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Incline Strangeland - new adventure game from Wormwood Studios

Verylittlefishes

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Everything is cool, Mark (and take my money already), it just me personally, I can't stand when someone states "our (pixel in that case) art is beautiful". Well, it is up to customer to decide. Just call it "classic" or "traditional" or whatever.

RELEASE THE GAME ALREADY AAAH
 

Zombra

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I think keeping it to a single sentence is punchier, but providing the list of characters does indeed ruin the cadence. While I understand the urge to pack in as much as possible and those characters are cool to mention one by one, I recommend omitting the list. Instead, simply say:
"Match wits with a bizarre cast of characters, solve multipath puzzles, uncover secrets—all while hunted and haunted by the Dark Thing."
That already sounds awesome and should pique enough curiosity for people to read more and find out what bizarre characters.

Better yet, be specific. Instead of "a bizarre cast of characters", say who they are collectively. The Denizens of the Dream Realm, the Guardians of Shoobadoo Castle, whatever.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
Everything is cool, Mark (and take my money already), it just me personally, I can't stand when someone states "our (pixel in that case) art is beautiful". Well, it is up to customer to decide. Just call it "classic" or "traditional" or whatever.

RELEASE THE GAME ALREADY AAAH
Disagree, they should go one step further. Gotta be confident.
"This is the best looking game you'll ever see, a lot of people say it. Great game. Best game. Best you'll ever play, guaranteed."
 

almondblight

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At the very least I would split the first sentence in two - i.e. "A new point-and-click adventure by Primordia's developer. Explore a surreal carnival in hopes of saving a doomed woman and unraveling your past. Match wits..." etc. I just don't like the rhythm of it the way it is.
This might be right. What do others think?

Sounds better to me. Though "Primordia's developer" comes off as a bit awkward, something like "by the creators of Primordia"/"by the developers of Primordia" sounds better to me. See the description of Obduction, for example ("A new sci-fi adventure from Cyan, the creators of Myst. Abducted far across the universe...").

Also, the description you posted sounds a bit like something you might put in an e-mail to a journalist or publisher - a bit flatter than descriptions for other adventure games. Compare to the steam descriptions for Obduction, Thimbleweed Park, Unavowed, or Kathy Rain (just a few I decided to randomly pull up) that all focus on putting the customer into the shoes of the protagonist and in the middle of the story. You have that in the italicized segment, but then the summary puts people in the shoes of the developers. There's also a bit of repetition in the summary and the features section ("beautiful pixel art"/"Breathtaking pixel art", "rich, thematic story-telling and world-building"/"A rich, thematic story", "challenging puzzles with multiple solutions"/"A non-linear design with puzzles offering multiple solution paths").

Another thing I noticed while looking at the Steam pages for other adventure games is that they often highlight voice acting in the features section.
 

Zombra

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Yeah, "Primordia's developer" is very goofy sounding. What you gain in real estate you lose in awkwardness. Just say "the developers of Primordia" like anybody else.
 

MRY

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Incorporating various feedback, here is a largely different style. Curious for thoughts:

Short
You wake in a surreal carnival and watch a woman die for your sake. Who was she? Who are you, for that matter? The denizens and devices of Strangeland offer only riddles and puzzles, which you must unravel while hunted by the Dark Thing. A long-waited second adventure from the creators of Primordia.

Long
You awake in a nightmarish carnival and watch a golden-haired woman hurl herself down a bottomless well for your sake. You seek clues and help from jeering ravens, an eyeless scribe, a living furnace, a mismade mermaid, and many more who dwell within the park. All the while, a shadow shrieks from atop a towering roller-coaster, and you know that until you destroy this Dark Thing, the woman will keep jumping, falling, and dying, over and over again....

SUMMARY

Strangeland is a classic point-and-click adventure that integrates a compelling narrative with challenging puzzles. For almost a decade, we've been working on a worthy successor to the fan-acclaimed Primordia, and we are proud, at long last, to share our second game.

Strangeland is a place like no other. Even in the real world, carnivals occupy the twilight territory between the fantastic and the mundane, the alien and the familiar. In their funhouse mirrors, their freaks, and their frauds, we see hideous and haunting reflections of ourselves, and we witness the wonder and horror humanity in just a few tents, circus wagons, dingy booths, and broken down rides. Strangeland, of course, is most definitely not the real world. Indeed, figuring out where—and who—you are is one of the game's many mysteries.

As you explore Strangeland, you will face an array of obstacles armed with unusual weapons and aided by the strangest of allies. Forge a blade from iron stolen from the jaws of a ravenous hound and hone it with a wrath and grief; charm the eye out of a ten-legged teratoma; and ride a giant cicada to the edge of oblivion.... In such a place, death itself has no grip on you, and you will use this slippery immortality to gain an edge over your foes.

