TIGSource Forums

Hey drunken adventurers!

We would love to hear some feedback on story and puzzles for our new adventure game Snakes of Avalon!

Was chosen as one of 6 best freewares of September by PC Gamer UK (http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/09/28/septembers-best-free-games/).

Was one of the IndieGames.com Freeware Game Picks (http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2010/09/freeware_game_pick_snakes_of_a.html) recently

And its currently one of the 3 featured games on GameJolt (http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/adventure/snakes-of-avalon/2691/)

(http://hardydev.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/snakes.menu_.png)

Created by Igor Hardy, Alex van der Wijst and Thomas Regin

Snakes of Avalon is a dark comedy point & click adventure game about alcoholic incapacitation and people obsessed with murdering their other half. It mixes the style and atmosphere of Hitchcock suspense films with a surreal game world inspired by the most cult trippy movies.

Jack, a hopeless drunk, becomes an accidental witness to a nefarious murder plot. So what can he do about it being who he is?

Features a great suspense+jazz soundtrack by the award winning composer for Blackwell Convergence and Emerald City Confidential!

Download (http://www.bigbluecup.com/games.php?action=download&game=1357&mirror=1) the full game here (http://www.bigbluecup.com/games.php?action=download&game=1357)

for more details visit: http://snakes.hardydev.com/

(http://hardydev.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/snakes.interior3.png)

A trippy teaser trailer from June:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MFvV6vdyQ8

 :gentleman:  Jolly good show.  We need more point and clicks around here.  Stay a while, will you?

Sure I'll stay. :) Especially if people will play my games.

Here's a vid from the beginning of Snakes as an additional encouragement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnFIJBBzB5E

My power supply died while I was playing snakes of avalon! That is how hard it rocked.

Thanks very much! If Snakes had a retail version we would put that quote on the box. ;D

I played this when it was posted on indiegamer blog ... it's quite good I think!  Afraid I don't have much in the way of feedback besides 'I liked it' -- the only thing coming to mind is I was a bit confused by the way it seemed to loop around from the end to the beginning again.

Hey Jimmy! Well, you know how the entire game is very much about confusion and loopiness...

Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed it and played through to the end. If you'll think of any more comments about how it played, don't hesitate to tell me everything.

In the meantime, here are example reviews the game got so far:

http://www.wingdamage.com/review-snakes-of-avalon/

http://www.slightly-deranged.com/?page_id=1389
(this one is for a shorter, early version of the game)

Snakes of Avalon has just been featured in the newest choice of freewares on Adventure Gamers (http://adventuregamers.com/article/id,1224).

Also, if anyone would like to read some more player comments before deciding about trying Snakes for himself, I suggest having a look at the game's thread (http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=40799.0) in the AGS forums.

There are many more great comments about the game scattered around, which I wish I could permanently stick to the game for everyone to see. For example, I really like this concise description of the game put on MetaFilter by someone with the nick jet_manifesto:

"In turns funny, sad, and bizzare" (http://www.metafilter.com/95848/Snakes-of-Avalon)

Hey just checking in here to say I played the game yesterday in some downtime between work.

I think I took me a little bit over an hour to complete, without looking up any hints. (Which makes me proud! :) ) I guess that means your puzzles were well structured & understandable. I think the limited, not in a bad way, scope also helped.


Overall I quite liked it, I think the storytelling is quite good - especially so that it actually goes beyond classics like Monkey island and others, this partly comes down to the more adult-themed storyline (without just cheaping out with sex or gore), and that certain feeling of dread/uncertainty wether you are doing the right thing. I especially loved the "good conscience" and the time travel parts.

The ending, I found, was a wee bit corny, but still well done.

Graphically I ended up being so/so about the style, sometimes I felt that the slightly crude-ish character animations got in the way of immersion. This changed in ACT III, where it really came to its own and carried the creepy vibe of the game well. Maybe experiment with other artistic styles in the future? Note: I'm not saying "pixel art" here....

Overall a very good effort that I can easily recommend to my friends!
Looking forward to more games from you....  :handthumbsupR:

As I've already told you dear Igor I really thought that Snakes of Avalon is both unique and excellent. After I finally publish my review on the thing, I'll get back to this very thread and try to be a bit more useful in my feed-back. Truth be said, just saying 'well done' isn't that constructive. Not that I have much more than that to add.

Anyway, welcome me to TIG Forums!

Big thanks for your feedback, VomitOnLino, end even bigger ones for recommending the game to your friends.

Good to hear what you liked, what you liked less, and that the puzzles worked out for you well.

As for graphics, the crude-ish style was both intentional and necessary - we didn't really have a lot of time to develop the game + I wanted the look to showcase the bar's ugliness and cheapness. Also, the graphic work was split between two people - I did the backgrounds (rather time-consuming without a tablet) and Alex did the animations.

In the end, I'd love the bar to be even more murky and discolored by filth, and the characters' faces even more twisted, but I'm very satisfied how it worked out given the time limitations we had.


Welcome to TIG Forums, Gnomey!

