As a wee kiddo I used to play a lot of adventure games. First text adventures like Scott Adams’ Pirate Adventure, and old Infocom classics. Then I got hold of Maniac Mansion for the C64, and I was completely hooked on graphical adventure games. Prior to playing that game I had only stayed up all night reading books (ah, Dumas, how your stories caused me to lose my well-needed beauty sleep!), but I vividly recall being physically unable to quit playing Maniac Mansion. The clock struck midnight, and I desperately tried to escape the prison. The clock struck 2 AM and found me finally figuring out that the rusty key opened the car’s trunk. And so on.
After that point, having to write text in an adventure game seemed like a giant step backwards to me. That’s probably why I never was a big fan of the Sierra adventure games. I’ve played my fair share of King’s, Police and Space Quest, but they never captivated me the same way that Lucasarts did with their magnificent opii. (Did you know that I’m trying to be ironic with my misuse of the word opii, and that the plural of opus is actually opuses or opera? And did you know that opii is the genitive form of opium in singular? Sweet mother of crap, I’m pretentious today!)
Still, I tried to enjoy Quest for Glory (or Hero’s Quest as I knew it) because I loved the idea of mixing an RPG with an adventure game. I never got very far, though; it was too cumbersome to type everything. So my fascination with the QfG series died in its cradle.
Boy, did I miss out.
Check this out. One guy is attempting to play all Quest for Glory games completely through, and is documenting it all on YouTube. (This is the very first one; he has over a hundred more clips.)
This has to be one of the coolest things ever. Evah! It’s thanks to his efforts that I’m rediscovering the QfG games, and its wonderfully witty punny humour. I don’t really do puns myself but I thoroughly appreciate reading the plethora of witticisms in the Quest games. “I forgot my Visa in the desert.” “We don’t take Dinar’s Club here.” …Just awful. In an awesome way.
For many years I’ve been in no rush to make something of myself: I’ve dabbled in writing some Windows applications, small game experiments, and lately casual games. I’ve also started writing a fantasy novel, written and performed humorous songs at university parties, written punk songs, metal songs, pseudo-baroque songs, and tried to learn how to draw better. But this year I’m turning 30. I still have long hair and dress all in black; I really should grow up and start doing some worthwhile things.
My professional life is going well: I like working with embedded software development and my current Field Applications Engineer role could be a much-needed spark of inspiration for me. But that’s not enough - I need to have more entrepreneuring projects for my spare time! I have a nagging suspicion that I’m far from the only one in a position like this, so for all our sakes I’ll make a short list of my current thoughts. With some luck they might give you inspiration to start something new:
Continue with casual games development. Well, this is pretty much a given. I love making games and I have loads of ideas: Spandex Force 2 with multiplayer support, a puzzle game based on Norse mythology, a free Flash verison of my old Word Mahjongg game, an abstract strategy game based on the dawn of civilization, an archaeology adventure/puzzle game, humorous adventure games based on old public domain stories - and so on. I’ll definitely keep this up. Especially since Spandex Force has given me funding for both Wildhollow and much of Spandex Force 2.
Import and sell items. I love weird cool stuff, and I’d love to find something obscure that I can sell in Sweden. I like the idea of a DIY thing with a small stock in my apartment and online distribution. Still haven’t found the Perfect Cool Thing(TM), though - a big part of the problem is that I don’t have a lot of capital to invest in a project like this.
Attempt to make one of these cool Web 2.0 places. (Well, it ought to be 3.0 by now.) Maybe “World Party” - a community-like site where you can have both world and city maps, and add locations where there’s good nightlife. “Go here, the beer is cheap!” Others can comment on your suggestions, and you can either use it as a personal “I’ve been here and done that” thing, or search for good places when you’re travelling. Whatever, there are probably places like this already. The idea itself is just a minor thing IMO - the concept is what’s interesting from a technical/design point of view.
Use my irreverent sense of humour to make posters/plaques/t-shirts with interesting prints. This would be pretty cool since it would involve taking studio photos of people posing with the products in question. See how much your pretty face is worth now! I’m the one hiring your services, and you’re dependent on me! Was it worth it, being one of the Beautiful People(TM)? We hatesss you… Seriously, this option would be risky since everyone and his dog can make prints these days, and everyone thinks he’s a bloody comedian. Just like me.
