Hello out there, and welcome to the newest edition of testgame.exe: Making the Adventure. (Unless you’re in the future and reading this, in which case maybe I’d better just call this the February edition. To my future readers: What’s the world like? Write back if you can.)
This month, everyone’s favorite in-development point-and-click adventure game takes another giant step/leap on the road towards story completion. As you may remember, there are a couple of large-scale puzzles currently left open-ended, and one over-arching puzzle that brings everything together in this the “castle section” of the game. (By the way, my goal for this article: use as many hyphens as possible.) One of these large puzzles, the one having to do with Amazing Anthony the ventriloquist and his three-signature-requiring petition, has been mostly completable for a little while now. (Scratch that. I’m finished with the hyphens. I now hate them.) The other big puzzle, as you may have noticed already, has to do with the captain of the guard inside the castle.
Now that I think of it, actually, this second puzzle may not really be as large and involved as I thought it would be, seeing as it can now be completed as of this month. Well, not actually completed completed, but just about a couple of lines of code and one interaction away from it. I’m not going to go into too much detail on this one, because there may be some of you that don’t know what the puzzle is yet. Just go talk to the guard captain about Amazing Anthony. All I’ll say for now is that he wants something, and as of this month, after a few (not so very tricky) steps, Paul is able to get it for him. Yay, making people happy.
I actually don’t have very much else to say. Progress continues as usual. Mmhmm. There’s been some more background work, and a little bit of animation (Artie is now capable of walking downwards). Other than that, I haven’t really had any amazing revelations or anything.
Next month, I hope to have every puzzle completed in this part of the game. Woah. Seriously? Yeah, I mean, once we can get the slingshot to Hans, it’s pretty much strait sailing (smooth shooting?) from there. Wow. We may actually be nearing the halfway point in terms of plot. Hehe, I know what’s coming!
What in the world could be going on in the second half of the game? Who is this Herkimer that Lily talks about, and what could he possibly want with Paul? Well, you may very well get to find out in the upcoming months! Not in this month’s version of the game. I don’t care! Play it anyway!
(And then give me feedback.)
(no extra programs needed to run this file)
Things to do/new features of note:
- Ability to make progress towards a certain puzzle solution (the one having to do with the captain of the guard). Try using some inventory items Paul has with various surroundings. Need a stronger hint than that? I suggest playing around with one of the items you get from the cobbler in the castle courtyard.
- Next, once you figure that out, try doing something with that inventory item to get another one.
- Then try using that inventory item to get yet another one.
- Now you can try to use that inventory item to solve an important puzzle! Well, you can’t solve it for real yet. There’s still one more step that’s missing.
- You can also try using some of the items involved in the bullet points above in various other (unproductive) ways, like with other inventory items and with Paul and the guard captain. So in all that’s…
- …four new inventory items. Well, I guess technically they’re all things you get by using up other inventory items…. But they’re still new!
- Things to look at/interact with in the castle kitchen.
- Artie now has an animation for walking downwards. I think this should come up in the game at some point. Maybe.
- Background work: castle hallway, forest outside door.
All the graphics and design are by Lizo. The dialogue was written by Lizo, with significant input by Paul. The background music is by Lizo. “Let’s Go Skateboard” is written and performed by The Word Problems. Adventure Game Studio (the program used to create this game) can be downloaded at http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/
