Messages

Thanks for the replies.
I've switch to a larger font for speech, and made it more obvious when the demo is over. However, I'm thinking about abandoning the Lucasarts way of displaying speech. It quickly gets hard to read unless it's modified in one way or another.

Spoiler

it is possible to get past the second hooded man who is hiding in the house after you kill the first hooded man and cut the alarm off.

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Good to hear you've enjoyed it.

Spoiler

It's not possible. Her story continues though, but on a path of her own. Getting past the first man will have some impact on later gameplay.

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@DBoyWheeler: Thanks. I like Yahtsee's games, and I'm sure they have had an influence on me, if not always consciously.

[Story:]

Story:
In Eerie Blue, you will play different law enforcement officers throughout the story, trying to solve a recent disappearance in a mid-sized town. The journey will be sinister and, depending on your choices, a varying degree of horrific. It will play out both in reality and in a more nightmarish place.

In this game, I try to experiment with several rooms on one screen, using the now possible larger resolutions. I also try out timed options and branching paths, now far more manageable with the implementation of new structures in the engine.

Story, design, graphics, animation, scripting, sound effects: Vegard Stolpnessæter
Music: Kristin Burdal

Features:

• 1920x1080 resolution
• Stages of discomfort for the player character, opening or closing options in the game
• Dialogues and actions with a time limit
• Music that changes with the level of tension experienced by the player character
• Sound

In the demo, you're a police detective that has been called to a house by the security company monitoring the house alarm. You must try to find out what has happened and stay calm.
The demo is available from the games section.

Screenshots (click to view full size):

This is my first game since Breakage and I'm looking forward to trying out something quite different from it.

Good job!
A huge thank you to all involved. This opens up new, tremendously exciting possibilities.

Congratulations. A very nice game. Really liked the setting, art and immersion it gave.

I had a start-up screen that told the player what the symbols showing left and right of the dynamic pointer meant, and that they were connected to the left and right mouse button (as well as inventory being available through the mouse wheel). With pictures. Felt it was the right thing at the time. I'm a sucker for clarification, though not time consuming ones.

And at one point I had a situation where looking, and not using, was the right thing to do. And I also added an achievement for looking around at minute things. Just to reward those who play that way.

That sounds confusing if it's done in the same game... first you reward the player for looking, but then you make a puzzle that requires NOT to look?

Looking was the right thing to do

There is another way of handling these situations, which is to use a 'dynamic cursor'.  This changes when over a hotspot to an icon that indicates what action the player can take (eg. an eye for look-at, a hand for pick-up or use).  The action is always instigated by a left mouse click.  You can then have the 'look-at' icon to start with, which changes to another action icon once the player has looked at the object and read your 'funny'.  I have used this system in my own games.
Good luck,
Elen

I am more and more comfortable with games that use a dynamic cursor, however I implemented them as having up to two choices in Breakage (one for the left and one for the right button), so it wouldn't be just clicking, but give the player some choice. And at one point I had a situation where looking, and not using, was the right thing to do. And I also added an achievement for looking around at minute things. Just to reward those who play that way. Some variants of dynamic cursors, like The Book of Unwritten Tales' first click is look, following clicks might be interact, and sometimes just looking several times is the required thing, rubs me the wrong way (when not hinted at is what should be done). I basically want some variation, but not a bundle of verbs, which produces a lot of dead ends, and grows the need to give the player logical feedback.

It looks really atmospheric. Looking forward to it.

Having received quite encouraging comments, and Breakage being made pick of the month for April, I decided to do something about the main grievance: No sound or music. So now it has sound and music. And some voice.

The music has been created by Kristin Burdal, one of the master's students in musicology at the university where I live (I actually work at the Department of Music there, just to give more disbelief to the lack of sound in the first place). I created the sounds, and some of the voice acting together with a friend of the female persuasion. The different creatures have some random sounds/sentences at the start of a conversation, and there is voice when the forth wall is broken.

So, as this has been something that came up in almost every comment, I choose to bump this now months old thread to point attention to the update, in the best tradition of ask forgiveness instead of permission. As I feel it might come forth as an almost new game to some who missed sound, or didn't play it at all because the lack of it.

/.../
Breakage (this one also has fantastic animation)
/.../

Thanks Actually the majority of the animations in Breakage don't have more than 5-6 unique frames. However there are more than 250 animations, counting everything that moves . There are some larger ones (the castle's bucket-hoisting for instance) but many of those too have minute differences between frames, reducing the time to draw them. The walk cycles were a pain though

I had a lot of fun with all those puzzeles and hope it won't be your last game.

Thank you.
It probably won't be

Thanks Leon, smooth sailing after that. Game completed. I assume the "star, eye and trophy" at the end, are the 3 "trophies" in the game?

Oooh, you got all achievements. Maybe a first. The star one at least is almost OCD-like. Or luck

[Breakage]

For your consideration: Breakage.

Link for downloading

Description: Breakage is an old-style point-and-click adventure game in its heart, with a modernized control system. The game's graphics and animations are hand drawn.

Story: Something weird has happened. You wake up in a dungeon, and the world seems a mishmash of fantasy, sci-fi and reality. You must find out what has happened and what is going to happen, and perhaps stop it.

Features:

• 1024 x 768 resolution
• Eight direction walk, talk and idle cycles
• Lip-syncing to text
• 34 rooms
• 15 Non-player characters
• Hand drawn graphics and animation
• Intuitive controls
• Silliness
• Achievements for doing totally useless things!

Screenshots (thumbnails):

Examples of animation:

You have probably already thought about this, but since animation usually is quite a big part of adventure games, you should take this aspect into the equation as well imo. - What works best from a workload / your animation skills -point of view.

About the same time as doing good pixel art I imagine (not used to it). I used about 1,5-2 years on Breakage. I'm not on a schedule here, I just take my time

He doesn't really look scary either way. Not he's badly drawn or anything (except that the low res version might need some tweaks).

Horror is unknown which, when it's a character, translates to uncontrollable and unpredictable. So how to turn that to character design? I suggest clothes ripped in places, blood stains, bare, cut up, feet instead of shoes, not a hood with an eye hole (that's just kind of seems week), but a guy who doesn't see yet still sees (think Pyramidhead) -> scary. Either that or go completely "normal", which twists slowly into darkness...
Quick edit:

Thank you for your input
I'm trying to not go for monsters per say, but I can draw inspiration from the rest of your edit, which is very good.

(And yes, honing pixel art skills will also be part of the equation if I go that way)

I thought I was imagining that the guy was blinking but then I saw it blink again and it freaked me out!

Mission accomplished

I'm contemplating doing a horror game. And I've wanted to do a widescreen Hi-res game for a while, but I'm not sure that this should be it. With horror much of the suspense lie in what is imagined by the viewer, and Lo-res is more accommodating to that. So I've tried out one of the characters as a Hi-res and a Lo-res version. Which is scariest? Or how to make either scarier.

Innovative preservation of the book, and probably making it even more available to a generation used to computers.

I am stuck at the very beginning. I have:

Duct, rubi, can with tape, scrap of paper and acorn.

Some hint, please.

Spoiler

If you speak with the shopkeeper about being on land, some new options might be available for you when speaking to the goblin. Taking that line of conversation to its end might give a reward.

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