Wildhollow, the quirky indie adventure game featuring weird humor and bizarre animals to take care of, is slowly starting to come together at long last. The minigames are still not up to par but at least the game is now possible to complete. I still have a few side quests to wrap up, but the main storyline is written and playtested. Up to, and including, the endgame that twists and turns a little but in the end settles into a nice and cozy happy ending.

Here are some tiny screenshots from the late stages of the game. If you’re really sensitive toward spoilers you might want to avert your eyes now. Nothing critical is revealed – I’m just offering a friendly warning in case you really want everything to be a surprise.

Yeah, let’s get it oooon!

I think I smell some fightin’ comin’ up!

Breaking the fourth wall? Guilty as charged!

I went for a very basic credits screen. I think it works, though.

Now, as soon as the minigames are functioning properly and the animal tending sub-game is in order I think the game is just about ready for release. I still wonder how it will be received, and if it will be appropriate for portals. Time will tell I guess.

Stay tuned for more information!

My recent non-public release of Wildhollow (v0.2) has received some very interesting feedback. First of all, many seem to enjoy the art and the writing. Yayness! That’s actually pretty damn cool – I’ve been freetting over whether or not I’m a moron for putting so much emphasis on dialogue in the game. My reasoning is sound: Spandex Force received praise for its humorous writing, so this time I’m concentrating on much more of that. But it is a bit of a gamble. The audio received some mixed comments, but the only thing I really have to change is the typewriter sound in the dialogues. I agree that it’s a tad anachronistic in a fantasy game…but on the other hand I’ve added heavy metal songs for the dramatic scenes as well. What can I say, I like contrasts!

Other than that there are three worrying tendencies in the feedback: the minigames suck (I’m fixing that), the animal management needs to be improved (I’m fixing that)…and I have a sneaky suspicion that some people feel that there’s not enough guidance in the quests.

I’m all for easy-to-play games that one can pick up instantly. But Wildhollow requires you to read a lot of dialogue and deduce what to do based on that. I’ve done my best to have “quest hints” for each stage of the quests and have characters repeat important bits of information if they’re relevant to a quest, but there still might be a lot of exploration required to solve some of the puzzles.

I’m still on the fence whether or not this is a good thing. My initial response is “It’s a good thing, dammit! It encourages immersion and makes the quests flow naturally rather than appear forced.” But yesterday I played Rise of the Argonauts and now I’m not so sure anymore…

I consider myself a casual gamer, and Rise of the Argonauts is a pretty casual action RPG. I click some buttons, and the dude runs around like a scorched ferret, cutting and clubbing people all over the place. I love it! Epic violence, beautifully performed, that requires almost no skill at all. I don’t have to spend hours to learn how to do weird combos – they simply appear out of nowhere!

But all is not well in ancient Greece… The game gives almost no indication as to what I need to do next. I can’t be arsed to read all the text in an action game – I’m playing the game to spear people on my enormous barbeque stick! But if I skip too much I end up with my hero standing around looking dumb, and me sitting there feeling even more dumb. “So… Uh… What? What do I have to do now? Do I have to talk to someone? Is there a list of active quests? I don’t know what to do!”

Now, Wildhollow and Rise of the Argonauts aren’t comparable at all. Not in the very least, and not only because RotA is a frigging multi-million production. My choice to rely on text in Wildhollow is a major part of the design – it’s an integral part of the game. RotA’s focus is on action, with text added on. In Wildhollow you can quickly click around to try out things or talk to people; in RotA you have to physically move your character between the scenic vistas to see if this was where you needed to go…and retrace your steps if not. But at its core, Wildhollow relies on the player to explore to proceed – just like RotA.

I’ve been toying with the idea of adding graphic indicators for whom to talk to next, but… That feels cheap. It breaks the immersion. And it just might make the puzzles too easy. Another approach might be to make conversations pop up more often – make some NPCs initiate conversations on their own. That’s probably a better approach, but I’m still not sure if that would work. What I want is to make a game that’s easy to play and follow, but still not ridiculously simple or lacking in immersion.

Any suggestions for good games I ought to play to get inspiration for how to solve my dilemma?

No one?

Not a single suggestion?

Man, you suck.

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.

1. My placeholder GUI art has been atrocious, which makes me unwilling to work on the GUI parts.
2. In order to improve the GUI art I need to find an artist for all the general design/icons/buttons details.
3. But in order to show artists what I need, I ought to have a working game with placeholder art that they can improve.
4. 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…..

I simply have to brag about the awesome character art that’s been pouring in lately for my adventure-puzzle-management game Wildhollow! Take a look at the cast so far:

Tiny, tiny samples of the characters in Wildhollow. Tiiiiny tiny tiny!

It’s going to be a whole lot of characters, and a whole lot of fun! I’d really like to write a bit about the story and the characters, but I’ll do my best to not spoil anything. And either way, things might always change before the end, so I’d better not say too much just yet.

One thing I can say though is that I’ve re-thought the beginning a bit. Originally I thought of giving the player loads and loads of things to do from the beginning, but that’s just…a bit overwhelming. Instead I’ll focus om the adventuring aspects first, and maybe some puzzles, before I bring in the management bits. Essentially, you’ll have to progress a little into the game before it really opens up. Not to worry, though – it won’t be like a dull tutorial. Just… Focusing on other aspects of the game, in the beginning.

When you start the game you have to solve a few easy quests and gather enough money for your first ranch upgrade before you can start buying animals. That’s when the game will begin properly; when you’re able to breed animals and create new species. But I have a suspicion that there’ll be quite some adventuring and puzzling even after that.

Enough ranting for now. I’ll just briefly mention that it’s a female dog to find background art that fits…and is affordable. I might have something going now – I’ll just have to wait and see. Stay tuned for Wildhollow news!