Dustbowl - Fallout'y Adventure

[Atavismus]

A separate thread is planed when I'll do the official announcement.
Should not be long.
Maybe next week-end.
Stay tuned!

 

[Atavismus]

Hi there!

Just to tell you I'm not dead (bis).
I'm learning Unity.
What is the best to learn? Do.
What is the best to do small game? Jam.
So I made this small point'n'click with the Yersinia's artist for #AdvJam2016:

You can rate it and download it on gamejolt:
http://jams.gamejolt.io/adventurejam2016/games/xenotep/149970

You can play it in your browser (with unity player) here:
http://univertgames.com/xenotep/

I hope you'll have some fun with it.

Cya and take care,

Atavismus

 

[CyberWhale]

Looks beautiful brah.

 

[agris]

Atavismus Did you ever consider adding ending slides to Dustbowl like toro suggested? If you still don't understand what that means, I can explain it further.

As a slideshow?

Oh, I thought you had played the original Fallout 1/2 for some reason. This is what I'm talking about:

 

[Atavismus]

Hi there!

As always, I've been very busy working on games.
I decided to pause Yersinia's dev to work on a "new" project: an interactive fiction for mobile.
I just posted about it here:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/somewhere-interactive-fiction-for-mobile.111755/
I work fulltime on it since september but started some months before.
Concentrate only on the story is a great experience, really.
Let's talk about it!

Cya and take care,

Atavismus

PS:
oasis789, I feel sorry and bit ashamed, but I can't really answer to your questions as I didn't wrote those quests.
I'm glad you enjoyed the game despite it flaws.
We learned a lot with Dustbowl, now we are ready to conquer the whole world. :D

agris, ok thx, now I'm sure about what you meant.

 

[lightbane]

Inspired by, right. You have to fight "The Vampire" and Death literally receives you at the entrance hall.
In before the main villain will also parrot "But enough talk, have at you!"


Still, this might be more interesting than the somewhat dry Dustbowl.

 

[lightbane]

So, I planned to write down my thoughts about this game for some time, but forgot about doing so. Better late than never, I guess.

Graphics-wise, I can't say much, you're not playing this for the graphics anyway.
Combat is clunky: There doesn't seem to be a point for aiming at limbs when you can aim the torso or the head for a greater chance at causing damage, since there's nothing resembling limb damage and headshots are not as effective as they should. Then sooner or later you find a totally-not magical artifact/unique AK that is strong enough to take out anything in the game. Oh, and one of the hospital areas you're required to visit is bugged and can lock you into a room with no way out if you're unlucky.

The survival mechanics are annoying and exist only to fill up your limited space of your backpack, which you cannot upgrade ever for reasons, and it can backfire when the protagonist refuses to grab something due excessive weight, which can cause you to miss some important items.

Plot-wise, it's inconsistent:

Spoiler

The game is overall depressing, which fits the post-apocalyptic theme, but the game seems to be unable to decide what to do with the aliens. From the very start they're hostile, they caused the apocalypse and you can fight them in random encounters that don't make too much sense in-game. Then you find that guy inside a sci-fi tube that acts as if they were completely innocent and merely wanted to study human species or something (and you cannot point out their damage caused). That follows into a Desu Ex HR-style set of endings with three possible choices, none of which are particularly good nor ensure if the MC's town is saved to begin with.
There's also the issue that you were supposed to go to the mole-people's village, but it never happens (cut content? Did I miss something maybe?). There's also a mole-guy with a monster in a random house that I never find out what was he meant for.

So overall the game could be better, but the plot drags it down. Hopefully this new game is better.

 

[CryptRat]

Atavismus Please tell me Castle Agony will be available on the Humble Store just like Dustbowl and you have my money.

 

[Grauken]

God damn, the control scheme on CA is fucking terrible. I don't want to be mean, but the few people who will be enticed to buy this based on screen shots, I say 90% will ask for returns because they expect to control it like a console action-rpg or similiar games. Even with no gamepad support, when I only use keys, I don't just want to give a direction and my characters runs there, I want to have full control of his movement. Every cheap RPGmaker game has better controls than this.

