Messages

Kazimir Malevich; Black square?

Yes, you are correct!
I wanted to include famous paintings a bit of an Easter-egg, and went with abstract motives because it would be hard to draw recognizable figures that small.

Really great BG, again!
Well, I do recognize Piet Mondrian, the other is way to dark for me to guess. The Scream maybe?

You are right about Mondrian!
As for the other painting, I wanted to reference a Russian painting from a hundred years ago.

Great music, really captures a Mayan feel!

Just by looking at the screens I'm having a huge nostalgia trip, as they remind me of my favourite adventure games from the 90's. In other words - I sure do like them! Keep'em coming, and good luck with the project! All of the characters, with that cartoony slash propaganda design applied to them, sure do look great.

Cant wait for the finished piece, Good luck with the project Blondbraid!

Looks like great fun. All the best, BB.

Thank you so much for your support, it's great to hear that you like it!

Regarding references, you have seen Enemy at the Gates right? Great movie about a Russian sniper (and based o true story).
Any timeframe for release yet?

Yes, I did see enemy at the gates, and I think it's a great movie despite taking liberties with the source material (the irony of this movie is that many critics complained about the gritty sniper duels being weighed down by a tacked-on romantic sub-plot, while in reality, most things in the movie was fictional except for the romantic "sub-plot"! ).

While I hope to finish my work on this game within this autumn, I have a hard time being specific since I still have not decided on all the ideas I'm pondering weather to include. While I do have a clear ending in mind, the road there may be a bit rocky, so to say...
As for now, here is a new screenshot.

Just for fun, can anyone guess which artists I've referenced in the paintings by the stairs?

[Future machines are not only smart as humans: they're also well-armed and grumpy.]

Future machines are not only smart as humans: they're also well-armed and grumpy.

"I'm sorry, there was a slight miscalculation in neutralization measures.  Medical personnel have been alerted, and will be arriving shortly.  Thank you for choosing EnerGenius."

All good stories are meant to make the audience feel deep and powerful emotions and seeing the protagonist
die in such a way almost made me burst into tears as I felt a very strong sensation of schadenfreude.

Looks beautiful, and your depiction of Stockholm looks spot on!

A man in a dark place looking at a sunset through a window? The color scheme looks nice anyway...

This game has some great aesthetics, and the image below the title look simply marvelous! It will be most interesting to see how this game will turn out.

You adapt the Propaganda Thingy beautifully!

Everything is tip-top, the artwork, the style, but maybe for me is the colors, maybe more shading and depth will bring them more alive? even just a bit. But that's just a one man's opinion, You've done great and keep up the good work!

Why thank you very much!
As for depth and and shading, it's a bit tricky. Partially because I'm going for a 40's cartoon aesthetic, but also because it's hard to animate (at least for me).

I love the premise and while placeholders, the art style looks promising!

And I almost forgot I should add that some of the women described on the site http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/ also served as a bit of inspiration, partially their description of sergeant Mariya Oktyabrskaya (though she drove a tank, and it was called the fighting girlfriend, and personally wrote to Stalin and asked for permission to buy said tank and kill Nazis with it to avenge her dead husband).

I've also been musing on the spotters backstory

Spoiler

While his parents are alive, they both served in the Women's battalion of death during WWI, his father disguising himself as a lady so that he could follow his lover into battle.

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This is what happens when you're painting while binge-watching Humans, listening to retro-synthwave music, and overhearing Donald Trump ranting on about lazy poor people on CNN in the next room.

While I haven't seen Humans, I did see the the Swedish series Real Humans (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2180271/?ref_=nv_sr_2) which Humans is a remake of, and I think the series have some pretty great themes and facinating storylines. This game has great potential to broach a lot of real world issues and ask questions about the society we live in, and I can see several parallels between this story and contemporary real life problems, such as the growing numbers of beggars where I live, or all jobs that are either outsourced to cheap labor countries or made redundant by technology. It will be most interesting to see how this game turns out!

It does make me think of this colorful ww1 character.

A most interesting read, thank you Grok! I had no previous knowledge of this very interesting person!

I suppose my primary source of fact's and inspiration for the sniper has been the book War's unwomanly face
by Svetlana Aleksijevitj (who is receiving the Nobel prize in literature this year) and a certain Don Bluth movie.
I've also posted a new screenshot on the ags in production thread today! http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=52586.0

New screenshot!

As you can see, there will be a bit of blood in the game...

Congratulations and good luck!

The spotter has the potential to be a really interesting character.

Great to hear! What I'm aiming for is a man who you never really know whether he is a dumb man trying to sound clever or a clever man pretending to be dumb.
But the sniper will hopefully be an interesting character as well, who loves stating pretentiously grandiose communist platitudes even more than she loves shooting enemies of the state in the head.
She spent most of her time before the war as a lone wolf after losing her family in the revolution, and it's eventually revealed that

Spoiler

the reason she lost them is that her parents were members of the aristocracy, her father even a prince. Turns out she was actually a princess all along!

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Does this sound interesting?

Looks pretty neat and lovely graphics, though I'm no aviation expert and cannot tell whether the plane moves correctly. I see nothing wrong with it though.

It is interesting to see a game about a contemporary crisis and this seems to have a great potential. Best of luck to you!

Some concept art!

I did a few sketches for a church tower which will show up in the game, settling on the rightmost one.

Spoiler

For what better place is there for a sniper to have an (anti)climatic showdown than atop a church tower?

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I wish for the setting to have a somewhat ambiguous feel while still being recognizably eastern European.
I also added a big clock face,
and I hope to make an homage to the Edgar Allan Poe short story A Predicament (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Predicament)!

Now, while it may not really have anything to do with the game, I read in the newspapers that the Belorussian writer and journalist Svetlana Alexievich will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature this year. Her book, War's Unwomanly Face, has been one of my sources of inspiration for this game with interviews of female war veterans providing an unconventional perspective on the second world war and I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
(I also recommend anyone interested in lavish ballgowns to watch the prize ceremony on tv on the 10th of December, but for some reason this interest rarely overlaps with WWII or computer games. )

Another source of inspiration has been Call of Duty: World at war, also an interesting, though very different, depiction of war. I hope that a game inspired by cartoons, blockbuster action and award-winning literature will be memorable, but if not I'm at least having fun making this game.