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Incline Heroine's Quest - D/L Link in OP - Available NOW (FREE)!
- Thread starter JarlFrank
- Start date
V_K
Arcane
Magic Dart also works. He just flies awa-a-ay :DI have to admit, I was a bit amused when I read you used daggers on Ratatosk, because I had no idea you could do that. I'd have to check what he says in response next time I go through the game
(Or even if throwing snowballs works on him for that matter).
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2009
- Messages
- 9,873
There are 3 NPCs that will tell you how to do it
Aurvandel, Regin, and Snorri(the dude who guards the jail in the castle)
V_K
Arcane
Name
Cipher
GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
Very nice game, downloaded it few days ago and just started. The atmosphere is phenomenical!
Replaying this with a sorceress now.
SO MUCH FUN
SO MUCH FUN
Since you've played through it with all three classes, would you perhaps like to write a review of the game for the Codex?
Just asking.
Name
Cipher
Also help you decide if it's worth spending your time on the game or not. And bandwidth. And mouse clicks. Keystrokes. So helpful!
Would I like to? Sure. Do I have the time to do it properly? Less sure. Let me see how much free time I'll have after this week and I'll get back to you.
Since you've played through it with all three classes, would you perhaps like to write a review of the game for the Codex?
Just asking.
Fizzii
Crystal Shard
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2013
- Messages
- 185
We would be very happy to see a Codex review! 
Just a heads up - we are aiming to release v1.1 within the week (depends on how Radiant goes with the remaining bugs, but the majority are fixed, and I need to do a little more testing). With the v1.1 release, we will also be including the original sound track
Just a heads up - we are aiming to release v1.1 within the week (depends on how Radiant goes with the remaining bugs, but the majority are fixed, and I need to do a little more testing). With the v1.1 release, we will also be including the original sound track
You may be the first developer to ever utter those words.We would be very happy to see a Codex review!
Fizzii
Crystal Shard
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2013
- Messages
- 185
Even a negative review can be useful to us as long as it explains what needs improvement, so we can keep it in mind in the future . But so far, the feedback here (and in other places) has been very encouraging.
The only type of reviews I don't particularly like are those where the reviewer has obviously not played the game for more than a few minutes, where the reviewer does not properly explain what is bad about the game when they say they don't like it, or where the reviewer expects that the graphics should be high res and look like AAA games. Those sort of reviews don't tend to be helpful for us. Fair and thorough reviews are always welcome, on the other hand.
. But so far, the feedback here (and in other places) has been very encouraging. The only type of reviews I don't particularly like are those where the reviewer has obviously not played the game for more than a few minutes, where the reviewer does not properly explain what is bad about the game when they say they don't like it, or where the reviewer expects that the graphics should be high res and look like AAA games. Those sort of reviews don't tend to be helpful for us. Fair and thorough reviews are always welcome, on the other hand.
Coyote
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2009
- Messages
- 1,149
Finally got a chance to try this out, and I haven't been this enchanted with a game since King of Dragon Pass was re-released on GOG. I'd guess I'm only about halfway through (~280 points and a little ways into the third chapter as a thief), but as a big QfG fan who would love to see more adventure/RPG hybrids I would definitely recommend it based on what I've played so far.
The coming patch may already fix these, but some bugs/minor errors I've come across while playing (sorry if there are repeats, didn't want to click those spoilers when I read the thread earlier):
The coming patch may already fix these, but some bugs/minor errors I've come across while playing (sorry if there are repeats, didn't want to click those spoilers when I read the thread earlier):
Bugs:
- Very rarely in the first two chapters and much more frequently in the third the game crashes at the end of combat. This has occurred when delivering the final hit against multiple types of enemies, including at least one each of a draug, muspell, jotunn, bergrisi, and Skrymir, with the same message in all cases:
This was while playing a thief and wielding the default daggers using normal attacks. I've been able to defeat draugar, muspellmegir, and IIRC Skrymir with melee attacks without triggering the error, but it has occurred every time I've fought a jotunn unless I use throwing daggers to finish it off. I'm not sure how consistently the error occurs with bergrisar, as they take so long to whittle down that I've been avoiding them or finishing with throwing daggers ever since the first. (Haven't tested whether the specific attack used makes a difference.)
- Throwing eight daggers within a single area outside of combat also results in a crash with a similar error message:
- Sometimes if you order a drink while Lithrasir is chopping carrots at the table your character walks up to the bar, but Lithrasir never gets up and the cursor remains stuck on the hourglass icon, effectively freezing the game. This may be limited to the first day, as I was able to reliably reproduce it then, but when testing at a later point she would say something like, "I am preparing food now. Please come back later."
