Wadjet Eye Primordia - A Point and Click Adventure - Now Available

[MRY]

I'd be surprised if it happened, though, of course, delighted.

 

[Jaesun]

I have not shared my thoughts on this, (I LOVE this game) but the single thing I want to mention is that the kiosk puzzle toward the end was utterly fantastic. I LOVED that. THAT was well done.

I really really liked the kiosk and searching for info (and learning some other stuff, setting wise as well). While 99% of the people playing your game do not do that or care sadly (and that is such a shame) I appreciate the effort put into that. To me that really fleshes things out for the setting.

 

[MRY]

Thanks, Jaesun. It was my favorite puzzle and feature as well. Unfortunately, by having a Steam achievement tied to finding all the entries, we kind of messed the whole thing up because, actually, 99% of people playing did care about it, but for entirely the wrong reasons, so what was meant as an optional easter-egg lore hunt turned into a de facto mandatory easter-egg achievement hunt (which incidentally turned out to be glitched and unachievable for the first six months after the game was released). Rookie mistakes, I hope.

 

[Diablo169]

Thanks, Jaesun. It was my favorite puzzle and feature as well. Unfortunately, by having a Steam achievement tied to finding all the entries, we kind of messed the whole thing up because, actually, 99% of people playing did care about it, but for entirely the wrong reasons, so what was meant as an optional easter-egg lore hunt turned into a de facto mandatory easter-egg achievement hunt (which incidentally turned out to be glitched and unachievable for the first six months after the game was released). Rookie mistakes, I hope.

I believe you were up for community vote at one point? In previous steam sales even the games that lost the vote came up in a flash sale eventually. They may not be doing that this time but I have my fingers crossed for you. It's obvious you still really care about your game, since I see you posting on just about every forum discussing it

 

[MRY]

We were up for a community vote in the Christmas sale, and never got reposted as a flash sale, so who knows? And, yeah -- it's hard to let it go.

 

[MRY]

Last part of the Fallen audiobook is up here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CANLxnsTm4s

 

[fizzelopeguss]

so, when are we getting that primordia RPG?

 

[suejak]

Best way to ruin a good game is by adding combat.

 

[MRY]

A couple fans have separately mentioned developing a Primordia PRG to me, and I blessed both projects -- which are P&P, not cRPGs. Not sure if either will be pursued; things like that start a lot more often than they reach their end.

 

[evdk]

so, when are we getting that primordia RPG?

Never.

 

[Victor Pflug]

To cap off my work on Primordia I put together an art retrospective. Basically just a slideshow of Primordia artwork, with a lot of unreleased concepts and a few rare treats that I even I forgot I had painted.
It's set to the music I did for Fallen. Thanks for all the support everyone! Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iEQvl8y_3Q

 

[Victor Pflug]

I thought I'd take a moment to answer some questions asked a few pages back by iqzulk. I would have replied earlier, but his question are ones that have been burgeoning on my mind long before he asked them, and it's taken me six months to really mull over how I might answer them if anyone did ask. So here goes.

From what I understand, Dave influenced your game pretty heavily. At the very least, he provided both the voice cast and the composer whose soundtrack made it into the release version of the game. And while I understand this to be a very sensitive area - and while it would probably be not so ethical for you to voice any concerns about his efforts in public, I still want to discuss a couple of questions regarding his influence. First of all, soundtrack. It is both my opinion and opinion of some people I've spoken to in the different corners of the Web, that the soundtrack to Primordia is quite bland actually - and it simply doesn't do justice to its visual component (and I personally don't think that vocal track that goes with Credits fits the mood of the game at all). Moreover, I haven't encountered a single person who would say that soundtrack was his favorite aspect of the game - it doesn't say much, of course, but it certainly isn't a compliment as well.

The question of influence by WEG is a difficult one for me to answer on several levels, but I'll try.

The soundtrack. Well, I haven't talked about this much publicly but I had a very specific tone in mind for the soundtrack to Primordia. I should start be mentioning that I prefer to create music using hardware of the era (or earlier) such as FM synthesis, analog, Soundtracker samples and various other machines of the late 80's to early 90's. It's not that I'm some kind of vintage hardware elitist, I just like the idea that one could play my games and recognize the sharp twang of an FM synth, low-fi crunch of a Soundtracker sample or the warm buzz of an analog synth -- and it's not a modern facsimile of that machine, a "virtual" synth or software analog. It's being made by a genuine hacked up and dusty old synth from the heyday of adventure games. Secondly I'm an avid circuit bender, and with Primordia being about glitched out machines I thought it would be extremely fitting to use genuine glitched out era-specific synthesizers. So yeah, in short, I had very specific things in mind for the soundtrack to Primordia.

