The Journey Down
Jennifer
Moderator
There's a new point and click adventure game out (that's the first chapter of a four part series) called The Journey Down. It is $7US and it's an HD remake of a free low-resolution AGS game (that's still available to download for free from the Journey Down website), with new HD graphics, full voiceovers, plus some additional locations and puzzles.
Developer Skygoblin was "inspired by the cartoony style of Bill Tiller's COMI, as well as Peter Chan's Full Throttle and Grim Fandango", and you can definitely see the influence in the art direction.
Developer Skygoblin was "inspired by the cartoony style of Bill Tiller's COMI, as well as Peter Chan's Full Throttle and Grim Fandango", and you can definitely see the influence in the art direction.
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Hopefully they package a few more episodes together at a cheaper price down the line, I really do wanna try this, but not at that price.
I will if you post a gif of a dancing penguin.
Why?
BECAUSE PENGUINS THATS WHY!!!!
Can't argue with that.
DAMMIT FAWFUL! :X
Oh well, still going to get that royale bundle anyway...
And HardyDev are also giving away a copy, although I'm not sure if the deadline has come and gone by now, but I guess you could give it a try anyway: http://www.hardydev.com/2012/06/10/the-journey-down-iv-contest/
Example easily visible on the page: Serious Sam 2 just says "for: steam(pc)", while Journey Down says "for: windows, mac, linux, desura". This means there are DRM-free direct downloads for Journey Down from the bundle page, while Serious Sam 2 only offers a Steam code.
unggghhhhhhhhggggrrrrrrh... that's not OK as a download speed.
Very short, but designed with a lot of thought. No pixel hunting, good perspective with a clear layout and not too much depth, characters do not feel like "obstacles" too much. The animators never took the cheap way out - actions of main character Bwana are normally performed in plain sight and are quite big; it helps a lot with the immersion (modern adventure makers keep forgetting that).
I first thought of the "African mask" theme as a cheapo variation of the Grim Fandango paradigm. It really isn't. There's quite an interesting application of facial expression in there, which is all the more visible as you don't expect it from those masks.
If you're like me, you might be wondering how chapter 2 is coming along. Luckily, the Chapter 2 Work in Progress thread at Desura has just been updated with news and new screenshots.
They've got an internal preliminary playable-to-the-end build of the game up and running, but there's a lot of things missing yet and most of the movies are still animated storyboards. There are still some puzzles that need inside knowledge to solve, but they hope to have an internal beta version of the game ready by February that will allow the game to be completed by people who don't know the solutions to all the puzzles.
It's looking really good. I'm really looking forward to this, as the first chapter was one of my favorite adventure games of last year.
I remember checking this out on Steam a while back. It was a little short, but it was definitely a good game though. Glad to hear Episode 2 is making good progress.
If you like this, I'd also recommend checking out The Dream Machine. Both are smaller, indie episodic adventure games with abstract themes.
Yeah, The Journey Down and The Dream Machine are the two games I've been following the most closely along with Broken Age over the last few years. Got on board with both long before they released on Steam and with The Dream Machine especially it's been a pretty excruciating wait between episodes.