Investigate the market and try to find a simple product that’s missing. Browse, look around, do a heap of research, and finally decide on something that I can get an investor interested in. I.e., do something on a bigger scale than any of the other projects.
Finish my book. I think I could put together a decent fantasy novel, and I love writing…in theory. Okay, this is no entrepreneurial enterprise, but it would still be interesting.
What I’m going to do now is print this page, hang it on the wall, throw darts to select three of the six items…and ignore all of this for now, and have a cup of tea and a slice of pan pizza instead. I need to re-design my websites and finish Wildhollow before any of this, either way.
After a short vacation I find myself filled with energy and inspiration, so what better way to spend it than to improve Wildhollow, the strange adventure/management game I’m working on? The general game code is pretty solid by now, but I’ve had some really irritating issues regarding the GUI art.
My placeholder GUI art has been atrocious, which makes me unwilling to work on the GUI parts.
In order to improve the GUI art I need to find an artist for all the general design/icons/buttons details.
But in order to show artists what I need, I ought to have a working game with placeholder art that they can improve.
Which I’m of course not keen on doing since it looks like crap.
Now, this is a nice pickle! A pickle of the catch 22 flavour.
Sooo, what would a sensible person do? Find an artist that one can have an open dialogue with, in order to build the GUI alongside the GUI art?
Hell no. Why take the easy route when one can spend an unnecessary amount of time on making slightly-less-worse placeholder art in order to get inspired enough to work on the GUI! That said, I’ll just show some work in progress screenshots from the game:
Look! A title screen! With lots of sparkles that aren’t very visible here. And some weird buttons. I was going for a “semi-bark-looking” theme for the interface. Meh. I’ll dig up some wood textures and see what else I can come up with later.
Our hero is about to finish the first quest: find and bring back Barber Jack’s glasses that he dropped at Zachary’s place when he was trimming some animals. Oh yeah. A sweet $20 reward awaits…
Wildhollow Ranch is destroyed! Solve quests in order to collect cash; after rebuilding the ranch you can buy and breed animals. My goal is that the player should be able to solve some quests, do a first repair of the ranch, and crossbreed his first set of animals within one hour. Why one hour? Because that’s where the demo time limit will run out, and sneaky me thinks that this will be enough of a teaser to make people want to play more…
I’m the first person to admit that this is all very experimental. I have no idea if this concept will work, or if people will shun the game. Shun! Shuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnn…..
With all my trips abroad and to West Coast Riot lately, things have been relatively slow on the Wildhollow front. But that doesn’t mean that nothing has happened at all! Time to show off some pretty artwork teasers: first we have some lovely backgrounds for the adventure screens:
This is about half of the adventure screens; I would like to make the game humongously large with dozens more locations, but - alas! - I’m just one person! The dialogue and the quests are taking a long to write and puzzle together as it is. I’m aiming for around 10 hours play time for this game, just like Spandex Force, but there really won’t be 10 hours worth of dialogue and questing since a large part of the game will concern experimenting with animals. I’m still not 100% sure if this weird mix of management and click-adventure-thingie will work out, but this game is intended to be experimental after all. And - thank Bog - I’m using the earnings from Spandex Force on the game, so I’m not gambling my spare cash right now.
Which I’m doing on Pacific Poker instead. Damn online poker! Damn you to the ninth level of hell!
Before I get side tracked I’d better show you some animal sketches as well. Still some work to do, but I really love these concepts! The critters are going to be cuter than a frigging teaspoon of sugar. No, better make that tub full of sugar.
Now I need to think about how these creatures should be inter-breedable and what else is needed. And in 26 minutes I have a 2500 players poker tournament to play. Damn you, online poker! Damn you!
About
Miro Karjalainen is a pretentious bastard with a background in punk rock, computer science, linguistics, embedded systems, game development and the noble art of drinking beer. E-mail: info@karjasoft.com