Navigating this nightmare of monsters and metaphors will require understanding of its denizens and its puzzles. Unlike many adventure games that offer a linear experience and single-solution puzzles, Strangeland lets you pick your own way and own approach—one player might pass a puzzle through sharpshooting, another by electrical engineering; one player might unravel a strange prophet's wordplay while another gathers visual clues scattered throughout the environment. Ultimately, Strangeland's story will be your story. You are not the audience; you are the player.

KEY FEATURES
  • Approximately five hours of gameplay, replayable thanks to different choices, different puzzle solutions, and different endings
  • Breathtaking pixel art in twice Primordia's resolution (640x360—party like it's 1999!)
  • Dozens of rooms to explore, with variant versions as the carnival grows ever more surreal
  • An eccentric cast, including a sideshow freak, a telepathic starfish, an animatronic fortune-teller, and a trio of masqueraders
  • A non-linear design featuring multiple puzzles solutions and multiple endings
  • A rich, thematic story about identity, loss, and self-doubt
  • Integrated, in-character hint system (optional, of course)
  • Hours of developer commentary and an "annotation mode" (providing on-screen explanations for the references woven throughout the game)
CREDO

At Wormwood Studios, we make games out of love—love for the games we've spent our lifetimes playing, love for the games we ourselves create, and love for the players who have made all of the games (those we've played and those we've made) possible. We know that players invest not just their money and time in the games they play, but also their hopes. And we want to make sure that players receive a rich return on that investment—a game that provides not only a fun, challenging diversion for a few hours of playing, but also a lasting memory to take forward (as we have accumulated memories of adventures games from before they had graphics to when they no longer have words).

We think the best way to do that is to adhere to the genius of the adventure genre: the marriage of challenging puzzles and thrilling exploration, on the one hand, with an engaging narrative, on the other. To that, we add uncanny visuals and thought-provoking themes. At the same time, however, we have tried to remove the punitive aspects of adventure games (deaths, dead ends, illogical puzzles, pixel hunting, backtracking, etc.). In Primordia, this formula seemed to work very well, and we have refined it further with Strangeland.

Haven't proofed it, but figured before I spent too much time polishing I'd see whether people preferred this approach.
 

MRY

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Added such a bullet, though of course there is not yet any voice acting in the game since that's a last step.
 

agris

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MRY I think the short take is better, and gets rid of the awkward sounding "hunted and haunted" line. But... how do we know this woman dies for your sake? Anyway, the 'for yoru sake' sounds a bit awkward in the short description, so i replaced it with the well.

You wake in a surreal carnival and watch a woman hurl herself into a well. Who was she? Who are you, for that matter? The denizens and devices of Strangeland offer only riddles and puzzles, which you must unravel while hunted by the Dark Thing. A long-waited second adventure from the creators of Primordia.
 

MRY

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I think the fact that she dies for your sake makes matters more interesting; the player is told at the outset that the woman died for his sake, so it's consistent with the information he'll have in the game. With your version, it's not clear why you should care about a woman in a "surreal carnival" throwing herself down a well....
 

Zombra

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The whole thing sounds weird. The problem is that you are teasing a huge vague interesting thing and then trying to make other questions the interesting part. I don't care who this woman was yet; I want to know what she just did! After all, she did it right in front of me so I should know that. It's "You see the most amazing thing anyone has ever done. But why were they wearing blue shoes?" Hello? Who cares about the shoes? What the hell happened?

Tell me how the woman died. It's much punchier to say "You see a woman crushed by an anvil while screaming your name. But you don't know her!" Now that's a mystery.

If you can't tell me how I know it was for my sake, don't mention it. Otherwise that's the only question that matters.
 

MRY

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Zombra My own strong inclination is that people have been misleadingly brainwashed by years of "show, don't tell" (which is largely responsible for a certain kind of excessive writing), so I don't find your "bad" example particularly bad (other than that it's deliberately written to be stupid by having the second statement a non-sequitur to the first -- substitute "But why were they wearing blue shoes?" into your second example, and it's just as stupid). "You see the most amazing thing anyone has ever done, but the moment it's over, the performer collapses dead" strikes me as perfectly fine structurally, no worse than, "You see the greatest triple axel anyone has ever done, but the moment it's over, the performer collapses dead."

bertram_tung I prefer the "... for your sake" construction.

Ultimately, I'm not persuaded, but I'm not above heeding consensus on something like this. Each of you has a different theory, but you all agree it doesn't work. How about this:

You awaken in a surreal carnival, where a woman calls you her love before leaping to her death. Who was she? And who are you? The denizens and devices of Strangeland offer only riddles and puzzles, which you must unravel while hunted by a Dark Thing. A new adventure from the creators of Primordia.

