Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Wadjet Eye Shardlight by Wadjet Eye Games

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Coming Spring 2016:



Learn more at http://www.shardlight-game.com

In a post-cataclysmic world plagued by disease and hunger, a woman named Amy discovers that the all-powerful government is hiding a terrible secret. With the help of a mysterious figure, Amy will attempt to unite the oppressed, assist a revolution, and cure the plague that threatens humanity and her survival.
 
Last edited:

Athelas

Arcane
Joined
Jun 24, 2013
Messages
4,502
After that trailer, I'm going to be disappointed if the game ends on anything other than an anticlimactic note wherein it turns out that no, there really is no way to save the protagonist's life.
 
Last edited:
Self-Ejected

supervoid

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 9, 2014
Messages
1,076
Two short games in Shardlight's world.
1auu8hG.png
 

VonVentrue

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Jul 16, 2007
Messages
814
Location
HPCE
Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2
I just hope they don't go full 3D. I like their 2D style myself.

I wouldn't rule out the possibility of WE abandoning the retro-flavoured pixel art in favour of much more detailed - yet equally evocative, somewhat stylized - 2D art. Nothing more than that, really - a sudden switch to 3D might prove to be too difficult and expensive for such a small studio to handle.
 

DaveGilbert

Wadjet Eye Games
Developer
Joined
Jan 5, 2010
Messages
85
Location
Brooklyn, NY
Hi all. Dave coming out of lurker mode to answer some of your questions.

1 - We're sticking with AGS. For now.
2 - We're not publishing this one. It's developed fully in house (albeit not written by me)
3 - We're not going 3D anytime soon. :)

And now back to lurking. As you were.
 

Gambler

Augur
Joined
Apr 3, 2006
Messages
767
Criticism:
- The color palette seems to be ranging from greenish-yellow to orange-yellow. Yellow sky, yellow clouds, yellow ground, yellow buildings. Yeah, I get it, it's post-apocalyptic. Still, some other hues and a bit more contrast would do the game a world of good.
- The music sounds like it's being played from a radio in another room. I would strongly consider changing reverb algorithm to something more spacious or maybe running the sound completely dry.

I guess I sound like a know-it-all asshole here, but both of those things really annoy the heck out of me. Especially the latter. I can't stand when indie games ruin otherwise perfectly good music with shitty FX or low bitrates, and it happens all too often.
 

Blackthorne

Infamous Quests
Patron
Developer
Joined
Jun 8, 2012
Messages
981
Location
Syracuse NY
Codex 2014 Divinity: Original Sin 2
:kwafuckyeah:

Great to hear :) I don't know if it's just me (it probably is...) but I prefer my adventure games in proper pixel style rather than 3D :)

I'm right there with ya man!

From the bits I've seen from this, it looks like another gorgeous and engaging game. I'm psyched for it.


Bt
 

pippin

Guest
Look interesting! Yeah it's post apoc, but it has a certain Primordia-esque feel that I really like.

Hi all. Dave coming out of lurker mode to answer some of your questions.

1 - We're sticking with AGS. For now.
2 - We're not publishing this one. It's developed fully in house (albeit not written by me)
3 - We're not going 3D anytime soon. :)

And now back to lurking. As you were.

You killed Red! You mean, mean man!
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/01/19/shardlight-hands-on/

Hands On: Shardlight
John Walker on January 19th, 2016 at 1:00 pm.

sha5.jpg


While the world got over-excited at the prospect of old men and women emerging from their dusty tombs to make adventure games again, one indie production company quietly continued putting out the best in the business. Dave Gilbert’s Wadjet Eyediverged from his self-created Blackwell series to producing adventures made by other individuals or tiny teams. The results have been splendid games like Technobabylon,Resonance and Gemini Rue. While I’ve only played the first third, it’s looking very hopeful we will be able to include Shardlight [official site] in that list of successes. The post-apocalyptic adventure from developer Francisco Gonzalez presents an intriguing story in an immediately embellished and believable post-apocalyptic world.



Far too often adventure games (and indeed any games) can spend much too long trying to force its exposition down your neck. LOOK AT OUR WORLD AND HOW IT’S DIFFERENT FROM YOURS! NO! LOOK MORE! KEEP ON LOOKING! Shardlight is a really rather splendid example of how to assume the player isn’t an idiot, and can pick up on entirely obvious themes without having them screamed. This is a post-bombs-falling world, in which an authoritarian and oligarchical governance called the Aristocrats has risen to take advantage of the chaos. You play Amy Wellard, a mechanic who is forced to take on “lottery jobs” to be in with a chance of winning vaccine from the government to treat a wildly spreading plague that’s infected her.

Lottery jobs are the kind of shitty tasks that no one wants to do. The game begins as you descend into a dingy under-street series of tunnels, tasked with fixing a reactor that generates electricity for the upper classes. Down there Amy finds a dying man who gives her a sealed letter, telling her if she delivers it then everything in her life will change. And so it does. It’s a tale of conspiracy, underground rebellions, and torn loyalties.

sha1.jpg


From this point on, Shardlight keeps getting things right. I think this is best represented as a checklist of what these games normally screw up, and why Shardlight – in its first third at least – does not:

- Too many locations

It’s a fine art, getting the balance of locations correct. Obviously it’s just an escape-the-room if it’s linear, but too often adventures give players an agoraphobic paralysis by giving them far too many involved places to go and not nearly enough direction. (Dropsy, I’m looking at you.) Shardlight gets this just right, with three or four places immediately available, each of them packed with people to talk to, alleyways to explore, objects to find and use, etc, and then rapidly adds new areas just when you’re ready to move on.

