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Daedalic's Night of the Rabbit

evdk

comrade troglodyte :M
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Codex 2012 Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Or I may have messed up the months. On the plus side the game is starring Alan Moore as a wizard himself:
am.jpg
 
Joined
Mar 23, 2013
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351
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Samothrace
Marquis? Never go on a magical journey with a man rabbit adorned with the title Marquis. It could only end in demonstrative reasoning, dialectics, and a giant cock up your ass.
 

toro

Arcane
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14,031
That trailer is not doing the game any favors.
 

Crooked Bee

(no longer) a wide-wandering bee
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Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire MCA Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
New Q&A at GOG.com: link. Also includes some new (?) screenies.

Snippet:

Q: How do you feel about the... evolution of the adventure genre? Were there any eras you liked or disliked, and is there any games you took lessons from when designing Night of the Rabbit?

A: Ahoy there and thanks for your question, Kliff! Well there have been a lot of tries to make adventure games better or easier to access or more fun to play. Some have been more and others less successful. In the end still it comes down to what one personally likes best and what kind of story you want to tell. The cool “Walking Dead” games have made a great use of choice and consequences. On the other hand they don’t give you much room to explore your world actively. A game like “Red Dead Redemption” has a vast open world, but the main story is still quite linear. If you’re wondering why I’m mentioning this game while we’re talking about adventure games, then that is simply because I think that games can only evolve in an interesting way if we forget about strict genre boundaries.

“The Night of the Rabbit” has simplified controls – it has no verb coin or anything like that, which means that outside the inventory you just need to simply click on things with your left mouse button. At first I wasn’t sure if that feels good to play, because I had written my previous games using the good old verb coin like in “The Curse of Monkey Island”. I realized that one-click controls actually felt better to play as you didn’t have distracting mechanical elements that stood between you and the game world. Of course there are areas that could still be more simplified and experimented with – you can lose items completely or reduce their number or try to avoid dialogue trees. We tried to keep the item and dialogue interfaces simple and easy to use, but they are still in our game.

In the end updated game play mechanics can make a game more fun and lead to a greater immersion, yet it is the story and the world that make a game interesting and memorable, I believe. I have always loved about adventure games that they bring places and characters to life. In “The Curse of Monkey Island” I was able for the first time to walk through hand drawn locations that felt simply alive. So for me the fascinating thing about making games was that you could create places and characters and weave a story around it. Choices and Consequences are fascinating too, but have so far not been that important for me – but they are something I would love to work with if I ever want to tell a certain story in the future that actually fits to that kind of narrative concept.

For “The Night of the Rabbit” still the classic LucasArts games have been my greatest influence but also games like “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask” because it was the first game that had introduced me to the idea of different daytimes to explore and there was so much to collect –something that is more common outside the adventure game genre. In our game you can collect quite a lot of things: from audio stories to playing cards to magical dew drops and much more. And because I always loved exploration in games in general you can now explore a lot of places at once in the main part of the game and switch between daytime and nighttime – a questlog and a help spell will help you to keep track of what you’ve seen or heard in our world.

For me it always starts with the world and the story and I’m sure we can find ways to evolve the gameplay further to strengthen the experience for the player. And I am very grateful for many inspiring games that dare to try new things because we can learn a lot from them. And, of course, because I can enjoy playing them.

Q: What is your favorite adventure game that you didn't have a hand in? Did it (or any others) inspire how you approach your games?

A: Hey, Hucklebarry! My personal all time favourite is still “The Curse of Monkey Island” because I simply fell in love with the game when it came out and I was always drawn back to it. For years I just loved to load old savegames and then walk around Plunder Island or Blood Island – like a tourist or a wanderer who returns to a place that he likes a lot and that he hasn’t seen for a long time. The fascination derives for me from the world and the characters – the way you are able to explore a handmade world that was crafted in a lovingly fashion, where nothing feels out of place. Music and sounds and animations merge and form something that is quite more than just the sum of its parts. And in these places characters live and through this world the story is told. Wonderful! You see, I’m still romantic about it.

When a friend of mine, Greg MacWilliam, created the Lassie Engine in 2005 I was very tempted to try and do something similar, although it was supposed to be my own world, not just an imitation of the places I loved from Monkey Island. And since then the fascination hasn't ceased and I’m still as mesmerized by how the elements come together to form something that is bigger and just feels alive.

