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 Primordia - A Point and Click Adventure - Now Available

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
It is magical, incredible game. I wish we have more games from creator of Primordia.
As bertram_tung notes, Strangeland is very nearly done (minus VO). I don't really know how to appraise it. I think in various ways, it vastly exceeds Primordia -- much better art, much better coding (something that is easy to overlook in an adventure game, but there's so much that's awesome under the hood of SL), better quality control overall, more openness, possibly better puzzles (though I still think that the divisive "find Memorious in the kiosk" puzzle is the best I'll ever come up with). I think the writing is more sophisticated, though not sure it's better.

The problem is that Strangeland has a fundamentally different structure than Primordia. Primordia is an adventure story. It's a somewhat subversive adventure story, since it's a revenge plot in which the underlying character arc is that the protagonist is trying to go from being a destroyer to a creator (Gran Torino had a pretty strong influence), so you have a protagonist who is somewhat at odds with the player. But, basically, it's a pretty standard post-apocalyptic plot of surviving a harsh journey, defeating a warlord, recovering a McGuffin, and making a utopia. And it has the typical PA fun of uncovering the lost civilization, the "lol, the survivors don't even know what the old world was" dramatic irony, etc. I think we glossed all of that in a pretty sophisticated way for a video game, but ultimately it had an inherent structure that is likely to please.

Strangeland, by contrast, is an internal story, more like a dream than an adventure. You don't have a journey, you don't really have an antagonist. Because it's a dream (or a metaphor), the significance of your actions is diminished. Everyone has succeeded and failed in dreams; the thrill or despair lasts only a few minutes after waking up. There are mysteries to unravel, but those mysteries are largely a matter of dream interpretation, rather than a secret history. And the protagonist is even less satisfying than Horatio -- Horatio may have only wanted to stay home and turn the lights back on, but at least he had concrete feelings and goals. Strangeland's protagonist drifts along because, again, our dreams are typically not about us but about what is happening around or to us.

For a small competition game, this all would've been fine. I'm less sure for a full-length game. To me, the protagonist's arc is an interesting one, the mysteries are interesting. But that's because the game's central question is a personal one to me. Whether it will resonate with (or even make sense to) anyone other than me, I don't know. The testers seem to like it, but they're of course predisposed to being nice to me. But I don't think it's a sure thing that if you liked Primordia, you'll like Strangeland.
 

Verylittlefishes

Sacro Bosco
Patron
Joined
Sep 14, 2019
Messages
4,731
Location
Oneoropolis
It is magical, incredible game. I wish we have more games from creator of Primordia.
As bertram_tung notes, Strangeland is very nearly done (minus VO). I don't really know how to appraise it. I think in various ways, it vastly exceeds Primordia -- much better art, much better coding (something that is easy to overlook in an adventure game, but there's so much that's awesome under the hood of SL), better quality control overall, more openness, possibly better puzzles (though I still think that the divisive "find Memorious in the kiosk" puzzle is the best I'll ever come up with). I think the writing is more sophisticated, though not sure it's better.

The problem is that Strangeland has a fundamentally different structure than Primordia. Primordia is an adventure story. It's a somewhat subversive adventure story, since it's a revenge plot in which the underlying character arc is that the protagonist is trying to go from being a destroyer to a creator (Gran Torino had a pretty strong influence), so you have a protagonist who is somewhat at odds with the player. But, basically, it's a pretty standard post-apocalyptic plot of surviving a harsh journey, defeating a warlord, recovering a McGuffin, and making a utopia. And it has the typical PA fun of uncovering the lost civilization, the "lol, the survivors don't even know what the old world was" dramatic irony, etc. I think we glossed all of that in a pretty sophisticated way for a video game, but ultimately it had an inherent structure that is likely to please.

Strangeland, by contrast, is an internal story, more like a dream than an adventure. You don't have a journey, you don't really have an antagonist. Because it's a dream (or a metaphor), the significance of your actions is diminished. Everyone has succeeded and failed in dreams; the thrill or despair lasts only a few minutes after waking up. There are mysteries to unravel, but those mysteries are largely a matter of dream interpretation, rather than a secret history. And the protagonist is even less satisfying than Horatio -- Horatio may have only wanted to stay home and turn the lights back on, but at least he had concrete feelings and goals. Strangeland's protagonist drifts along because, again, our dreams are typically not about us but about what is happening around or to us.

For a small competition game, this all would've been fine. I'm less sure for a full-length game. To me, the protagonist's arc is an interesting one, the mysteries are interesting. But that's because the game's central question is a personal one to me. Whether it will resonate with (or even make sense to) anyone other than me, I don't know. The testers seem to like it, but they're of course predisposed to being nice to me. But I don't think it's a sure thing that if you liked Primordia, you'll like Strangeland.

MRY, sounds amazing. Btw do you like The Dream Machine?
 
Joined
Jan 9, 2011
Messages
2,727
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I've played most of The Dream Machine, think haven't finished the last episode. I liked the clay looks (more serious and grotesque Neverhood vibe, and I freaking loved Neverhood). The puzzles were ok, and the world quite interesting. Not in the same league as Primordia, but I remember enjoying it, and def want to go back and finish it.
 

StaticSpine

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 14, 2013
Messages
3,232
Location
Moscow
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
This week I have finished Primordia for the third time. And it's my first time completing an Adventure game without looking at the walkthrough (I barely remembered any of the puzzles because previously I played it 5 years ago). I must say Crispin's hints were always on point and the game still feels great.
 

