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A bit of middle of the night brain-storming:

The Golden Hero?

Astrum Gate

The Reluctant Crusader

The Key is Malakey

Mr Malakey, get us rid of this Malady

A-strum

StarFall

You spoke about GUI (CMI/FT-style), plotline (Larry), puzzles (Gobliins) - but what will the general atmosphere of the game be like?

I was going to say "like Black Adder (especially the first series with the naive rendition of Edmund)", but to be honest I'm not basing the game's style on anything specific. I want the game to be quite unusual.

Storywise it will be first of all a character-driven comedy and the main character's obsessions and quirks will be setting up the tone. The locations and music will be one of the main sources of atmosphere and they will be very different for each of the game's three segments.

[1. The Story]

Hi there, everyone

Two months ago, after years of deliberations I finally started making my first adventure game - Frantic Franko: A Bergzwerg Gone Berserk.

The game tells of a hero's long journey, but it doesn't make an epic story out of it, focusing rather on the personages and puzzle solving. I'd compare the structure to the adventures of Leisure Suit Larry who would always jump around all females he accidentally meets on his way and solve their problems for them, but I should make it clear that Frantic Franko's interactions with other characters will not be about sex (sorry, folks), as a matter of fact they will be primarily about revenge...

The puzzles on the other hand may be a bit in the vein of the Gobliiins series, yet with lots of dialogue puzzles among them. And for the game interface I used the verbcoin, but there won't be any eyes, magnifying glasses or hands to choose from... So anyway, everything in the game should seem reasonably familiar and a demo should be out pretty soon.





1. The Story

The game is set in a fantasy world. The main hero of the story is a ferocious dwarven warrior called Frantic Franko. As the game begins he goes on a long journey to a far away land just to get to the guy from a rival clan who unforgivably insulted his own. And the challenge is considerable as the offender is none other than the notorious Kinky Koval. Yet it won't be easy for Franko to reach Koval in one piece. In fact it's during the journey that his real problems and the true story start while revenge becomes an even more important issue...





2. The Main Hero

...really isn't a nice person. Actually he is something of an egoistic, sadistic psycho. He has a mother complex, problems with verbal communication, a tendency to attack anything that moves with his axe, and other appropriate quirks.

Also, Franko  is nearly blind (blinder even than most other dwarfs as he lost one of his eyes) so he catches the scents of things instead of looking at them. And what of an accute sense of smell he has indeed - ideal for examining hotspots in the game. Most importantly though, Franko is also equipped with a highly destructive nature in consequence of which he chooses swing his axe at things as the primary action when interacting with game objects.


High Res version of the concept art here

3. Game Features

- a short-sighted, foul-mouthed anti-hero with a strong revenge motif and who constantly smells his way either into or out of trouble

- hand-drawn third person adventure presented in stunning 16 bit SVGA graphix

- includes music composed by Łukasz Pawlik and performed by the jazz band Kattorna

- wacky puzzle solving focused gameplay

- Full Throttle/Curse of Monkey Island style  "verbcoin" interface with some little, neat twists

- three completely different environments (the screennies despite contrasts are from the same one) - each with its own style, mood, pacing and ways of dealing with problems

- the innovative "a persuasive dwarf's bag of junk" conversation system - Franko's special equipment that helps him to manipulate conversations in exactly the way he desires, or at least makes him to appear as a complete fool, but allows to get the job done nevertheless



4. Progress

Download the DEMO here or here.

Here is the official game demo page.

The game should be ready before the end of the year 2011.

In the meantime you can follow entries in my development diary here.

some gameplay footage on YouTube (Beware as it contains solutions for solving the first few puzzles): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XuB0RPN_eQ

The art (especially the coloring and the amount of details) is truly excellent.

Is there actually any way to fix the pipe system if I forgot to take items from the chest upstairs? I didn't see that situation covered in any walkthroughs.