Hello everyone, and welcome to the newest installment of testgame.exe: Making the Adventure! Before we get too far into the article, though, there’s something important that needs to be taken care of:
Happy birthday, testgame!
That’s right, it’s been exactly one year since I started updating testgame monthly for GameCola! And it’s been quite the “adventure,” let me tell you.
As a special one year anniversary gift, I’ve done something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, something that’s a big step toward making testgame more like my own game: I finally replaced the really scary icons at the top of the screen! Now, before you get too excited, I must admit that the changes aren’t that drastic, as I really just changed the graphics to buttons I drew myself. But overall, I think the new effect is much happier and less…scary. Did anyone else notice how creepy the floating eyeball and maniacal smile were? But, I digress.
Also, before anyone tries to sue me, I do realize that I’ve been highly influenced by the King’s Quest games (especially KQ6) in this revitalized icon bar. The new golden color just seems right to me, having played KQ6 so much, and I’m pretty sure I stole the color appearing upon mouse rollover thing, too. But in any case, this makes me happy. The next step is to redesign the cursors, too.
Something that’s making me really happy about testgame in general: all the interlocking puzzles and bits of things. Needing to talk to someone before being able to use an item, needing to have been to a certain screen before you can ask a character about something—it’s just too cool man, and I can barely keep track of the web of actions myself. With Artie’s dialogue for instance, I just sort of have to trust that the stuff I set up a month or two ago will continue to work, because at this point I just have no idea what I did, but it seems to make sense when I’m actually playing through the game.
Speaking of new things, I’m not sure you’ll believe me when I say how close to the end of this section of the game we are. You can do everything now up to the very last cutscene plus one more puzzle, and then we’re in a new area! It’s kinda scary. A year ago at this time, I couldn’t even imagine the game ever getting this far.
Download the newest version and enjoy! Here’s to another year, testgame. 🙂
(no extra programs needed to run this file)
**Note** If you get an error message about resolution when trying to run the testgame.exe file, first open the winsetup.exe file and change the resolution option to 640 x 400.
Voice Actors Wanted for the Following Characters:
- Thurston – Male; bad guy extraordinaire.
- Artie – Male; somewhat helpful old guy in a kilt.
- Creature – Female; high voice, NOT creepy, I swear.
Just contact me if you’re interested in any of these parts. At all. Really.
Things to do/new features of note:
- It is now possible to cut the vine! This is, quite literally, one of the last things to do before leaving this part of the world.
- Brand new puzzle in the cave screen! This has to do with Artie and inventory items, and it involves new animation and dialogue and happy things like that!
- New room, including new things to look at and a new item! See if you can get behind the curtain the cave of thorns!
- New items and interactions in Paul’s room! But you have to go explore outside his room and come back to be able to do everything.
- Total new item count: four!
- Some more artwork tweakage in the cave screen, like floor texture and stuff.
- Updated stream screen—now it doesn’t look like you should be able to walk down!
Upcoming tasks for Lizo:
I HATE THIS SECTION! I’M NEVER WRITING IT AGAIN!
All the graphics and design are by Lizo. The dialogue was written by Lizo, with significant input by Paul. Paul is voiced (appropriately) by Paul Franzen. Lily is voiced by Lizo. Omar is voiced by Jenny. Adventure Game Studio (the program used to create this game) can be downloaded at http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/