By the way, in the early 2000s I even emailed Jonathan Ackley who had been the project lead for “The Curse of Monkey Island” to tell him how much I liked his game – and he even mailed me back. I think the mail was deleted during a bigger hard drive problem a couple of years ago, but I’m still very grateful and excited, as he told me that to make games like his you just should start making your own small games and then show them around. Without his advice I might never have started and then never have gotten the opportunity to make “The Night of the Rabbit”.​

I dislike the all too prevelant focus on "accessibility" and the one-click interface, but I forgive him because he enjoys The Curse of Monkey Island
:love:
 
Last edited by a moderator:

kaizoku

Arcane
Joined
Feb 18, 2006
Messages
4,129
:hmmm:


not sure if this is going to end well with this "simplification process"


Nonetheless, it looks quite charming.

Some reporters came even up to me after presentations and told me “This is just for kids. Who’s going to buy this?” If that’s a legitimate question then surely my bosses at Daedalic took a risk, when they allowed me to make “The Night of the Rabbit”. Yet, I on the other hand strongly believe that a well crafted story can be enjoyed by all ages, like the Studio Ghibli Movies for example.
 

Berekän

A life wasted
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Sep 2, 2009
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3,097
Been playing this, I'm enjoying it so far thought the simplified "just one action" system's shit. I like the "fairy tale" approach of the history, but I find the protagonist's a bit too soulless, doesn't really have any personality.
 

Aeschylus

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Been playing this, I'm enjoying it so far thought the simplified "just one action" system's shit. I like the "fairy tale" approach of the history, but I find the protagonist's a bit too soulless, doesn't really have any personality.

Daedalic has yet to create a likable or interesting protagonist. It's probably their biggest weakness. Also this:
At first I wasn’t sure if that feels good to play, because I had written my previous games using the good old verb coin like in “The Curse of Monkey Island”. I realized that one-click controls actually felt better to play as you didn’t have distracting mechanical elements that stood between you and the game world.
Makes me :mad:. This eliminates a whole potential group of puzzles, and makes the world *less* interactive, not more.
 

piydek

Cipher
Joined
Feb 13, 2006
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819
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Croatia
Also this:
At first I wasn’t sure if that feels good to play, because I had written my previous games using the good old verb coin like in “The Curse of Monkey Island”. I realized that one-click controls actually felt better to play as you didn’t have distracting mechanical elements that stood between you and the game world.
Makes me :mad:. This eliminates a whole potential group of puzzles, and makes the world *less* interactive, not more.

But it's good for the immershun. Fuck interactivity.

Yeah, i feel with all Daedalic's games that they are a bit soulless and definitely often very forced. Humour in Deponia was fucking dreadful. Wadjet Eye adventures walk all over Daedalic's IMO.
 

Berekän

A life wasted
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Joined
Sep 2, 2009
Messages
3,097
Been playing this, I'm enjoying it so far thought the simplified "just one action" system's shit. I like the "fairy tale" approach of the history, but I find the protagonist's a bit too soulless, doesn't really have any personality.

Daedalic has yet to create a likable or interesting protagonist. It's probably their biggest weakness.

Well, I kind of liked Rufus and with Sadwick at least they tried to give him a defining personality (although he ended up being annoying). Here the protagonist has the same charisma as a box of shoes, it looks to me like they didn't even try to give him any personality whatsoever.
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
I'm to Daedalic what J_C is to popamole. :( I liked both Sadwick and Rufus.
 
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Nope

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 22, 2011
Messages
108
Pretty fun little game. Better than what I expected with the "one click for everything" talk the author went on about.
He could have skipped the (relatively unobtrusive) minigames and spent that time expanding the rest of the game some more.
And for once Daedalic managed a not completely anti-climactic ending.
 

kaizoku

Arcane
Joined
Feb 18, 2006
Messages
4,129
ahh what the heck, bought it for 10 bucks.

If I can chip in money for some KS, might as well support who actually makes some decent games.
 

Sòren

Arcane
Joined
Aug 18, 2009
Messages
2,350
game's okay. the storytelling lacks a decent structure, the writing is boring most of the time and the characters aren't worth mentioning. while obviously childish the gameworld itself is sorta interesting.

it's worth your ten bucks but i wouldn't spend more.
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
Myeah, somewhat enjoyable, but not that great. In terms of other Daedalic games I think it's way below Whispered World and Deponia but above Satinav and that other one with hippies which I forget now.
 

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