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[Alex Higgins]

WAKER

Waker is an adventure game with RPG elements about an office drone. Fed up with his condition, he lets himself drift into a dream world experiencing its death, beginning a journey that will determine the fate of wanderers and loners throughout the land.

It has Poggles and blue people in it. What's a Poggle? Play to find out.

It's a story driven game first and foremost. Player choices and discoveries affect not only the ending, but the behavior of other characters towards the protagonist. The hero may also be shot at, stalled, stalked, and blown up, causing him to wake from the dream world to the real world. Mundane office work sends him back to dreaming.

It's been in development since July 2012. It's going to be in development for a good while longer. It's going to be worth it.

Ashton Morris is working on sound and music for it, which is pretty sweet.





Demo:
Click here to download the demo. (October 2013)

For now, Windows OS and screen resolution exceeding 960x720 are required.
Esc quits. F5 and F6 save and load. All other controls are explained in-game.
NOTE: This is old. Wait for the new demo if you can There's no sound, and it's buggy, and the pacing is a little off, and the writing's been completely revised.

Screenshots:
(More screenshots can be found throughout the thread and on my blog)

PROGRESS (with bullshit percentages next to each item that mean nothing):
-Basic engine (100%)
-Tiles (97%)
-Game world (77%)
-Character art and animation (55%)
-Dialogue (51%)
-Story events (51%)
-Music (5%)
-Sound (3%)
-Menu interface/options/save system (12%)
OVERALL: 54.875%

More screenshots and info are available from my blog, here.
Follow me on Twitter @alchiggins


Thanks!

[Nathan Cash]

Looks great! The art looks a bit like Super Brothers Sword and Sorcery.

[Alex Higgins]

Thanks! Yeah, the character art was very inspired by S:S&S EP.

[Nathan Cash]

Ill be really happy when this gets finished. Good luck!

[jO]

Really love the art style and basic concept of this game - keep it up!

[toipot]

Premise sounds cool, and I like the character art.

The perspective makes it a bit hard for me to judge verticality at a glance though, and the tiles don't help. The shadows seem like the only way I can quickly assess which "layer" a tile is on.

[Alex Higgins]

Premise sounds cool, and I like the character art.

The perspective makes it a bit hard for me to judge verticality at a glance though, and the tiles don't help. The shadows seem like the
only way I can quickly assess which "layer" a tile is on.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Obviously it's a bit late to change the entire game's perspective, but I'll take a look at some other tile sets and see if I can do anything else to make it a bit clearer.

Thanks for the encouragement, everyone!

[circuiton]

Looks pretty good so far, and I like the premise. Stuff that messes with the consciousness of the player is always a win.

[Alex Higgins]

Thanks!
Took this screenshot as I was editing one of the rooms - super happy with how it's turning out so far:

[DustyDrake]

That's... a lot of flowers.
I hope those are flowers.

[rickardwestman]

Last screen looks very nice! Good job!
Though, one thing that always bother me a bit is when rectangular squares are used for floors. I always get a feeling of looking into a brick wall instead of onto a floor.
Have you tride making floortiles that are more quadratic in shape? I would prefer something like that. Of course it is a matter of taste
Keep up the good work!

[Alex Higgins]

That's... a lot of flowers.
I hope those are flowers.

Yep, those are flowers. Should I draw them a little larger so that it's more obvious?

Have you tride making floortiles that are more quadratic in shape? I would prefer something like that. Of course it is a matter of taste
Keep up the good work!

Hm... I was going to avoid that because I thought it might skew the perspective, but upon second though I guess it wouldn't. I might give it a shot and see if it looks better.

[rickardwestman]

Have you tride making floortiles that are more quadratic in shape? I would prefer something like that. Of course it is a matter of taste
Keep up the good work!

Hm... I was going to avoid that because I thought it might skew the perspective, but upon second though I guess it wouldn't. I might give it a shot and see if it looks better.


[/quote]

Sure give it a shot if you like, otherwise it still looks really nice overall. Might be just me.
I really enjoy the flat emptiness of your environments, atmospheric!

[sublinimal]

Flipping between two worlds sounds like it could be an interesting take on interactive storytelling.

[Alex Higgins]

Update!

I've been talking to Tigsource's own KomradeJack, and as of now it looks like he'll be producing audio for the game! I'm very excited about the collaboration; the game will sound good if nothing else.

Also, here's some new screenshots:

[Arnaud DE BOCK]

Can't wait to try it!
Really love the graphic style!

[horsman]

This game looks super rad.

[Alex Higgins]

Again, thank you all for the praise.

Here's a bunch of new screens, finally including some from the game's "real" world.

I've been experimenting with framing the character off-center in each screen, instead of putting him straight in the middle. Any thoughts?

Dream world, giant:


Dream world, re-did much of the graphics for the ruined village:
(I know, the shadow looks weird in that one spot, I already fixed it.)


Real world, office building:


Real world, metro:


Real world, at the desk:

[Alex Higgins]

Alright, so I'm playing around with the idea of making the game a bit "gamier." As it currently stands, the game consists entirely of exploration and dialogue trees - there isn't much interactivity besides that. Now I'm considering throwing a handful of dungeons in there to spice things up.

Part of the reasons that I originally wanted to make the game (mostly) dungeon-and-combat free was because I wanted to make an interactive story that could be enjoyable without traditional gameplay just because it hasn't been done enough, but I also wanted to make the game more accessible to non-gamers. I thought that, by removing a lot of the challenge but keeping a lot of the decision-making, that non-gamers wouldn't be intimidated by the game. Boy, was I wrong.

I had my non-gamer dad try out the game, and he struggled just to navigate the game world. He kept running into walls and the edges of cliffs expecting to move through them somehow. He also failed to distinguish identify what parts of the game world were important to interact with, and which were not. Nobody else who's played the game so far have had these troubles.

I never realized how many conventions in games there are that we take for granted - stuff like not being able to move in cutscenes, etc. As much as I tried for it not to be, Waker is a game designed for someone with a gamer's intuition. As a gamer myself (obviously), there's no getting around that.

So, yeah, I've come to realize that non-gamers are going to struggle with it, whether it's challenging or not, and after playing Anodyne and re-playing Cave Story, I've been craving to attempt to design some clever dungeons. Still, part of me wants to make something fun without resorting to traditional gameplay just because people don't do it enough.

Not sure what to do - thoughts?

[rundown]

I wouldn't place the character in the middle of the screen either, you could really capture some feelings with that. Like when the person would stand near something dangerous, or he saw something from a distance.

And for the "gamier" part. I suggest to highlight your objects. Not that mutch. Even a certain collor would do. Just look at different games. Like mirrors edge for example. Everything you want to interact with is red for instance. In other games the interactive things are less ambiant collored.

Anyway, you seem to have a nice build here at hand. Good luck!