Exciting news, Troll Fans!

Yes, after a long and wearisome search, I think we've found our new artist.  But first, let me introduce our new programmer...

Presenting... Dualnames!

Dualnames is extremely well-known in the AGS community, having contributed in some way to a mighty 27 AGS games, perhaps best known for his pet project, the  Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Remake (a graphical remake of the ancient Infocom text adventure).  I interviewed him way back in 2009 about this remake and other stuff.  Jim is a man of many talents, and he will soon be able to include making games about trolls among them.



Now for our artist...

Presenting... AprilSkies!

A relative newcomer to the AGS forums, AprilSkies has only made one game with AGS to date.  However the game in question - Donald Dowell and the Ghost of Barkwell Manor - was pretty fantastic, and has been nominated in no less than 12 categories of the AGS Awards 2013!  If you're an adventure game fan, you owe it to yourself to try this game - it's already been downloaded over a thousand times (something Troll Song has yet to achieve, though to be fair it is only a demo, and a very short demo at that) - you can get it here.

Take a look at the screenshots from Donald Dowell below... I think the style is going to fit nicely with the graphics Tino has already done (play of course AprilSkies will be trying to use the same style anyway, but actually to me they look reasonably similar already).

So this means we;ll get the Verse One: Completely Stoned finished really soon, right?  Well... wrong.  What it does mean, however, is that we will be working on the game once again, and that we will begin to make real progress once more.  At this stage I'm not willing to commit to any time frame, with other big projects such as Captain Disaster in Death Has A Million Stomping Boots and The Journey of Iesir (though the latter is likely to be released under a different name... you heard it here first!  Well, maybe you did.).

Still, now that we have a team and we will be forging ahead with Troll Song, I will most definitely be updating this blog more frequently to let people know what's going on, because it does seem to have been a popular demo so far.  If you haven't played the demo yet you can get it from GameJolt.

Update

So, Troll Song has sat on the shelf for a long time and unfortunately we haven't really been able to move it forwards much.  I'm not really happy with this situation, and as it largely stems from my co-dev being desperately short of time to work on it, I'm going to see if I can get a couple of other bods in to help with the graphics and coding.  Over the next couple of weeks I'll hopefully know how successfully this attempt is going to be... so I'll keep you posted.

In 2014, CLOD WILL RISE!

Or at least we can hope he will.  I really want to get this game series made.

In the meantime, the Troll Song: Verse One - Completely Stoned Demo is eligible for the AGS Awards 2014, where I'm hoping it will be nominated in the Best Demo category.  See the "For Your Consideration" thread over at the AGS board for some of the games that can be nominated - I'd forgotten how many truly great games had been released in 2013!

We still haven't had enough votes on the demo to actually get an overall rating - at least 5 are needed - so if you're an AGS member and fancy giving a vote to let us know what you thought of the demo, head over to the Troll Song AGS games page.

Even more GJ love!

Yet more very positive comments for the Troll Song: Verse One Demo on GameJolt:


"I thought it was great! I loved the voice acting, and the cut scenes were great as well. Awesome game, man. 5/5"

"The demo was awesome! I hope to see more out of this nice game. Loved the abilities, voice acting, art and music. Loved everything about it really :)"


Current stats on GJ:

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 (based on 14 ratings)
- 2,422 profile views
- 455 downloads
- 17 comments

Player reaction on GameJolt

The reaction to the Troll Song Demo on GameJolt has been almost unanimously positive, which is very pleasing to Tino and myself.  It currently has a 4.3/5 rating based on 12 rates, with comments such as:

"It is really really short but... It AWESOME! Me, as a Monky Island or Sam&Max Lover can't wait till this is finished. Do it soon!!"

"I couldn't help but feel trapped like the protagonist of this game. When I figured out how to get out of the cage I was overjoyed! The puzzles are smart and the story is unique. This has the potential to be a great game. "

"So funny, so creative, so trolly... the game makes me so interesting and impressed! This is such a good game and I wish for you to make more! "

"I LOVE THIS GAME!!!!!!!!"

It warms the heart of an adventure game developer, so it does. :-)

Troll Song a Featured Game on GameJolt.com!

GameJolt.com made the Troll Song demo a Featured Game and we've had a ton of new feedback - nice!

Demo moved to GameJolt

I've moved to hosting of the Verse One demo over to GameJolt.  I'll keep the pages there updated although obviously this blog will still be the main source of info about the game.

Concept sketch

I know this is a bit dark, but you should be able to make it out... not much to show but here's a brief concept sketch to prove that the project isn't dead!