THE SIXTEENTH PROMISE - Point-and-click pixel-art psychological thriller

Started by bastrick, Wed 15/11/2017 08:30:06

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bastrick


The Sixteenth Promise

London, 1886.

One after the other, prominent bankers, lawyers and politicians are being killed in a succession of brutal murders. A serial killer has emerged from the shadows but remains elusive and furtive, stealthily avoiding arrest while leaving cryptic clues for anyone who has the mind to tackle them.

Journalist Horace Emerson is assigned to cover the unspeakable crimes in the hope that he can solve the puzzle. However, he soon finds that the killer shows a special interest in his journalistic work. Will Horace be able to solve the mystery before the murderer finds him, or will a more sinister entity, surfacing from Horace's past mean even more danger for the people of London?


---------------

This point-and-click psychological thriller is set amidst the fog and grime of Victorian London accompanied by sublime pixel-art and augmented by a stunning musical score from a renowned composer.

Published:
TBD - expected release in Q2 2018. Demo available soon.
The Sixteenth Promise will be released on every major online game distributor for PC, Mac and Linux.

Controls:
Mouse only

Credits:
Developed and created by: Tobias Svenblad
Artwork and graphics: Arvey Yudi Sebastian
Music and audio: Carlos Viola and Martin Gunnarsson
Font(s) used: Beanstalk by MistressEllipsis
Made in Visionaire Studio

Website - https://bastrick.com
Twitter - https://twitter.com/tobiassvenblad
Itch.io - https://bastrick.itch.io/the-sixteenth-promise
GameJolt - https://gamejolt.com/games/the-sixteenth-promise/295688
IndieDB - http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-sixteenth-promise

Screenshots




Why did I decide to develop this game?

When playing through LucasArts Monkey Island as a kid, I fell in love with the pixel-art, simply because the rough edges and lack of detail leaves some imagination to the player himself. I always wanted to develop my own pixel-art game since then, and this will be my first public shot at it. I've also been an avid book reader and became interested in the Victorian era, so when I came up with the story for The Sixteenth Promise, it seemed like a natural move to play out the game in such a setting.

As a high school student, I took a lot of psychology classes, and our teacher was always telling us that the mind is capable of more than we think. I wanted to include that element in this game as a sort of climactic twist.

Thanks to Robert Louis Stevenson and The Game Kitchen for inspiration.

Devlog

I'll try to update this log when something newsworthy are happening. As a father of a 5-month-old, I'll try to squeeze in as many hours of development as I can :-). But, I'll keep a reminder to update this devlog as well.
Website - Twitter
-- Currently working on: The Sixteenth Promise
-- Previous work: Frore Inc.

Mandle

Looks amazing so far!

Now I have to wonder what the first 15 were until you release the game.

KyriakosCH

This is the Way - A dark allegory. My Twitter!  My Youtube!

Snarky


Kini


Frodo


bastrick

Wow, thank you everyone! Really appreciate the kind words :smiley:
If you want, follow me on Twitter on @tobiassvenblad to get the latest updates!

Quote from: Snarky on Wed 15/11/2017 14:23:15
Quote from: bastrick on Wed 15/11/2017 08:30:06
Made in Visionaire Studio

Why won't you love us?! :~(

This looks swell, though.

Haha, I've actually been an AGS user for more than 5 years, and I really like it! But I decided to go with Visionaire for this project because of the stagnant development that was a few months back. Not sure how the status is now though? Has AGS found another lead developer?
Website - Twitter
-- Currently working on: The Sixteenth Promise
-- Previous work: Frore Inc.

shaun9991

This looks amazing! Great premise too. Will be following closely :)
Support Cloak and Dagger Games on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=460039

LeonDaydreamer

So many people are making psychological thriller adventures these days! :-D
This looks really great, Bastrick!

Click'd

Visionaire Studio has this really annoying "feature" where you get heavy controller rumble (if one is connected to your PC) when the screen shakes. Scared the crap out of me in Four Last Things. /off-topic

bastrick

Quote from: ClickClickClick on Wed 15/11/2017 22:24:02
Visionaire Studio has this really annoying "feature" where you get heavy controller rumble (if one is connected to your PC) when the screen shakes. Scared the crap out of me in Four Last Things. /off-topic

Hmm, never heard of this before!
I'm currently using Visionaire Studio 4, but planning on merging to version 5 as it was just released. From the looks of it, they squished some bugs and added some new features which may solve the problem you're describing :)
Website - Twitter
-- Currently working on: The Sixteenth Promise
-- Previous work: Frore Inc.

Snarky

Quote from: bastrick on Wed 15/11/2017 18:57:13
Haha, I've actually been an AGS user for more than 5 years, and I really like it! But I decided to go with Visionaire for this project because of the stagnant development that was a few months back. Not sure how the status is now though? Has AGS found another lead developer?

I don't know about stagnant; Crimson Wizard, Alan v. Drake and others have been plugging away at the engine pretty regularly: over the last year there have been 4 stable releases (various patches to 3.4.0), and 3.4.1 is currently at RC stage and should be made official very soon. It supports switching between window and full-screen modes on the fly, fixes two long-standing bugs in Direct3D mode, and adds an OpenGL renderer. In my book this takes care of most of the biggest problems AGS has suffered from in the last ten years (leaving platform compatibility, which is improving, and savegame compatibility across game updates, which is being considered).

bastrick

Quote from: Snarky on Thu 16/11/2017 08:52:41
Quote from: bastrick on Wed 15/11/2017 18:57:13
Haha, I've actually been an AGS user for more than 5 years, and I really like it! But I decided to go with Visionaire for this project because of the stagnant development that was a few months back. Not sure how the status is now though? Has AGS found another lead developer?

I don't know about stagnant; Crimson Wizard, Alan v. Drake and others have been plugging away at the engine pretty regularly: over the last year there have been 4 stable releases (various patches to 3.4.0), and 3.4.1 is currently at RC stage and should be made official very soon. It supports switching between window and full-screen modes on the fly, fixes two long-standing bugs in Direct3D mode, and adds an OpenGL renderer. In my book this takes care of most of the biggest problems AGS has suffered from in the last ten years (leaving platform compatibility, which is improving, and savegame compatibility across game updates, which is being considered).

Interesting! Might go back to AGS sometime. Made my first point-and-click with it, which albeit ended up in the trash, but still!
Website - Twitter
-- Currently working on: The Sixteenth Promise
-- Previous work: Frore Inc.

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