Looking for a coder to light-on-puzzles adventure game!
Games is called Sadmoons: Mackenzie Adventures (chapter 1) and, well, it's something different, I believe. First of all story is quite linear and I do not bother too much with the puzzles as I believe they only stop me, as a designer, from building the tension and exposing player to the plot the way and in pace I want, not the pace that is determined by quality of my puzzles or how good my reasoning matches particular person. Then, I set the game in the world I create in which I set all of games I work on (and plan to constantly do that for next few years [which actually makes me think that a few years is plenty of time
I don't change my mind, though]). If there is one thing that I ever missed in games that is shallow and infantile plot (generalization, I'm not intending on saying that there are no mature games or, especially adventure games). Adventure game seems to be closest to movie, book or a play in terms of how much plot matters, plus it is suppose to be about an adventure. That's my interpretation of the genre.
I divided whole story into 3 chapters because of few reasons. It's easier to finish smaller games than one big game. Main character will travel through different country in every chapter (3 chapter, 3 countries, 3 cultures).
I've worked on the project somewhere in summer-autumn until a coder quit (lack of time) and I lost my motivation for a while + I felt like it would be good to gain some perspective and get back to it later (I moved on to other projects of mine). Fortunately, script seemed better after a few months than when I've been actually writing it and so I became confident to get back to it.
Story tells about a young man living in a country known as Gothia (it's sort of a slightely steampunkish British Empire's capitol; that's simplest way to describe it but it also takes away a lot of its originality). He is in his early 20s, History is his major. He is a grandson of famous Gothian explorer. His name is Philip Seymour Mackenzie.
Game is set in times when Gothia's Steam Age is at its peak. Philosophy (or human thought) had its huge impact on society and science, to the point where intellectualists (highly educated and "by nature") subscribe to the point of view that nature has to be tamed as it prevents man from his natural domination over the world.
The game contains some strong ecological, philosopical messages. Through script I tried to played a bit with two contradicting concepts that inspires me very much (love to natural world, and belief that nature is poor evil that has to be terminated; in other words: belief that man is part of everything, and belief that man and nature are divided).
Although game is set in a fictional fantasy world, I've done my best to make the meaningfulness of the story as universal as I only could. If you do not appreciate this sort of experiments within game medium, I guess you shouldn't send me an e-mail. But if you do... Voila!
Game should not be difficult to code as it contains pretty much only one puzzle.
I have finished about 70% of backgrounds, little of chara designs and no animation at all. Also a few music themes that I intend to work on more and add a few more.
This game has been my playground in terms of learning simple pixel art (you can see what I do now here: http://sadmoons.com/letters/). I decided to go with platformer camera angle (if that would make hotspots hell I'm willing to convert images into perspective ones) for simplicity and difference.
I'm not sure if I have covered everything so, please, feel free to ask anything you want/need.
http://sadmoons.com/excerpt.txt :: Excerpt from the script to give you an idea of my writing style (right mouse and Save As... [it's a txt file])
http://sadmoons.com/medley.ogg :: Music medley that is far from being polished but I catched the atmosphere and emotions I was looking for which matters to me most.
English is not my mother tongue thus if you expect astonishing writing you might be rather disappointed.
I'm looking for someone who might be still a semi-rookie in AGS but who is reliable and knows that he can finish the project with me (there is nothing worse for me than unstable collaboration so please no time wasters; I'm putting my whole wit and heart into what I do and I expect at least 50% of the same from you). In other words: you can improve on your AGS skills much easier than improve on your personality.
I will take care of backgrounds, sprites, animation (they will most likely be simple but I consider the plot most important part of the game), music and sounds. And most likely I would love to have voice acting to strengthen the emotions and make it a bit more serious / appealing serious. Right now I work on other project where I've begin to gather voice actors and if this one go well I will definitely aim at fully vocalized game.
My website: http://sadmoons.com
If you are interested into collaborating with me on this project please drop me a mail at kaworu (at) sadmoons.com. Thanks.
If you have to here, thanks for reading!
Happy New Year!
-Kaworu
P.S. Please excuse me if the post is a little chaotic, I worked about 10 hours today.