- When Volund wins the dice game with two hammers the VO says, "A good smith can handle two hammers. I win again." The text is missing the bolded letters.
- Hervor's line about the frozen garden, "Hoddmimi's Holt is not meant to be frozen," is also elicited if you examine the apple seed in the guildhall while she's present.
- The huldra entry in Arngrim's book ends with the words "huldra?s spell", though this may just be a font issue. Also, I may be missing a reference here, but it says "INSERT PICTURE OF VARG HERE" for no apparent reason at the end of the varg entry.
- If you examine the stump in the Gandvik area with a hole in the ice, it says, "A mossy stump groes beside the lake."
- The scarf's description when you examine it in your inventory is missing a space between the words "scarf" and "reduces".
- Using the mouth icon on either of the doors in the area outside the blacksmith's shop produces the line, "Shovels are for digging through earth and soil, not through doors. Where did you get that idea?!" This also occurs with the locked "escape hatch" door inside the thieves' lodge. Using the mouth icon on the doors outside the room where you first meet the Norns results in "The door is too sturdy for you to bash it in."
- When you ask Arngrim about Svartalfheim, his final line ends in the sentence, "Sad story, yea?" However, the VO doesn't include this part of the line.
- When you ask Kraka about Svartalfheim, the VO says "great wolf Fenrir", whereas the text omits the word "wolf".
- When you ask Andvari if he's been to Midgard, the text says, "It has no appeal to me, and the sunshine is bad enough to turn a svartalf to stone." The VO cuts off after the first clause of this sentence.
- When you ask Aurvandel about the duergar, the VO leaves out the entire second sentence of the second line ("They can turn themselves...").
- If you ask Jarl Ylfing for the key as your reward for saving him from the huldra, the VO says, "That is the symbolic key to the [Vem?]. My grandfather gave it to me and told me I should not part with it. Ask me for something else." The text says, "That was given to me by my grandfather. I do not know what it does, only that I should not part with it. Ask me for something else."
- If you tell Alviss that he deserved his punishment, the VO says, "Will you give me time to think on this, maybe continue talking when I have?" The text says, "Will you give me time to think on this, for I do not wish to talk to you until I have?"
- It's possible to play dice with Snorri and Volund when the latter is not present. The text for Volund's initial line (before you enter the dice game screen) appears in red, but everything else appears to work as normal.
- If you try to talk to Horrendous/Heronus while he's in the tree the second line of narration says, "The cat doesn't listen to you. What did you expect from a cat, 3 all?" Again, I might just be missing something here; the only "3 all" I know of is this, which I doubt it's referencing.
Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
Finished the game somewhere about a month ago (as a sorc, also tried to do a warrior run, but got too bored almost before the end of act III), but decided to wait for a while before leaving any kind of impressions here. Just to be calm and more objective. All in all, I liked the game, but I'm not as overhyped about it as the rest of the codex - honestly, in terms of "zealotry" (for the lack of a better word) people here aren't much different from the fans of (let's troll a bit) bethesda, bioware or ea, it's just that the focus of their obsession is different and the obsession itself remains the same. More or less (I won't argue that point, but just look at the codexian top-10 - for all the elitism of this place, it's not half as monocled as it should've been). Anyhow, let's begin from what I didn't like in the game:
1. Humor. What constantly spoiled the game for me was the humor. I found it inept, overfilled with plain references (sorry, but the reference does not make a joke) and annoyingly repetitive. Even a couple of jokes that made me chuckle initially (like Thrivaldi boasting about defeating a cat or a child, kinda forgot exactly what) were immediately ruined by repeating the same freaking joke pattern twice after that. I'm not retarded, I got it from the first time, ok? And there's way, way too much characters written like that in the game - Thrivaldi, the down squirrel, Aur-what-way-his-name-is-pronounced, most of the dark elves. It's all about "here's a funny line, prepare to hear the variations of it a hundred times more!!!" No, thanks.
And sure, the original series also featured some silly humor, but (totally subjectively speaking) it was of better quality and wasn't as prevalent as here (and they also had no lengthly cutscenes filled with it).
2. RPG system. Look, I absolutely love QFG series and it's great that you've decided to spend so much effort on this tribute to it. However, while staying faithful to the original is cool, it didn't mean that you should've repeated all of its mistakes. QFG's rpg system was always broken because of its overreliance on the exploits. Y'know, like, need to climb a tree for your quest? Sorry, we won't give you an opportunity to raise your skill properly, so go do some repetitive clicking on some random tree or cliff until you'll get better. And that's what you did through most of those games - just made some pointless and repetitive actions so your stats will grow. And it's the same here, only even worse. Here, look at my warrior heroine:
Yeah, if you somehow missed it - it's the evening of day one. No editors or whatever used, obviously.