I miss "for that matter," but can't get the word count to work with it. It does let me swap "awaken" for "wake," which I prefer. (And "before leaping" for "then leaps," my initial construction.)
 

bertram_tung

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Insert Title Here
Zombra My own strong inclination is that people have been misleadingly brainwashed by years of "show, don't tell" (which is largely responsible for a certain kind of excessive writing), so I don't find your "bad" example particularly bad (other than that it's deliberately written to be stupid by having the second statement a non-sequitur to the first -- substitute "But why were they wearing blue shoes?" into your second example, and it's just as stupid). "You see the most amazing thing anyone has ever done, but the moment it's over, the performer collapses dead" strikes me as perfectly fine structurally, no worse than, "You see the greatest triple axel anyone has ever done, but the moment it's over, the performer collapses dead."

bertram_tung I prefer the "... for your sake" construction.

Ultimately, I'm not persuaded, but I'm not above heeding consensus on something like this. Each of you has a different theory, but you all agree it doesn't work. How about this:

You awaken in a surreal carnival, where a woman calls you her love before leaping to her death. Who was she? And who are you? The denizens and devices of Strangeland offer only riddles and puzzles, which you must unravel while hunted by a Dark Thing. A new adventure from the creators of Primordia.

I miss "for that matter," but can't get the word count to work with it. It does let me swap "awaken" for "wake," which I prefer. (And "before leaping" for "then leaps," my initial construction.)

I think it's better but not sure if it's ready or not.
I'm just going to throw out some more ideas and see if you like them.


"You awaken in a surreal carnival and watch a woman leap to her death. She called you her love. Who was she? Who are you? The denizens and devices of Strangeland offer only riddles and puzzles, which you must unravel while hunted by a Dark Thing. A new adventure from the creators of Primordia."

Or

"You awaken in a surreal carnival, where a woman calls you her love before she leaps to her death. Who was she? Who are you? The denizens and devices of Strangeland offer only riddles and puzzles, which you must unravel while hunted by a Dark Thing. A new adventure from the creators of Primordia. Trump 2020 MAGA"

I think "calls you her love" sounds weird for some reason. Can we say "she professes her love for you" or is that inaccurate to the script?
 
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Zombra

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You awaken in a surreal carnival, where a woman calls you her love before leaping to her death. Who was she? And who are you?
That's much better. The first part gives me a much stronger context to ask the questions in the second part.

My examples were intended to be more illustrative than rigorous, but hopefully they were helpful.
 
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Jack Of Owls

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Wasn't Strangeland also the title of a rather bad horror film written by & starring a former rock star but co-starring the actress that went on to play Velma in the live action Scooby Doo movies when she was a sweet, nubile teen thing?
 

ghostdog

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It's a 300 character limit, right? Here's my take:

You awaken in a surreal carnival, where a woman sacrifices herself for you. Who was she? Who are you? The denizens and devices of Strangeland offer only riddles and puzzles, which you must unravel while hunted by a dark presence. A long-waited second adventure from the creators of Primordia.
 

almondblight

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Incorporating various feedback, here is a largely different style. Curious for thoughts:


I think that's better, though the second paragraph of the long section feels a bit off to me:

Strangeland is a place like no other. Even in the real world, carnivals occupy the twilight territory between the fantastic and the mundane, the alien and the familiar. In their funhouse mirrors, their freaks, and their frauds, we see hideous and haunting reflections of ourselves, and we witness the wonder and horror humanity in just a few tents, circus wagons, dingy booths, and broken down rides. Strangeland, of course, is most definitely not the real world. Indeed, figuring out where—and who—you are is one of the game's many mysteries.

My preference would probably be to remove the whole digression into the nature of real world carnivals. But if you want to keep it, maybe it can be sharpened a bit. Something like: "Carnivals. They occupy the twilight territory between the fantastic and the mundane, the alien and the familiar. We see hideous and haunting reflections of ourselves in their funhouse mirrors, their frreaks, and their frauds. But Strangeland is a carnival like no other. And it falls on you to find out just what it is - and just who you are."
 

MRY

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Eh, at some point, the luxury of being independent is that you can use your own voice. The proposed rewrite isn't how I would express myself, even in marketing talk. Plus, if my mildly baroque marketing writing turns off a player, it's 100% sure they will not like the way-more baroque in-game text!

(This isn't to say I don't appreciate all the feedback; I do. But as I say, there's a point at which it just becomes substituting someone else's taste/voice for you own.)
 

almondblight

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Eh, at some point, the luxury of being independent is that you can use your own voice. The proposed rewrite isn't how I would express myself, even in marketing talk. Plus, if my mildly baroque marketing writing turns off a player, it's 100% sure they will not like the way-more baroque in-game text!

(This isn't to say I don't appreciate all the feedback; I do. But as I say, there's a point at which it just becomes substituting someone else's taste/voice for you own.)

Yeah, I'm sure I'm biased towards thinking that descriptions that are more typical "sound right." Lines like "Even in the real world..." probably sound off to me since there's a certain amount of fourth wall breaking going on there that's atypical of descriptions (the implication seems to be that this is a game and not real life, though perhaps it's just supposed to suggest an otherworldly setting). But you don't have to avoid things that are atypical; like you said, in the end it's your game and you have to do what feels right to you.
 

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