ValeVelKal

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2011
Messages
1,604
Ah, I have just finished the Dream Machine and Episodes 1-4 are really on par with Primordia in terms of quality of both story & puzzles, so Episodes 5-6 are weaker (but by no means bad).
 

iqzulk

Augur
Joined
Apr 24, 2012
Messages
294
Both AGS-geared Beacon and Primordia convey this.
Smooth lines are drawn in a blatantly inadequate low-res so that it breaks smoothness of minute smoothly lined detailing in particular.
Smooth lines, to put it a better way, are drawn THROUGH blatantly crude pixelwork.
Pixelwork breaks the smoothness of what it arguably depicts, which is what is being depicted.
In other words, pixelwork meddles with representation of lines representing such meddling of pixelwork, is pixelwork adequate for representation of lines created for representing pixelwork's inadequacy?
Next, the picture devolves into the bunch of pixels, and whatever you imagine through said bunch of pixels devolves into bunch of pixels namely conceptualization of bunch of pixels.
In other words, bunch of pixels devolves into bunch of pixels, devolving taking place.
If you still happen to be entertained with someone trying to toy with your perceptional peculiarities.
This a technique, which can otherwise be formulated thus: Logical Level is a mixup of Logical Levels (denoting and connoting one having been written in one).
There are games which could be made to produce output on the same computer monitor, and beyond monitor, other objects one might interest oneself in.

P.S. This technique, either parroted (as in this case) or learned, is the underpinning of Contemporary-Art in its generality. Contemporary-Art is meant strictly descriptively.
 
Last edited:

Jermu

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Aug 13, 2017
Messages
1,354
Just finished this few hours ago great game. Really enjoyed the art style and voice acting was surprisingly good.

I'm such a casual that I had to use walkthrough twice
(first time with pixel hunting crystal in the ship and second time with the kiosk that 1 was brutal)

Strangeland is going to be :d1p:
 

OSK

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 24, 2007
Messages
8,003
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! 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
Native Linux and Mac builds for Primordia now on Steam and GOG.

What prompted the native Linux build? Your game worked perfectly (if I recall correctly) in Proton. Was it for the GOG dollars?

With Valve pushing developers towards Proton over native builds, we've been seeing native Linux builds being canceled in favor of Proton.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Nah, we'd wanted to release a native build forever, but we couldn't get WEG to upload it (basically). Strangeland was more finicky on emulators, so Dualnames did a Linux port of that, and after that figured he should also do one of Primordia.

Since the only *nix system I've ever used was when I would log in remotely to a Unix system for my very early internet provider, I have no idea what Proton is, or what the benefits of native vs. Proton systems would be.
 

OSK

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 24, 2007
Messages
8,003
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! 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
Nah, we'd wanted to release a native build forever, but we couldn't get WEG to upload it (basically). Strangeland was more finicky on emulators, so Dualnames did a Linux port of that, and after that figured he should also do one of Primordia.

Since the only *nix system I've ever used was when I would log in remotely to a Unix system for my very early internet provider, I have no idea what Proton is, or what the benefits of native vs. Proton systems would be.

Wine is open-source software used for running Windows applications on Linux. Proton is a Wine fork created by Valve that focuses on running Windows games on Linux. Neither Wine nor Proton are emulators since they aren't faking anything. They're compatibility layers that translate Windows system calls to Linux system calls.

As far as pros and cons, without getting philosophical or political, the biggest pro is you, as a developer, don't have to do anything. People have been playing your game on Linux through Proton for years. You make the game for Windows and Valve and the community does the work to make sure the game runs on Linux. The only real cons are that there can be a performance hit (especially if the game is using DirectX in which case there's another compatibility layer it needs to run through), and you don't have the same fine-grained control to make the game run the way you want to.

Unsurprisingly, developers have taken a liking to Proton. And with the announcement of the Steam Deck, Valve has actually been pushing developers towards relying on Proton and have promised 100% compatibility by the end of the year. As a result, native Linux releases are being canceled in favor of using Proton. That's why it's a bit surprising to see you release a native Linux build.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Interesting.

As with so much in life, I manage to come so late to the party that it's already wrapping up. :)
 

OSK

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 24, 2007
Messages
8,003
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! 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
Interesting.

As with so much in life, I manage to come so late to the party that it's already wrapping up. :)

I didn't get into any of the philosophy or politics. There's definitely Linux users that appreciate the native release.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
I mean, sort of. WEG is one person (Dave), and he has a lot of things on his plate. Porting a back catalogue game (even if it is the best-selling WEG title) to a small-market OS is not a high priority, particularly because the publishing arrangement for Primordia makes it not very lucrative for WEG no matter how well it sells. Dave's view is that every system port introduces the risk of product breakage and then people pissed at poor QC by WEG, so I get where he's coming from. Plenty of hassle and downside, not much upside. Anyway, glad it's finally ported.
 

Nifft Batuff

Prophet
Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Messages
3,169
An effective and general way to solve the portability issue is to open source the engine code.
 

Victor Pflug

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 17, 2009
Messages
261
Jesus christ...

I guess I started this thread in some long forgotten life. A lifetime ago. Another- AH STOP RUMINATING!

So. Here's the cover for an alternate, "unofficial" (but actually totally official) soundtrack I made for Primordia during production, way back in the day.

A created a few hundred tracks for Primordia back then, but I wasn't allowed to use them in game. Fast forward a million years - and now I've decided to release what I consider a genuine piece of Primordia... Lore(?).

This was the soundtrack that was *supposed* to go with the game - I love Nathan's music but it never completely felt to me like the Primordia I envisioned, not truly. Anyway - this'll be up on the Primordia Steam page for sale, for cheap, soon enough.
I'd prefer to give it away but - well - you're never gonna get the sequel unless I manage to pay rent.

Also - hey everyone! Sorry I haven't been around much*. I plan to change that.

Will have more Primordia related news soon.
Untitled-1.png


*got bored of hookers and blackjack so it's time to make some fuckin' games again I suppose
 

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