Games is called Sadmoons: Mackenzie Adventures (chapter 1) and, well, it's something different, I believe. First of all story is quite linear and I do not bother too much with the puzzles as I believe they only stop me, as a designer, from building the tension and exposing player to the plot the way and in pace I want, not the pace that is determined by quality of my puzzles or how good my reasoning matches particular person. Then, I set the game in the world I create in which I set all of games I work on (and plan to constantly do that for next few years [which actually makes me think that a few years is plenty of time
I don't change my mind, though]). If there is one thing that I ever missed in games that is shallow and infantile plot (generalization, I'm not intending on saying that there are no mature games or, especially adventure games). Adventure game seems to be closest to movie, book or a play in terms of how much plot matters, plus it is suppose to be about an adventure. That's my interpretation of the genre.I divided whole story into 3 chapters because of few reasons. It's easier to finish smaller games than one big game. Main character will travel through different country in every chapter (3 chapter, 3 countries, 3 cultures).
I've worked on the project somewhere in summer-autumn until a coder quit (lack of time) and I lost my motivation for a while + I felt like it would be good to gain some perspective and get back to it later (I moved on to other projects of mine). Fortunately, script seemed better after a few months than when I've been actually writing it and so I became confident to get back to it.
Story tells about a young man living in a country known as Gothia (it's sort of a slightely steampunkish British Empire's capitol; that's simplest way to describe it but it also takes away a lot of its originality). He is in his early 20s, History is his major. He is a grandson of famous Gothian explorer. His name is Philip Seymour Mackenzie.
Game is set in times when Gothia's Steam Age is at its peak. Philosophy (or human thought) had its huge impact on society and science, to the point where intellectualists (highly educated and "by nature") subscribe to the point of view that nature has to be tamed as it prevents man from his natural domination over the world.
The game contains some strong ecological, philosopical messages. Through script I tried to played a bit with two contradicting concepts that inspires me very much (love to natural world, and belief that nature is poor evil that has to be terminated; in other words: belief that man is part of everything, and belief that man and nature are divided).
Although game is set in a fictional fantasy world, I've done my best to make the meaningfulness of the story as universal as I only could. If you do not appreciate this sort of experiments within game medium, I guess you shouldn't send me an e-mail. But if you do... Voila!
Game should not be difficult to code as it contains pretty much only one puzzle.
I have finished about 70% of backgrounds, little of chara designs and no animation at all. Also a few music themes that I intend to work on more and add a few more.
This game has been my playground in terms of learning simple pixel art (you can see what I do now here: http://sadmoons.com/letters/). I decided to go with platformer camera angle (if that would make hotspots hell I'm willing to convert images into perspective ones) for simplicity and difference.
I'm not sure if I have covered everything so, please, feel free to ask anything you want/need.
http://sadmoons.com/excerpt.txt :: Excerpt from the script to give you an idea of my writing style (right mouse and Save As... [it's a txt file])
http://sadmoons.com/medley.ogg :: Music medley that is far from being polished but I catched the atmosphere and emotions I was looking for which matters to me most.
English is not my mother tongue thus if you expect astonishing writing you might be rather disappointed.
I'm looking for someone who might be still a semi-rookie in AGS but who is reliable and knows that he can finish the project with me (there is nothing worse for me than unstable collaboration so please no time wasters; I'm putting my whole wit and heart into what I do and I expect at least 50% of the same from you). In other words: you can improve on your AGS skills much easier than improve on your personality.
I will take care of backgrounds, sprites, animation (they will most likely be simple but I consider the plot most important part of the game), music and sounds. And most likely I would love to have voice acting to strengthen the emotions and make it a bit more serious / appealing serious. Right now I work on other project where I've begin to gather voice actors and if this one go well I will definitely aim at fully vocalized game.
My website: http://sadmoons.com
If you are interested into collaborating with me on this project please drop me a mail at kaworu (at) sadmoons.com. Thanks.
If you have to here, thanks for reading!
Happy New Year!
-Kaworu
P.S. Please excuse me if the post is a little chaotic, I worked about 10 hours today.