And you can say - well, dude, you're the retard for abusing the game. Play properly and don't spoil your experience. The thing is, the game wasn't build for that. I'll cover the main reason for it in the next paragraph, but let's just say, spells. Obviously, to solve puzzles as a sorceress, you'll be required to use them. However, often your starting spell level won't be enough. So you have to raise them a bit. That's an obvious and rather common for an RPG, of course, there's just one but - with many spells, there's zero ways to use them before that point. So you have to go somewhere and spam them mindlessly until they're raised up, that's the solution.
3. Combat. It accentuates the problems with rpg system because it's difficulty curve is absolutely unbalanced. Mind you, I've done the dragon bone cavern challenge at the highest difficulty & game speed possible so I'm not bitching about combat being too hard. It's just that there's no proper progression. So from act I to the middle of Act II combat is easy (just worgs and bandits, maybe a troll if you decide to wander at night - all pose no challenge; well, maybe trolls if you're really, really undertrained), then, suddenly, you start to encounter duergar (not that strong, but can be annoying, I guess?) and mages (should be absolutely devastating for the unprepared character). Then it's act III and you're fucked because giants, giants everywhere. Worst of them being the Jotuhns, requiring unreasonably precise QTE mastery - sorry, but it's not that kind of a game. Oh, and then you get the lightning spell and combats are popamole once again. Unless your player knows he needs to grind, it's a pair of sudden, unexpected difficulty surges. I guess one can play on the lower difficulties, but then the combat is just effortless and thus boring. Dunno. I would prefer it properly balanced than "it's broken, so balance it yourself by playing with difficulty and metagaming". Of course, combat in original series was also quite broken, but I loved what they did with it in the QfG remake.
Also, you really should've separated "comat difficulty" and "encounter rate" into two different sliders - I wanted challenging fights, but I never wanted to be pestered by them (especially by the low-level trashmobs in the late-game). Same thing could be done for "game speed" and "combat speed", because it's one thing to walk through those forests slowly and the other to fight the freaking Brauggi with minimal reaction time.
4. OK, this one is a minor point and mostly me, but I've found the traditional QfG fairytale setting kinda in dissonance with the moral ambiguousness of the northern mythology & setting. The easiest example of this all characters being good & polite & noble (even with the worst ones, like Snorry and Kraka, being not all that bad), i.e., fairy-tailish, on the other hand, they're vikings and they're positively cool about their lifestyle choice (i.e., going on the raids and killing people to loot their stuff). And some other rather greyscale situations (like Hervor's "distant homeland" or lack of proof for Regin's accusations) aren't really resolved in any meaningful way, leaving a strange aftertaste. Dunno. To put it simly, I think that "black and white" style here clashes with the true neutrality of the setting.
Ok, as I'm kinda tired from typing all this, I'll be extremely concise about the strong parts of the game:
1. Non-comic writing is good. I dunno if it is good from the viewpoint of high literature, but it totally does the job for a videogame and it does it great. Setting is good, characters are good, dialogues are good, plot is simplistic, but that's ok because we're talking about a fairytale plot, after all. My favourite part of the writing is characters' lines being slightly changed depending on the people present.
2. Overall quest scheme and puzzles are great. They're difficult enough and most solutions are vaguely (or not so vaguely) hinted in dialogues, meaning that you're never stuck if you are paying attention. The only exception being that stick of the dead quest, but hey, I guess it's forgivable. Also, I really like that player can be slightly punished for not planning his actions thoroughly enough (like when freeing a certain person at day) or being way too munchkin with some of the quest rewards.
3. Graphics and sound are great. You really should've gone commercial with this project, though - I don't know if that's ideological thing, but you'd definitely got on steam with this and it's a great shame that you won't get rewarded for all your efforts properly.
4. Voiceover was also surprisingly decent. Honestly, I was expecting much, much worse.
All in all, a solid 8/10.
1. Humor. What constantly spoiled the game for me was the humor. I found it inept, overfilled with plain references (sorry, but the reference does not make a joke) and annoyingly repetitive. Even a couple of jokes that made me chuckle initially (like Thrivaldi boasting about defeating a cat or a child, kinda forgot exactly what) were immediately ruined by repeating the same freaking joke pattern twice after that. I'm not retarded, I got it from the first time, ok? And there's way, way too much characters written like that in the game - Thrivaldi, the down squirrel, Aur-what-way-his-name-is-pronounced, most of the dark elves. It's all about "here's a funny line, prepare to hear the variations of it a hundred times more!!!" No, thanks.
And sure, the original series also featured some silly humor, but (totally subjectively speaking) it was of better quality and wasn't as prevalent as here (and they also had no lengthly cutscenes filled with it).