The reason you're not hearing my music in game is pretty simple, I'm nowhere near being an accomplished musician and Dave Gilbert from WEG felt we needed a real professional producing the soundtrack. I strongly disagreed with him at the time, while I'm quite happy with Nathaniel's work for Primordia on the whole, I felt a lot more emotion could have been conveyed with stronger music, and a more appropriate tone could have been achieved. That's a pretty pig-headed thing to say I know - easy for me to say "Oh I would have done much better music", but that's kinda just how I feel about it. I spent a lot of time basically composing tracks for Primordia and sending them to Nathaniel asking "please compose something like this". Probably drove the poor bastard near crazy but I feel like a lot of the things I wanted to hear in Primordia made it in, and the tone is certainly appropriate. It took me hearing someone else put sound to my visuals for me to realize how much I truly want to marry the two elements myself in a game. My best creative nights are when I come up with the beginnings of a good sketch, then I put together some music playing from that visual. I set the music to play looped while I finish painting the picture. To me it feels like each mediums informs the other and vice-versa, and I love working like that. Maybe I just can't do one thing for too long...

Second, the voices. I do not have any complaints about the quality of voice acting in the game. But. What I've heard multiple times is that while the actors do know how to act - and provide the game with a great deal of personality, they also make it sound like "just another Wadjet game". "Gee, I wonder where I've heard that voice" - "Riiiight, that's the detective dude from Resonance", etc. etc. Moreover, I haven't played the game with commentaries, but I've heard from a person who did play with commentaries (it's not the most reliable source though - so I could have just been misinformed), that there was original voice cast team, which was picked by you and which later got disbanded by Dave and switched for a new voice cast team - the one that made it into the release. And it really makes me wonder, what did that original team sound like.


The voice cast. Kind of the same deal here. I had a ragtag group of individuals I lined up to play various characters, but Dave insisted we use his guys. Again, they did a good job, but it wasn't in line with my ideas for how the characters should sound. My main gripes were with the choices for Crispin and Horatio. I'd like to be completely clear here though, my ideas for this stuff could well have made for a game with, shall we say, a "divisive" cast and soundtrack - and considering Primordia's considerable success I can't say I'm altogether regretful. Dave, his voice team (some of whom I've now roped into my own personal game projects I might mention) and Nathaniel all did a sterling job, but yeah, given half a chance I would have made it differently. I guess at one time this caused me a lot of distress, but I love Primordia despite it not being completely the game I set out to make. In many ways it's much much more than what I set out to make, and I have Dave Gilbert to thank for that.

I do appreciate the lowres lo-fi aspect of the graphics - and it does indeed give the game a certain charm. Still, there is one concern that gnawed on me ever since I saw this game for a first time. The squareness and the blockiness of the picture simply doesn't go all that well with the smooth curved lines of mud and almost organic forms of hopelessly rusted machinery. In my opinion, the resolution aspect of the game conflicts with the visual aspect of its design - and greatly diminishes the impact from the artwork. Still, it is your game, and you do, of course, have each and every right to consider it (or any other style) the canonical look of the game. I wouldn't even voice my concerns over this issue, were it not for one detail. From what I gathered from the interviews, one of the main reasons you went with 240p was the animation issue. Higher resolutions would require more frames of animation (in order to make it look reasonably smooth) - and going with higher res would slow down the development tremendously (to the point of the game still not being released as of this moment). Still, it left me with a distinctive impression that you don't actually consider 240p to be the only canonical res for the background artwork - and were it not for animation concerns, you would probably go with a somewhat higher res.

Mark pretty well covered this question of resolution; first and foremost - despite the how my style might suggest otherwise - I love 320x200 graphics and a loss of detail doesn't mean much to me in exchange for that digital canvas look only low res can achieve. Animation was a big concern too, I'm no animator and I have enough trouble at the pixel level let alone trying to do Disney cell animation type stuff.

Now - to the main question at hand. Is there any chance, something like "Primordia: Developer's Cut" could appear some time into the future? With the original voice cast, rewritten soundtrack, higher res artwork, maybe - trimmed or expanded endings (some of the "false" endings simply felt out of character - and like they were simply tacked on, quantity over quality)? The way Primordia should've been were it not for (insert whatever you want here). The ultimate original vision, no compromises, no unrealized potential. Or is the current version the final one we'll ever get (not that there is anything particularly wrong with it)?

