A Hardy Developer's Journal – as written by indie adventure game developers

A tree is known by its fruit, and you could say an adventure game is known by its aesthetics, even though that may be a bit oversimplified. If we apply that principle to Jolly Rover, you might come to the conclusion that this is a children’s game.        The gentle, charming dog characters and background art and the pleasing voices may make you think so. But is it really?

The hint system certainly suggests so, at first. Every couple of minutes, a parrot – in itself a likeable character – pops up, asking if you need help. This can easily get annoying, but fortunately there’s an option to just say no to its incessant offerings of help. When you couple that with the ingenious way in which you earn hints – you have to find crackers throughout the game to feed the parrot whenever you require a hint – it’s actually pretty clever, and not that annoying. (more…)

It’s been exactly 1 year and 3 days since the last installment of DEV INTRO – a special interview format I established to allow HardyDev to have more regular and varied interviews. It was particularly handy to introduce developers that only just released their first independently created game (or at least can show some lovely content for it).

Today, after the aforementioned short break, DEV INTRO is back! And it brings you nothing less than Rise of The Hidden Sun!

Rings a bell? It should!
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Where do video games go when they die? Most of them end up on the scrapheap, forever forgotten by new generations of gamers. But some rise from the grave, haunting the gaming universe for a long, long time. One such game is Curse of Monkey Island. With its distinct art style, it revolutionized adventure games, and left quite an impression on game makers, who are not afraid to use its legacy in their own games.

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I stumbled upon one tiny image.

My brain burst into emotions. I remembered getting chewed out by my boss for messing up with a client, being recruited by a secret underground organization, running a smalltime casino in a jazzy little port town, I remembered my good friend who drove me across the land in his madly upgraded company car, exposing corruption, swinging a scythe, and in the end finally getting on a train with the girl I had been chasing all that time. I got chills.

All that came from one single image…

Correct. I remembered Grim Fandango.

“What if I could capture that in my art as well?“, I started thinking.
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Has nothing to do with U2's guitarist.

Over The Edge is the first chapter in the four-part series, The Journey Down. Written and designed by Theodor Waern, the game tells the story of Bwana, a simple fuel station attendant attempting to get he and his sidekick Kito’s plane airworthy in order to take a strange and beautiful woman to the mysterious area known as “The Underland” by going over what is known as “The Edge.” If you haven’t already, prepare yourself for some incredible freeware adventure gaming.

When playing an adventure game

there are many different factors that can make the experience an enjoyable one, some love puzzles, some the visuals, for me personally, it’s the story that has to be great, and a great story needs a great main character to drive it forward. (more…)

The Falling Soldier by Robert Capa

Past, present, future. Of these three, the past is the one we have most affinity with. The present is just too volatile, it changes all the time. The future is endlessly interesting, a great source of speculation, but that speculation is inherently based on our current experiences. Experiences that come from – you’ve guessed it – the past. (more…)