2. RPG system. Look, I absolutely love QFG series and it's great that you've decided to spend so much effort on this tribute to it. However, while staying faithful to the original is cool, it didn't mean that you should've repeated all of its mistakes. QFG's rpg system was always broken because of its overreliance on the exploits. Y'know, like, need to climb a tree for your quest? Sorry, we won't give you an opportunity to raise your skill properly, so go do some repetitive clicking on some random tree or cliff until you'll get better. And that's what you did through most of those games - just made some pointless and repetitive actions so your stats will grow. And it's the same here, only even worse. Here, look at my warrior heroine:
Yeah, if you somehow missed it - it's the evening of day one. No editors or whatever used, obviously.
And you can say - well, dude, you're the retard for abusing the game. Play properly and don't spoil your experience. The thing is, the game wasn't build for that. I'll cover the main reason for it in the next paragraph, but let's just say, spells. Obviously, to solve puzzles as a sorceress, you'll be required to use them. However, often your starting spell level won't be enough. So you have to raise them a bit. That's an obvious and rather common for an RPG, of course, there's just one but - with many spells, there's zero ways to use them before that point. So you have to go somewhere and spam them mindlessly until they're raised up, that's the solution.
3. Combat. It accentuates the problems with rpg system because it's difficulty curve is absolutely unbalanced. Mind you, I've done the dragon bone cavern challenge at the highest difficulty & game speed possible so I'm not bitching about combat being too hard. It's just that there's no proper progression. So from act I to the middle of Act II combat is easy (just worgs and bandits, maybe a troll if you decide to wander at night - all pose no challenge; well, maybe trolls if you're really, really undertrained), then, suddenly, you start to encounter duergar (not that strong, but can be annoying, I guess?) and mages (should be absolutely devastating for the unprepared character). Then it's act III and you're fucked because giants, giants everywhere. Worst of them being the Jotuhns, requiring unreasonably precise QTE mastery - sorry, but it's not that kind of a game. Oh, and then you get the lightning spell and combats are popamole once again. Unless your player knows he needs to grind, it's a pair of sudden, unexpected difficulty surges. I guess one can play on the lower difficulties, but then the combat is just effortless and thus boring. Dunno. I would prefer it properly balanced than "it's broken, so balance it yourself by playing with difficulty and metagaming". Of course, combat in original series was also quite broken, but I loved what they did with it in the QfG remake.
Also, you really should've separated "comat difficulty" and "encounter rate" into two different sliders - I wanted challenging fights, but I never wanted to be pestered by them (especially by the low-level trashmobs in the late-game). Same thing could be done for "game speed" and "combat speed", because it's one thing to walk through those forests slowly and the other to fight the freaking Brauggi with minimal reaction time.
4. OK, this one is a minor point and mostly me, but I've found the traditional QfG fairytale setting kinda in dissonance with the moral ambiguousness of the northern mythology & setting. The easiest example of this all characters being good & polite & noble (even with the worst ones, like Snorry and Kraka, being not all that bad), i.e., fairy-tailish, on the other hand, they're vikings and they're positively cool about their lifestyle choice (i.e., going on the raids and killing people to loot their stuff). And some other rather greyscale situations (like Hervor's "distant homeland" or lack of proof for Regin's accusations) aren't really resolved in any meaningful way, leaving a strange aftertaste. Dunno. To put it simly, I think that "black and white" style here clashes with the true neutrality of the setting.
Ok, as I'm kinda tired from typing all this, I'll be extremely concise about the strong parts of the game:
1. Non-comic writing is good. I dunno if it is good from the viewpoint of high literature, but it totally does the job for a videogame and it does it great. Setting is good, characters are good, dialogues are good, plot is simplistic, but that's ok because we're talking about a fairytale plot, after all. My favourite part of the writing is characters' lines being slightly changed depending on the people present.
2. Overall quest scheme and puzzles are great. They're difficult enough and most solutions are vaguely (or not so vaguely) hinted in dialogues, meaning that you're never stuck if you are paying attention. The only exception being that stick of the dead quest, but hey, I guess it's forgivable. Also, I really like that player can be slightly punished for not planning his actions thoroughly enough (like when freeing a certain person at day) or being way too munchkin with some of the quest rewards.
3. Graphics and sound are great. You really should've gone commercial with this project, though - I don't know if that's ideological thing, but you'd definitely got on steam with this and it's a great shame that you won't get rewarded for all your efforts properly.
4. Voiceover was also surprisingly decent. Honestly, I was expecting much, much worse.
All in all, a solid 8/10.
STEAM constantly rejects games with this kind of resolution. They do not like these kind of games on there (just ask the Wadjet Eye guys and all the hell they try to go through). Which is complete fucking bullshit, but whatever.
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