gorgeous in any adventure game I've ever seen.
 

cat

Oh really 8-0 for me it was always ee-a-seer in my head :P

Anyway, congratulations for winning Best Demo. The Best Background Art category was one of the closest regarding votes. I think that the backgrounds of Iesir as well as Shardlight are amazing, each in their own way and style.

Daniel Thomas

Thanks for everyone voting on us!

Cat is actually correct, ee-a-seer was the idea.

Here is also an artdump of some of the backgrounds that didn't had the chance to go in game, from the mines and inside Big Dio's mansion:










Some misc. art:


Sealwolf, Daniel's magnificent boat


WIP animation where Mikael actually manages to find the painting in Big Dio's Mansion.
Obviously, it's not that easy, he gets cornered and are forced to dive out the window.
Check out The Journey of Iesir Demo | Freelance artist, check out my Portfolio

Snarky

So, like I.E.-sir in Scandinavian? OK.

ThreeOhFour

So nice to be able to see these extra scenes. the amount of work that's gone into them is really inspiring - and more than a bit intimidating. I can only imagine how hard you worked on these, thanks for sharing!

Stupot

Great extra backgrounds. So good.

I've been pronouncing it "yessir" all this time. I guess I have to re-train myself.

cat

Those screenshots make me want to play the full game even more. I really want to explore that mansion :~(

Blondbraid

Those screenshots look absolutely gorgeous and the animation really fun,
I'm still hoping to see more of this game, it's just so beautiful!


Riaise

I totally agree with cat, I would love to play the full game. It's such a shame that it hasn't worked out, I feel like this game could have been incredible.

Wersus

Oh, I only now noticed that the demo has been released to the public 8-0
But dang... Really sad to hear it never took flight in the end. I really enjoyed working with all of you and was so disappointed when I had to leave the project, as this game was definitely one of my favorite projects to work on to date (great team, great game, good vibes all around). I would still love to see the game being made one way or another and take part in that, but I guess there's quite slim chances for that anymore :(

All the best to you guys for the future! I'm sure we'll see a lot of other great stuff in the years to come from the people involved :)

And now for one last run through the streets of Glassrock Bay... :~(
Wish me luck! :-D

- Santtu

Cassiebsg

I've been trying to play this game on my tablet (Android), but the thing (the app) just keeps crashing. On that Account, and after having been forced to see the intro 3 times now... why is there no skip cutscene provided? And why, oh why, after playing the game for like 20 minutes or so, and picking up a few dialog options, the option to save was never given?
Do I need to watch the intro every time the game starts? And when exactly is saving allowed? I want to play this great looking game, but now I'm weary to try it a forth try. :-\
There are those who believe that life here began out there...

Daniel Thomas

Quote from: Cassiebsg on Sat 14/07/2018 21:13:10
I've been trying to play this game on my tablet (Android), but the thing (the app) just keeps crashing. On that Account, and after having been forced to see the intro 3 times now... why is there no skip cutscene provided? And why, oh why, after playing the game for like 20 minutes or so, and picking up a few dialog options, the option to save was never given?
Do I need to watch the intro every time the game starts? And when exactly is saving allowed? I want to play this great looking game, but now I'm weary to try it a forth try. :-\
It's not a tabled release, but an Windows release. You can skip intro by pressing 'escape'. Saving game you can do in the main menu, which you bring up with the 'escape' as well.
Check out The Journey of Iesir Demo | Freelance artist, check out my Portfolio

sthomannch

Looks absolutely cool!
The demo was also very promising! Hope to see more... Good luck!

Cassiebsg

Daniel, I have tried the Esc, but doesn't seem to work. :(
And yes, I know it's not a tablet release. I'm using the AGS android app. But guess this game is just too heavy for it, so hopefully my win tablet will be up and running again soon. :-D Does the game use any plugins that might make it crash? Might just be my android though.
There are those who believe that life here began out there...

Crimson Wizard

Quote from: Cassiebsg on Wed 25/07/2018 05:21:38
And yes, I know it's not a tablet release. I'm using the AGS android app. But guess this game is just too heavy for it, so hopefully my win tablet will be up and running again soon. :-D Does the game use any plugins that might make it crash?

Does it show any error message when crashing?

Game uses ags_utils.dll, which is something that we do not have ported (I see this plugin name for the first time). It may be even made for this game exclusively (Daniel Thomas could clarify perhaps).

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