Also, not sure whether its the game, but I have terrible lag

 

[Lujo]

I liked Dustbowl. Mechanics aside, it was strangely atmospheric and the audio was really doing work and I didn't mind it's shortcomings at all. Tip for future releases - make sure all your achievements are actually, you know, achievable without messing with the game. I'm not sure it's at all possible to score a critical hit in any legit way and there's 3 achievements which require you to get a bunch. Don't ask how I did it, it involved using a postit note in creative ways.

 

[Lujo]

Oh, and as a sign of appreciation I'm actually keeping the permadeath run badge in my steam achievement showcase for a small bit of passive promotion. I'd also put it in my featured games showcase as I display semi-indie stuff I want to point out to folks, but recommending games with troublesome achievements is frowned upon by my crowd - just to let you know that this sort of thing is actually important. I'd do more to promote and mark it as a warmly recommended game on my growing list of 100% achievement games, but I'd get flak.

And I was dissapointed that the moleman town never got made, but that's an actual compliment. Means I was interested enough to see it.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[toro]

Thanks for posting the clip but the commentators are really retarded.

That being said, this game deserves more attention from the codex.

 

[toro]

Good news, Atavismus is working on a new game.

More info: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=66601.0

 

[lightbane]

Castle Agony was boring and underwhelming, hopefully this one will be better.

 

[toro]

Castle Agony was boring and underwhelming, hopefully this one will be better.

I did not bother with that one because it had no appeal to me.

Also I don't think Atavismus worked on that game: his games are Somewhere, Dustbowl, Xenotep and probably H Corp.

The original Pompous Pixel was formed by Atavismus and a British guy.

This new game seems to be developed by Atavismus and a French guy.

H Corp: A dystopian visual interactive fiction.
Hi there!

I'm UnFantomeBleu, I’m french and I’m a student in a third year program « Licence en Sciences de l’Information & de la communication » with a video games option.

Since 2014, I worked on several small games like Archeos.

"Archeos" - "For Them" - "Blue":

During a work placement, from 7 January to 15 February, I decided to create a mix of point’n’click and interactive fiction with Atavismus (who worked for examples on Dustbowl and Somewhere).

Maybe at some point he will jump back in this thread and correct my statements.

 

[toro]

It looks like this guy made another game: https://atavismus.itch.io/yersisland

 

[Atavismus]

I did not bother with that one because it had no appeal to me.

Also I don't think Atavismus worked on that game: his games are Somewhere, Dustbowl, Xenotep and probably H Corp.

The original Pompous Pixel was formed by Atavismus and a British guy.

This new game seems to be developed by Atavismus and a French guy.

Maybe at some point he will jump back in this thread and correct my statements.

Hi there!

Glad to see someone here still care about my games. : )

You are right, I didn't work on Castle Agony.

Indeed, I wrote and coded HCorp (and Archeos and some other point'n'click like U-Ropa).

Despite the +500k download of Somewhere, it is was a commercial failure (but I was not surprised), so after 2 years of indie I had to take a fulltime job, so few time for gamedev...

But I still write and code regularly and I have tones of ideas.

I'll probably finish HCorp demo in 2020 (it's 95% ready I guess...).

Cya and take care!

 

[toro]

I did not bother with that one because it had no appeal to me.

Also I don't think Atavismus worked on that game: his games are Somewhere, Dustbowl, Xenotep and probably H Corp.

The original Pompous Pixel was formed by Atavismus and a British guy.

This new game seems to be developed by Atavismus and a French guy.

Maybe at some point he will jump back in this thread and correct my statements.

Hi there!

Glad to see someone here still care about my games. : )

You are right, I didn't work on Castle Agony.

Indeed, I wrote and coded HCorp (and Archeos and some other point'n'click like U-Ropa).

Despite the +500k download of Somewhere, it is was a commercial failure (but I was not surprised), so after 2 years of indie I had to take a fulltime job, so few time for gamedev...

But I still write and code regularly and I have tones of ideas.

I'll probably finish HCorp demo in 2020 (it's 95% ready I guess...).

Cya and take care!

You too man. I'm looking forward for HCorp

Edit: Infinitron can we have a developer tag for Atavismus ?