I wouldn't rule out making a "Director's Cut" version of Primordia, but right now I like the fact that Primordia is done and finished. I can say I actually made something of worth. I have a lot of adventure game ideas -- at least three main ones I'd like to realize in my lifetime -- and they're just not going to happen if I retread old ground so soon. I would consider making a game with higher resolution for my next project, but Primordia will never be remade in high res - that I can say with near certainty. Primordia, from when I first decided to make it, was supposed to be a small simple game that would give me some street cred for more serious projects. It became more than that, and less, but the end result is more than I'd ever hoped to achieve so soon.
I wonder what I can now do, making a game with;

-An idea not devised almost overnight
-Actual resources and some considerable experience
-A little credibility in the industry
-Total control over the AudioVisual aspects of the game

It's exiting. Very, very exiting. I'm working on something new right now which I'm very engrossed in, can't wait to show you guys a glimpse of it.

Victor

 

[MRY]

Vic's video is awesome.

Also, regarding the RPG point, it looks like at least someone did something with it:

I currently run a D&D 3.5 campaign based on the Primordia setting, where the last surviving humans hide deep underground in bunkers & habitats, while apathetic machines rule the uninhabitable surface. With Magi-Tech as a base for the technology of the setting.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15676653

 

[MRY]

For those who are interested, Primordia is 66% off on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/227000

 

[Haba]

Oh damn, how did I miss this one!

Sir, you just made a sale.

 

[MRY]

Hooray!

 

[almondblight]

You guys need to be in a Humble Bundle if you haven't been already. I suppose we can e-mail them and request it; not sure how much good it'd do.

 

[MRY]

I know Wadjet Eye is working on that. I think the rule (or at least, expectation) is that the game must be playable in Linux and Mac OS, which WEG is also working on (I think). That said, I won't complain if someone emails the Humble Bundle folks.

 

[tuluse]

I know Wadjet Eye is working on that. I think the rule (or at least, expectation) is that the game must be playable in Linux and Mac OS, which WEG is also working on (I think). That said, I won't complain if someone emails the Humble Bundle folks.

What a load of crap by Humble Bundle then, as the THQ, Deep Silver, and EA bundles were Windows only (and DRM only).

 

[MRY]

They raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity with those bundles -- it's hard to get too upset at them over that. Primordia isn't the kind of marquee game that they seem to look for, so there would be no reason for them to bend rules at all. And those rules, as much as a PC chauvinist as I am, are clearly designed to encourage independent game development on platforms that don't get as many independent games. So I can't be too mad at that, either.

 

[almondblight]

The GoG versions of Primordia and other Wadjet Eye games seem to work perfectly well on the Mac. I know that those versions were ported by GoG though (not versions that Wadjet Eye sells), and Humble Bundle appears to be pretty Steam-centric (doesn't seem like they'll do GoG keys), but hopefully it's not that much of a hurdle.

 

[Tolknaz]

How on earth did this game manage to slip under my radar? I picked it up during the last Steam sale and now after playing through it, i almost feel guilty for getting it so cheap. It's easily one of the best adventure games of the last decade. Ah, well, i guess i can get a second copy on GOG to show my support.

 

[MRY]

@ Rohit: I think people have gotten it running in Linux using that method. To be honest, I lazily leave the distribution stuff to WEG. I probably should dig into it more.

@ Tolknaz: Thanks! But you don't need to buy a second game. There are lots of other great games out there, and plenty of projects that need funding on Kickstarter. I wouldn't object to your writing a review on GOG though. I think those matter quite a bit (perhaps I'm deluded), since it's the only place where a large number of user reviews of the game are aggregated.

 

[Aeschylus]

Adventure Game Studio has a working Linux build. Would it be possible to package that with the game data to make an Linux version of the game (assuming it is tested)?

Just based on how AGS has always worked (packaging the game engine in the binary file) it would probably be possible to make a working Linux build as long as there's no major differences in the engine. It would require the original game source, but I assume that's not a huge problem. You generally can't just swap game data files to a Linux machine due to how the engine is packaged.

 

[VioletShadow]

I just bought the game on steam...aaand there's achievements! Heh, off to play now, looks beautiful.