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EXTRA DOWNLOADABLES:


CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A FUN EXTRA PDF BESTIARY


OR CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE WALK-THROUGH



The Plot

Samuel lives a solitary, brooding life ever since his young wife's death. He lectures at a university but his heart isn't in it anymore.

His unhappy existence is interrupted when his former mentor (a historian) sends a letter from Germany informing Samuel that he is "onto something big." Answering the call of his old friend, Samuel leaves his home in England for the chance to be part of a historical discovery but all that he finds in the deserted town of Rottgarten is horror and secrecy.

If you get close to the finale of the game and you end up in a hallway, right before the final fight, you are at the end of the game as it stands.

:(

ENJOY the game.
Feedback and reviews are welcome.




Details

This is a survival horror game set in Victorian age Europe, featuring:

Multiple endings depending upon your karma

Full 3D cut scenes (presently only one)

3D item animations Upon inspecting important items, players see a 3d animation of the item.

Several hours of gameplay

Unlockable bonus features (not in beta version)

Release date set for july the 15th. (in production since 2005)

This release of the game has all but the final couple of maps and a number of cinematics..





Latest Blog

Back underway

The other guy is back from his trip so we're slowly progressing again. The few movies are getting done and I'm looking for the time in amongst all my teaching to put in the finishing touches.

I'm kind of interested in what all those downloaders had to say about the game. I've had a lot of feedback from Jear but apparently we have 10 subscribers and 200+ downloaders. So don't be shy, please tell me what you liked or didn't like and how the overall opinion is.

Posts

More feedback:

-You've got a lot of spelling/grammar issues, but your actual plot is pretty solid. If you can, it'd be worthwhile to get someone else to look over your script and tune it up. Your characters and settings are great.

-There's an abrupt change in dialog boxes and font texts starting right when you start researching the medallion. I'm not sure where this came from, but it's jarring. Maybe use the fancy dialog boxes all the way through? And never have anyone speak in red text. It is brain-hurtingly bad.

-You've got an impressive number of animations, and all of them are really high quality for a 2k3 game.

-I like the idea of the question skill, and it allows the player to choose how much dialog they want to pursue. Making it cost MP I'm not so sure about, but I haven't run into any situations where this has caused me to get stuck.

-The music is great. Appropriate and atmospheric.
Thanks for the feedback, dude. Yea, I'll need to sit down and have a play through with someone who can spell. I'll have to have a notebook and write down all the problems because there are a lot of typos and mistakes.

Hmm, I know the bit you are talking about, when the cut scene happens in the uni basement...I can't think of anything that changes the font there. I know I change the text colour when different people are talking but it shouldn't make the font any different. As far as I recall, Sam's text is in the normal colour and the deen's was red or orange.

It'd be helpful to see a screen print or something, maybe you have a different font installed or something.

I loved the idea of using that dialogue system all the way through but I only got good enough at rpg maker to create it when we'd already been making the game for several years, so I only went back and made the big talking scenes like that.

So the red text is bad is it? That's wierd...I'll have tot take a look.
Please keep giving feedback, I love you for it.


Ok dude, that's how it looks on my machine. Is that how you see it? If not we have problems. Means that I'll need to bundle in the font patch or something.

I reckon the red looks fine but are you seeing something different?
I like the dialog style, with the fancy boxes and moving portraits, but I think consistency really matters. Even just using the same dialog box in the thirty minutes or so of gameplay leading up to that point would make for a less jarring transition. It's not bad once you get past it, but it's a really weird moment when it happens.

As for the colors, they look a lot better on your screen than mine. So, that one's probably more the fault of my computer than anything you did. I should be building a new desktop today, so I'll see if it looks any differently on that.

edit: do you have a written word doc for the script? I could edit that. If you wrote things into the game as you went, that's more of a problem, since I can't alt-tab out of it without crashing my system, and there's usually a spelling/grammar error per dialog box.
Wow, that's an incredibly generous offer but there is no set script. It's all been written as we go, from the initial story outline, which is less than a page long.

Yea, since the fancy dialogue system can't be used the whole way through without major MAJOR reconstruction, maybe the whole thing needs to go. I thought it would be fine to use just for cut scenes, so the player knows that this conversation is different from a regular one, but really it might just confuse people and make them wonder why the dialogue box changed.

As long as the font is the same for you I'm happy, I'd freak out if people got that horrible block one where the letters mash together, that would ruin everything.

How far through are you now? And how many minutes?
This is all so helpful, since I know where to go it's no help timing myself.
good news: I got past the door. Must have had somethings as minus. Anyways... I'm wandering through the asylum but can't get past the 2nd floor, after I fixed the generator. do I have to kill the guy in the flashing room to get a key or something before I can get any further?
Nope, when the generator is fixed you should be able to walk right up to the second floor by using the stairwell. Well, you should be able to go up there before you fix the generator but you wouldn't be able to see.

