Tales From The Outer Zone: Cyborg Seppuku
Cyborg Seppuku - Postmortem
(The game is complete and available to download here on itch.io.)
Here is a little postmortem:
I always wanted to make a point-and-click adventure game, but thought it would be impossible with my little knowledge of programming.
When I worked on Deponia (Daedalic Entertainment) as a background artist, the general feeling I had was "boy, making adventure games is much more complicated than I thought", so I pushed the idea aside and began making other game genres.
But then I discovered AGS (Adventure Game Studio) - an easy to use program that require little programming skills. I had learned some programming in the meantime, but only enough to make simple prototypes in Unity. But AGS seemed pretty simple so I tried it.
I entered the monthly game jam at the AGS forums (called MAGS) - now I had a deadline in one month! I learned the basics in the first week and then moved on to designing and writing the game in week two, and spending the last two weeks making backgrounds, portraits, GUI, animation, sound fx, music and polishing the whole deal.
Sure, it was a tough three weeks, but I managed to make the game - and it's quite close to my initial vision, so that's good.
Some things came as a surprise though. For example, I did not plan to have the player go directly back and forth between talking with the Cyberpunk and Allegra, but at a point in the game, you kind of have to. This is not the best game design as it gets a bit tedious, so I'll be careful of that next time I design a narrative game. Also, I should have let the player find the right tool for the operation instead of giving the tool out of context. I still need to learn how to plan out an adventure game :)
Small and "spontaneous" projects such as these are quite rewarding to work on, as they don't get to drag out. The game goes almost directly from mind to product. This way, the subconscience plays a role and leaves a dreamlike quality to the experience. I would recommend anyone to join in on making short games. It's a fun learning experience and the result will be different and interesting.
Development pictures
Thanks for playing and/or reading :D
Cheers,
Malte
Comments
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This was great! Adventure game (even some good old ones, but specially modern ones) tend to go on for too long, which makes them have one too many puzzles or tedious situations. This format is lovely, I enjoyed it very much and it reminded me of another episodic adventure game I love (The last door)
The hardest thing for me was to match the pipe designation with the real pipe (actually had to watch a walkthru). I think the game is really too low-res for that. I also agree that the way of getting a screwdriver was too much of a happy coincidence — then again, it's clearly a common Philips screwdriver. The cyberpunk probably should have had it, or maybe it should have been something more special (which makes sense as you don't want anyone to remove your valuable implant with a store-bought tool).
Then again, I generally dislike the adventure games philosophy of turning routine actions into problems and having the only solution for the problems that obviously should have many.
I liked the visual design, loved that the main guy wasn't the typical slim, trenchcoat-wearing hacker type that usually star in cyberpunk games. But I expected some twist ending and it looked more like a no-ending.
The beauitiful game! Good story and visual design. Thank you for it.
Waiting a continue. ... Will it be?
Postmortem is awesome! I love sketches and development stories..
P/S: Would you be interested in translating your game? I can help translate it to Russian. (totally free, of course)
Thank you so much :) Yeah I am definitely make it into a series - but I don't know when I will get the time/money for the next episodes.
A russian translation would be so awesome! I would love that :D
I understand...
(about translation) If you decide - let me know.