- Over-simplified inventory puzzles

This is a modern curse of point-n-clickers, where the inventory puzzle has been reduced to putting the triangle-shaped object into the triangle-shaped hole, reducing any point in their existing in the first place. Where once poorer games would require you click everything on everything, more recently you click one thing in the only place it could go. Shardlight remembers how it’s meant to work, with a small collection of items, and ways to use them ranging from sensible to esoteric. It also understands that it’s great fun to have one object that accompanies you all the way through with multiple uses, which this time looks likely to be a trusty metal bucket.

- Brainless world puzzles

If you’re an adventure designer and the words, “sliding tile” ever cross your mind, it’s your duty to quit your job and work on an oil rig for the rest of your life. There are ways to implement more traditional puzzles into a point and click game, but ambitions can stretch beyond restoring a torn up note. Shardlight has some lovely examples of this, including a door lock puzzle that requires you do some in-game research in a book, then apply that elsewhere, in a very satisfying manner.

- Unrelatable characters

Amy is extremely likeable, without being perfect. She’s reduced to performing dangerous jobs that don’t use her skills because she needs to enter the lottery for a drug that will save her life. And most tellingly about her, she has a lot of friends all over the city, people who are pleased to see her, act positively toward her. Making them relatable too! While there is certainly unnecessary obtuseness from some, these are people willing to help her, positive around her, rather than grumpy or sullen or plain confusing. It is a fantastic shortcut for having you feel like you’re playing an established character in an established world, rather than the all-too common memoryless avatar freshly emerged from a cocoon.

sha4.jpg


Add to that list some really splendid voice acting. Forget the olden days of Wadjet Eye’s hissy, amateur voicework – this is really professional and naturalistic stuff. And then of course there’s Ben Chandler’s glorious artwork. I think this is his best yet, the portrayal of a conflicting society of extremes of wealth and poverty elegantly set in a broken world. Character design is lovely, the super-simple pixels of their animated forms managing to portray immense amounts.

The one thing standing in the game’s way is, as ever, the engine. Wadjet Eye have previously promised they intend to move to Unity, and dear me it can’t happen soon enough. Chris Jones’ Adventure Game Studio served a wonderful purpose for years, but it’s really wearing bone-thin. It seems now to be a technical restriction, clunkily making the gorgeous art of this game awkward to run at large sizes, rather than supporting these games in a useful way. The pixel art is marvellous, and importantly, artistic. But I’m pretty sure Unity could be bent and snapped in such a way as to present it in a far smoother, more accessible way. Still, it’s just about good enough to let Shardlight shine.

sha6.jpg


I’m hooked by the story, especially because it hasn’t felt the need to hammer home its finer points. I adore that the Aristocracy wear what look like porcelain masks, a grotesque assimilation of the powdered-white faces of the British Elizabethan era, and this is only mentioned once in a throwaway remark. There are lots of lovely details like this, world-building asides. The story reveal that occurs just before this preview version ends will be ridiculously obvious to anyone who’s ever seen a film or read a book in their lives, but there’s no real harm there. The tale is smart enough that it doesn’t rely on such surprises.

But most of all, this was an absorbing puzzle adventure, which is a phrase all too rarely uttered even in these days of the genre’s clumsy resurgence. I’m very much looking forward to March to continue onward, and rather hoping that it manages to maintain the standards, and not fall off a cliff (as with last year’s almost good Dead Synchronicity). Only a couple of months to wait.
 
Self-Ejected

Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 7, 2013
Messages
7,817
From this point on, Shardlight keeps getting things right. I think this is best represented as a checklist of what these games normally screw up, and why Shardlight – in its first third at least – does not:

- Unrelatable characters

Amy is extremely likeable, without being perfect. She’s reduced to performing dangerous jobs that don’t use her skills because she needs to enter the lottery for a drug that will save her life. And most tellingly about her, she has a lot of friends all over the city, people who are pleased to see her, act positively toward her. Making them relatable too! While there is certainly unnecessary obtuseness from some, these are people willing to help her, positive around her, rather than grumpy or sullen or plain confusing.

Oh spare me.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
They did play Primordia, they just hated it, which is too bad, as I would think it satisfied all of these criteria except for not having an amnesiac grumpy protagonist. It's just funny to see them exclude it from the list of WEG third-party titles. But I suppose maybe it's just not "splendid." :D
 

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
too often adventures give players an agoraphobic paralysis by giving them far too many involved places to go
Could someone provide me with a list of those? I always feel moder adventures are too claustrophobic.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
too often adventures give players an agoraphobic paralysis by giving them far too many involved places to go
Could someone provide me with a list of those? I always feel moder adventures are too claustrophobic.
I've never felt it in a point-and-click, but it caused me to give up on Savoir Faire (an IF game). Dropsy is quite open in design. Definitely not claustrophobic at all.
 

ghostdog

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2007
Messages
11,079
Hunger Games, the adventure game?
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom