Messages

Do it like Heroine's Quest, which is a game inspired by Hero's Quest but NOT a fan sequel or ripoff of Hero's Quest.

The game actually does use a certain number of modified graphics from copyrighted products. For example, the heroine's sprite is modified from the heroine from Legend of Kyrandia 2, and the portraits are traced from photographs of celebrities. But it's always done in a tasteful, NOT lazy way, and the game otherwise has an incredible amount of original content -- most of all, the game is a genuinely good game in itself.

So it all depends on how you present your game. If you simply rip off Police Quest in a lazy way, essentially piggybacking on it, most people will show some disdain toward your project -- including the copyright holders who will send a certain kind of legal letter in your direction. If however you present a serious, interesting game inspired by a classic, then even if you happen to use a few copyrighted content (whether graphics or game mechanics), most people will show admiration toward it -- perhaps even the original game's creators! and hopefully the actual copyright holders will turn a blind eye.

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Alternative solution:

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I've seen that option in AGS "use all sprites from a folder". That could be my solution, but it's not my preferred one -- does anyone know how to export all frames of a Photoshop animation into single files?

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File > Scripts > Export Layers to Files

Only ten people have rated this game on the website. C'mon guys!

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1748/

That looks pretty cool. The perspective reminds me of Ultima.

Oh wow, I didn't know about this game and the graphics are amazing!

For sound this looks interesting:
http://www.mediacollege.com/downloads/sound-effects/

For music, I like the following site as a fan of music in general, but I'm not sure how you would go about looping these tracks for game use:
http://ccmixter.org/

Forgive me for such a newbie question, but don't the rules say that game assets must be completely new apart from music and sound? Dakota's main graphics are ripped from Illusion of Time (or Illusion of Gaia as it is called in North America), a JRPG for the SNES. Don't get me wrong, I'm just curious as someone outside of the competition.

My first minutes in the game :
She's hungry > I go looking for food.
I try to kill a boar with snowballs > she can't throw them properly.
Now, she's cold > back to the adventurer's guild
Let's train to throw snowballs > now, she's dead from exhaustion.

What a wimp !

You want to kill a boar with a snowball?

The graphics are pretty good! Looks like a grittier Gobliiins game I'll definitely play this.

The Haugbui

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The vase is a normal item (not Eitri's) that you can buy at one of the shops

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in Munarvagir.

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Getting Your Stuff Back from Thrivaldi

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Getting past Thrivaldi depends on which class you're playing. As a Warrior, you must use one of the skills which is characteristic of a Warrior.

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Something involving Animal Ken.

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Get a Fox and use it to fetch your items.

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And what can you do with the strand of your own hair? I saw something in the dialog about Loki's tricks, but did not come across anything yet calling for it. Is it just a red herring?

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You could use it on the Lodestone to make a compass during the snowstorm sequence. I don't know if it has another use.

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Yeah personally I didn't click this option, because it was not what Lithrasir had said or suggested. It struck me as odd because this was maybe the only instance of a jerk option so early in the game. In any case, this by no mean diminished my enjoyment of the game

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I can't give the flowers I finally managed to get from Eitri to Lithrasir because I told Liff she didn't want them. That apparently also closes off a couple of other quests. and I guess I can't deal with the whole Regin/Fafnir situation because I told both of them I'm staying out of it. Which I think means I can't get Andvari's armor because I can't get a dragon scale.

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While it is a bit annoying, I don't really mind those Regin/Fafnir dialog options as they have at least some logical basis. Regin and Fafnir have a conflict and the heroine can choose to stay out of it. That makes sense. Plus, I'm pretty sure this is unrelated to getting Andvari's armor (lindworms are randomly-encountered enemies, at least for the warrior).

But the dialog options with Liff and Lithrasir on the other hand definitely makes no sense at all. Why would the heroine lie and randomly sabotage their relationship? It really comes out of nowhere.

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- Character's name on the stats page is written over an invisible button? When clicking around it I make the text lower a little

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This also occurs in the dice minigame when clicking the amount of money. Also, clicking the game's name or other text on the title screen triggers the same sound as when clicking "New game" or "Restore game" etc.

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Why not change the rules of the "Completed Game Announcements" board so that games posted there MUST also be added to the AGS database? It could be a rule like how games posted in the "AGS Games in Production" board must have two screenshots.

Edit: Or what LimpingFish said too!

[Graphics]

Just beat the game as a Warrior.

My game stats just for fun:

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Graphics

Graphics were fantastic! Usually you can "see" when a game is an amateur production due to there always being something slightly off with the perspective, lighting, shading or colour usage, but this was never the case here. All the backgrounds felt professional and beautiful. Svartalfheim looked slightly less interesting but Nidavellir more than made up for it. I also liked how the monsters were very diverse. For instance, the gulon is short and fat, the svartalf is thin, the jotunn is tall, etc.

I loved the visual cameos that I understood, from the obvious ones like the items in Sigrun's and Eitri's houses, right down to the less obvious ones like the Super Mario mushroom in Eitri's house (and Fremont's waterfall). I was more confused by the ones I didn't understand and could only guess were cameos, like the interdimensional bard, that... person... with the fishnet stockings, or the Imp.

The animations added a lot to the experience. The forest could have been boring fast but it didn't due to all the little animated animals and environments. There's one minor instance where the animations sort of let me down, especially since it affects a puzzle: Gandvik lake, which is supposed to be windy according to dialogue but which doesn't look much more windy than anywhere else.

Audio

The music was really good! I actually have no idea how many tracks there were, because they never felt intrusive, so I just enjoyed them without noticing the track changes and stuff. The real-world music you incorporated was also totally appropriate.

The sound effects were slightly less impressive. I didn't think the sounds of the weapon strikes were as "satisfying" and hard-hitting as they could be. But then again, I'm a fan of JRPGs and fighting games, where the sounds of the hits and attacks tend to be exaggerated, so maybe it's just a question of habits, aha.

The voicing was mostly fine. It served its purpose well in differentiating the characters and helping us familiarize with all those Nordic names and terms. I found Skrymir's voice the most entertaining.

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On the downside, it's a shame Loki's appearance was optional. I liked his voice the most. He was much more impressive than Egther.

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Story

The story was also very well done and focused. It really felt like a classic adventure game. It also actually felt like an adaptation of Norse mythos, rather than a generic Tolkien-esque game with mythologic names randomly thrown in for flavour. The story kept me interested because, as a fan of Norse mythology, I was wondering how you were going to depict Ragnarok.

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When I finished the game, I was a bit disappointed that the Aesir didn't show up, but I realized them being constantly talked about but never seen by the humans is in tune with the point of view of the ancient Norse people. You stayed true to the Norse spirit even insofar as making Keira actually die in battle, and becoming an Einherjar. I was afraid you were not going to go beyond the usual "Hero(ine) walks away into the sunset while the people she's just saved celebrate", but I was pleasantly surprised.

One thing I really didn't like at all is the random time-travelling puzzle near the end. I thought it was totally out of place (in addition to being out of time lololol). At first I thought the final act was going to be set in that post-Ragnarok setting. That wasn't in the original myth but I thought, okay, well, this could be fun. But then the game backtracked and the whole thing ended up being a random puzzle that takes away from the immersion and just makes me think of the one in Curse of Monkey Island.

One minor thing I didn't like in the ending is that we hear Brynhild and Keira talk. It kinda took me out of that wonderful magical moment. The narration and semi-animated pictures were already perfect IMO. [For example, in one of the films based on the Arthurian mythos I'm pretty sure we see the wounded Arthur depart to Avalon without much words, if any, and that was very powerful.] I also would have preferred to fight Loki as the final boss instead of the less ominous (relatively-speaking) Egther.

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Writing

The introduction sequence (up to you leaving Fornsigtuna for the first time) was a bit too wordy for me. I mean, I just installed the game and I want to go explore and do stuff, but instead some woman and some kid bombard me with terms and information that I just don't care about just yet. After that sequence though, the writing was very good. You did a good job of using all those Nordic terms without them ever being cheesy or incomprehensible.

I liked the use of different speech patterns for different characters, for the most part. Two I didn't like were Eitri and Aurvandel; they were kind of overdone. I feel sorry for the guy who voiced Aurvandel because I skipped probably over half of all the lines he recorded...

Some of the jokes however I feel were too out of place. The possibility of having Keira call herself a mighty pirate and reference Guybrush's story and stuff was honestly a bit too much for me. I know this is an RPG but it doesn't ever feel in-character for Keira to say that. On the upside, the jokes told by the narrator were all excellent.

Gameplay

The RPG aspects and battling are excellent and I had a lot of fun with it! I have a French keyboard so my keys don't match with the interface on-screen, but it wasn't too problematic (then again I played with the default difficulty). Some of the stats seem to go up too easily, comparatively, for instance endurance which goes up on its own and animal ken for which you can just spam-click any animal and see the number skyrocket.

I would have liked an option to discard items and to rest more than one hour. Changing the game speed through buttons would have been welcome too, because sometimes a cutscene happens before a battle and you don't get the opportunity to open the menu to change the speed.

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As for the puzzles, I thought most of them were logical without being too obvious, but some were really frustrating. I mean, why can I freeze that ghost's food in Skrymir's challenge yet I could't burn it or put a caltrop in it or other stuff? Wasn't Skrymir watching anyway? And Andvari's sliding puzzle... seriously, a sliding puzzle? Overall, I think the puzzles involving animals were the best ones.

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Overall

This may well be my favorite AGS game of 2013 The production values are incredible, the story is original (it's based on something but the way it does it feels very fresh), the gameplay is addictive and technically-speaking very impressive, and the adventure long enough for a first playthrough to be satisfying yet not too long enough that you won't want to do a second playthrough after it. Oh, and the bonus material is the icing on the cake. More indie games should do that.

A heads-up for everyone: when you have to go to the final castle in the final chapter, make sure you've done everything you wanted to do in the second world, because the entrance to that world is blocked once you've passed this point of no return (you can still explore the forest and towns, but not the second world).

Some general questions:

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1. Is it possible to sell stuff to the merchants to get some additional money? I have four pelts, and I got a message about "you wouldn't want to wear them in their current condition, you'd smell like a varg". Can I process them? Or sell them? Sell something else?

2. I haven't tried it yet, but are the chests "synced"? Meaning if I stored something in one inn's chest, can I retrieve it from another inn's?

3. How can I repair the golden sword and what's its use?

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1. You must use the Daggers from Volund on them to process them. I'm not sure if having several increases the effect.

2. I've just tried. They are not.

3. Volund can repair it, but he needs corals for that. You can get corals by using a Picking Tool near the lake in Svartalfheim. I'm still trying to see what its use is (Fafnir doesn't want it ).

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Daniel:

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I read that's because of the cursed ring you got. Give it to Heime to get rid of it.

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Thanks!

Not a question, just a random remark: for some reason, everyone (except Hervor, Heime, and some guards) hates me and I don't even know why

Lovely to see this as a free release, i assumed it was a commercial effort! Really enjoying what i've played so far, the first town has a great cozy atmosphere with plenty to explore. Still getting used to the battle mechanics, i usually suck at these :p

They can't make it commercial seeing as how there are cameos from the Sierra classics, and some of the graphics are partially traced from copyrighted photographs

Anyway this might be my favorite AGS game of 2013 so far! I love the RPG aspects.