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We're giving away a copy of our gamebook, DestinyQuest Inifnite

AdventureCow

Novice
Joined
Dec 4, 2014
Messages
13
Our tiny team (roughly one and a half people and a lot of tea) has been working on our game(book) DestinyQuest Infinite for way more time than we expected to, so to celebrate its release we’re… giving it away? Yep, we’re running a weeklong giveaway in anticipation of DestinyQuest Infinite: Act 2, available March 17.

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Enter for a chance to win a free copy of Act 1 or the full game. Here’s how:

To win Act 1:
Post a comment right here on this post to be entered into a random drawing. That’s all! One winner will be chosen to receive a free copy of DestinyQuest Infinite: Act 1.

To win the whole game (Acts 1-3):
For a chance to win the entire game, visit the official DestinyQuest Infinite website and subscribe to the newsletter here: http://dqinfinite.com/x/giveaway?rpgcodex

This giveaway will run from March 9 until March 15, Midnight EST. Winners will be announced on March 16.

More info about the game and fine details on the rules are found here.

We have a trailer!



Good luck, everyone! :)
 

AdventureCow

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Dec 4, 2014
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13
MaskedMan At the moment it's just browser based. We're working to make it playable on any device that has a browser, and giving it offline functionality.

Don Peste That's right, if it's not a rose, it's not a flower.
 

AdventureCow

Novice
Joined
Dec 4, 2014
Messages
13
Kattze What kind of RPG would it be if there WASN'T an option to play as a wizard? That happens closer to Act 2 though. (And yes yes I know, not all RPGs actually need wizards but I'm a sucker for the powerful squishy..)
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,824
Well, after playing it like 30 mins ill offer my first thoughts:

For such shitty combat you sure make us do it reallly often, combat isnt the heart of interactive fiction, its just another thing that you do (and more often than not, avoid). The C&C seems non existant at this point and the writing is p. uninteresting after the prologue. Also only battle related stats? really? Im interested in being able to do other kind of stuff, like social interactions, stealth, and other misc skills that could change the outcome of your adventures, that should have weight on future adventures and interactions as well.

If all i have to look forward while playing this is the next bit of frankly boring combat or a p. generic setting id simply rather not. Im going to concede its too early to tell how its gonna go, but im not a fan of the early signs. You should really take a look at other works of interactive fiction, like Paul Wangs Sabres of Infinity and Mecha Ace, both are p. fucking good.
 

Loriac

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Joined
Jan 20, 2007
Messages
2,375
I don't know if the posters here are aware of the destiny quest gamebooks themselves (they're fairly recent, I think the first was published 2-3 years ago or something), but I think its a situation where the gamebooks are reasonably 'innovative' for that format (reminds me a little of something like the old fatemaster books in some ways) - I've seen reviews of the book versions that call them 'the diablo of gamebooks' which I guess is because you have bite sized adventures and can pick up phat(ish) lewt to customise your character as he goes through the adventure.

However, the books (I only bought the first one, 'The Legion of Shadow') seem quite blandly written relative to other gamebooks (e.g. say the Lone Wolf series) - not necessarily because the author wasn't very good, but as a design decision to give you more feeling of 'ownership' over the character or some such.

If this was transplanted as-is to the browser based game, I can see it creating a bit of a problem - the gamebooks are involving partly because you're throwing real dice, you have a real book in your hands that you're leafing through, and its all reminiscent of one's misspent youth (perhaps that last part is just me); on a computer, once all the 'housekeeping' stuff is taken out of your hands, you could end up just being left with a non-descript experience.

Having looked at a few of the gamebook translations onto the tablets (Tinman games, Sorcery!, Lone Wolf) its interesting to see how the genre is evolving on that format - Tinman is the most 'traditional' but tries to compensate by good writing and persistent settings between some of the books; Sorcery innovates by taking away the 'choose a page' dialogue for moving a figurine around a map by dragging it and a rock/scissor/paper type combat framework; and Lone Wolf abandons the whole roll a die aspect and switches to quick-time event based combat. Basically, a vanilla gamebook translation without added mechanics to involve the player in the tablet version results in a boring experience.
 