I'm playing through again to test all the new stuff and I'm up to the school, so I'll be at the asylum pretty soon.
cool, let me know when you're there...
The reason i ask about the 2nd floor is because I go up from one side and it says, after it's unlocked "locked from the other side" and when I go up through the side with the generator (and slashing monster) to the 2nd floor it says "it's stuck"
author=Jear77
cool, let me know when you're there...
The reason i ask about the 2nd floor is because I go up from one side and it says, after it's unlocked "locked from the other side" and when I go up through the side with the generator (and slashing monster) to the 2nd floor it says "it's stuck"

Hmm, this is a problem...I have never encountered this. I'll have to go and see what's causing it.

Thanks for the heads up.

EDIT:
I know why this is. The door to the second floor will not open until you've figured out what to do with the red cross shield and the stone feather emblem. Try examining them.


I'm quite happy with how this turned out but I'm trying not to use the RPG maker battle system so much, so feel free to use this monster in your games.
Just checked out the art work, and it looks pretty good.
I figured it out. Keep having to sleep as my antidotes are running low. Problem now is the spheres. I'll recheck all the rooms downstairs to see if the one remaining is there...
author=Jear77
I figured it out. Keep having to sleep as my antidotes are running low. Problem now is the spheres. I'll recheck all the rooms downstairs to see if the one remaining is there...


Good plan. I'm quite happy with that shield and feather thing. I'm glad the asylum is proving more of a challenge than the school, thanks for pointing out that it was a bit simple. It's in line for an overhaul now.
In the final copy people will have to weigh up whether it's worth using an antidote or sleeping, because if they sleep all the time they'll get hungry and might start running out of food. I think it'll be good.

How many spheres have you got?
and how many minutes does it say you've been playing?
Comments before I answer your questions:

If you want people to examine something, when they pick it up, it might be a good idea to have a dialog pop up which states "do you want to examine now?" with the default being yes. instead of having to find it in the inventory and looking for it, which I didn't think to do.

I just found a barrel in the back part of the Asylum (i didn't find the passage before that point, it's not very visible -- you might want to make the passage more visible in the area where the "save book" is) and it says "I could hack through it if I had an axe" I HAVE the big axe, yet it doesn't register. You might want to have BOTH the "axe" and the "big axe" able to hack through it.

It says I have 3 spheres, and I need a 4th. I'm almost 280 minutes in. I kept wandering around, then saved in case I triggered something important. I had picked one up earlier. There's a place in the Asylum that says "There are lots of narcotics here" but he doesn't take them for some strange reason.
Great stuff Jear. I made that barrel thing before I put the big axe into the game. Better go and fix that.

Yea, I'll make Sam able to take some narcotics, why not?

When you say the passage is hard to find, do you mean the one hidden under the table in the room with the big cage? I might make a book and put it on the table, with the pages turning on their own, so Sam says "there must be a draft from somewhere" Maybe that would be too obvious though.

Somewhere on the second floor there should be a journal entry from a nurse talking about something a doctor gave her to look after. That tells you where the last jewel is.

There should be:
1sphere in a room on the first floor with 2 zombies
1 sphere in a similar room on the second floor with Androse
1 sphere at the end of a hidden passage starting on the first floor, ending on the second
and 1 sphere at Silvermane Court where the nurses house is.

Maybe I should put up a walk through with the final one.
what do you think?






EDIT. Wait, hold on. How are you at the room with the barrel if you don't have all 4 spheres? You need to get all 4 shiny spheres to open the door to the third floor. This isn't making sense.
the one barrel on the 1st floor, past the hidden passage. I didn't know it was supposed to be hidden.
author=Jear77
the one barrel on the 1st floor.

I'm stumped and perplexed. might be that it's 7am and I've just been up all night but I can't find any barrel on the first floor. I can't think of any other secret room I hid behind a barrel.

This is crazy. Is it in the northern side of the asylum?

I'm going mental. I did find the barrel which did indeed have that error. Only one axe was set to work with it, but that should be on a floor that you can't get to get. Unless one of the teleport events takes you to a room on the wrong floor...I don't know.

Well you've found a bug that I've fixed and I'll also make that passage more obvious so that's two great improvements anyway.
I found a game breaking error. If you hit the right pixel wandering around, you are teleported to the 3rd floor and there's fire, with a 2 minute countdown. I found the stairs but after descending them, couldn't exit because of fire blocking the path.
author=Jear77
I found a game breaking error. If you hit the right pixel wandering around, you are teleported to the 3rd floor and there's fire, with a 2 minute countdown. I found the stairs but after descending them, couldn't exit because of fire blocking the path.


Thanks for that Jear. I'd left a design shortcut in there from when I was testing how long it would take to escape the third floor. This would have been a problem if you hadn't found it.

I looked all through the first floor a bunch of times for that mystery barrel. Can't find the one you mean. I changed one exactly like that on the third floor though. I just have no idea how you could have been there yet.

How's the asylum going overall anyway?