AdventureCow

Novice
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Dec 4, 2014
Messages
13
Lhynn We hear you. Gamebooks were pretty innovative for their time and the community is still thriving. Which is not to say this kind of book is everyone's cup of tea, but we really hope we can help some new people discover a genre that they probably didn't even know existed. There's a ton of amazing interactive fiction being created these days, you can definitely find something that fits your tastes more. :)

Loriac I can see what you're saying but at the same time DQ is a huge brick of a book with a much more involved combat than previous gamebooks. I think the fact that it does take keeping track of things off your hands makes it more accessible, and shifts the focus off keeping track of things and onto actually strategizing and using the best equip. As for the writing, it tends to play with tropes, not meant to be read like a serious fantasy book. Hopefully it translates better to digital format than you give it credit for! Have you tried the demo? I'd love to know what you think about it once you've had a chance to play with it a little. (Though the demo doesn't really get into the skills and equip that much since it's only the first two quests).
 

AdventureCow

Novice
Joined
Dec 4, 2014
Messages
13
Our random number generator has chosen a winner! We'll get in touch.

Thanks for posting, everyone.
 

Loriac

Arcane
Joined
Jan 20, 2007
Messages
2,375
So I tried the browser demo, and I hate to say it but I was extremely underwhelmed. The first demo quest is basically two combats, which consists of rolling dice until either you win or lose, or tedium overtakes you. The second demo is some mish-mash of little red riding hood which simply makes no sense. And again is filled with combat, which is still pretty tedious but helped by the +1 speed item you pick up in the first quest. I think these quests are directly from the 1st gamebook (its been a long time since I picked it up off my bookshelf).

If its true that the complexity does make things more interesting later on, it might have been better to have the demo be one of the interesting quests with a pre-generated character, so you could see what the tactical options are. As it stands, the combats were purely rolling dice with no real player input.

I'd disagree with the statement that DQ combat is 'more involved' than other gamebooks: I seem to recall for instance the way of the tiger books gave you choices of punches/kicks/throws which made things interesting and offered player choice; Sorcery! where you had to memorise the spellbook and use spells appropriately as you went through the books (although I'll bet most people cheated a bit like me); and perhaps the most ambitious series I can recall, the Blood Sword gamebooks which allowed you to play with a team of 1-4 characters, and had maps and stuff for the combats.

Dave Morris in fact seem to be a guy who always tried to push the envelope (he did the Blood Sword series, and Fabled Lands); one series I never tried was Fabled Lands, which allowed you to adventure between books each of which described one particular region of their fantasy world.

In other words, DQ is a gamebook blast from the past, and each book has a lot of content, but it doesn't live up to the best gamebooks of the past. And I haven't even thrown in stuff like Grail Quest which was my favourite gamebook series when I was a teenager.
 

AdventureCow

Novice
Joined
Dec 4, 2014
Messages
13
Hey Loriac,

This thread is pretty old but I thought you brought up a good point - we should have a more advanced demo that isn't just rolling dice. Act 1 does start off pretty simple, to get new people used to the mechanics.

Here's a more advanced fight from Act 3, based on the combat walkthrough (link) at destiny-quest.com:

http://adventurecow.com/stories/774/destinyquest-combat-test

We're also working on a demo of Act 3 with a full quest, and not just combat. It's no Moby Dick but it's a little more involved than the Red Riding Hood quest. I'll post a link to that when I'm done coding.
 

AdventureCow

Novice
Joined
Dec 4, 2014
Messages
13
I literally was going to post the demo this afternoon, got distracted by reading about Mecha Ace and other games and ended up spending the whole day thinking about new ideas for gamebooks. Blah.

Here's the demo for Act 3 of DestinyQuest. It's in the middle of the action and has a bunch of abilities and items.
Here, for convenience, is the demo for Act 1, which is also above.
 

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