Having already posted my (glowing) review of Snakes of Avalon, now is the time to come up with a few suggestions/gripes.

Here goes:

1. You could have added a few more clickable objects, a few more descriptions and a couple more dialog options. After all the gaming world is quite restricted and this would have made it even livelier.

2. I do believe that little fish is overused as a puzzle solver.

3. Didn't care much for the coloured lamps puzzle. I just did it due to having played far too many adventures. Never quite understood why it worked.

4. I HATE COCKROACHES. No, really.

I don't entirely see why using a fish three times makes it qualify as overused, but maybe it is considering the relatively small size of the game.

I will admit it; the game confused me. I was hoping that the questions would be resolved by the end, but after playing, I still don't understand how I was able to talk to my father and apparently save his marriage when he died while I was a kid. Or was the marriage I saved my own? Does that mean I died long before the events of the game? Great snap, this is confusing.

Hey, great game ;D

Makes me want to go back and play the Chzo Mythos - there's something charming about adventure games. That is, once you've developed a tolerance for frustrating "clicking on everything with everything" situations. SOA avoids these for the most-part though, and the puzzles make sense in a "hallucinating alcoholic" sort of way. You really have to put yourself in Jack's shoes and think like a crazy person, which is a lot of fun and something that not many games do (apart from almost anything by Cactus).

I saw "Shutter Island" just a couple of days before playing this - it has a lot in common with the game. I like these kind of trippy... "stories" very much  :)

A few minor criticisms would be:
- it took me a while to figure out the the inventory is accessed by pointing the cursor at the bottom of the screen. Now that I think of it this is fairly standard adventure-game fair, but I'm not too familiar with them and it's not explained anywhere.
- it's hard to "point" at things precisely with the fish. There's nothing more annoying than  spending 10 minutes trying to use a fish on a handbag, concluding that it can't be done, trying every combination of item of everything, giving up, consulting a walk-through and finding out that you were supposed to do what you were already doing  ???
- most of the lines ware very characterful, but "I'm rubbing them together but they won't stick" is VERY generic. I get the feeling I've heard that in several other games too, and I don't even play many adventure games.
- the "I'm not leaving while I can afford to stay" makes sense the first time, but subsequently doesn't really work, because Jack can't actually afford to stay.
- at the end of the game the bodies seem to be lying in the air. Is this intentional or a glitch?

Anyway, expecting this to earn you riches and - lucky bastard (but you deserve it) ;)

PS - music and voice-work was great!

PPS - I felt very sad when the fish was eaten  :'(

Heh, I really like the teaser vid. Unfortunately haven't quite found the time yet to try this out but it looks ace... it'll be on my list :)

@Gnome

Ad.1 To be honest I wouldn't like any more hotspots in the game. Conversation choices - maybe. I kept those that I felt were meaningful.

Ad.2 The infinite variety of uses the fish had was meant as a "monkey-wrench" kind of joke and was also meant to make the player love his evil conscience even more. But I admit it somewhat spoils the serious puzzle-solving side of it :).

Ad.3 The lamp puzzle is mentioned by quite a few players as the only puzzle they had problems with. I still haven't fully figured out why it turned out so difficult for some.

@Sir Raptor

Nice to see you so confused by the story ;). I hope you don't want me to now spoil your experience by explaining it all?

@willbefast

Thanks very much for all the positive comments, as well as feedback and criticisms, but could you hide the puzzle and storyline spoilers in your post like Sir Raptor did? They might ruin the plot for new players.


I tried to make it as noticeable as possible - when Bob tells you to pay him at the very beginning of the game, the inventory at the bottom of the screen blinks at the player for a few seconds. Also the readme mentions how to access the inventory.


Yeah, sorry about that - the fish item has a rather irregular shape. But like all items it has this little pink pixel that shows you exactly which area on the screen are you pointing at. And the best indication if you're correctly pointing at a hotspot is the fact if its label showed up or not.


A total lack of generic responses is never my goal, or a feature that impresses me that much as a player. Secret of Monkey Island 2 is still one of my favorite adventure games ever.


Intentional.


Cheers! So far we've made the astonishing sum of 0,00$ in donations... ;) But I'll be fully content as long new players will keep coming to play the game, and old ones won't forget about it.

@jotapeh

Good to hear that trailer manages to win people over.

I "fixed" the post, perhaps fittingly. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me  :shrug2:

You've turned hiding spoilers into true art form. :beer:

To be honest, it wasn't that difficult to figure out (if you've played enough adventure games), but I still don't understand why it made sense. Felt a bit like a Myst puzzle to be honest. Still, what a lovely lovely game.

Actually the puzzle is more of a homage to Monkey Island map puzzles - especially popular in Tales of Monkey Island, but also to be found in all the others.

Hey, if anyone would consider voting for Snakes in this year's IndieDB's comp, we will be most grateful:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/snakes-of-avalon




Also, GameZebo seemed to really like the game (http://www.gamezebo.com/download-games/snakes-avalon/review) a short while ago. Have a read (http://www.gamezebo.com/download-games/snakes-avalon/review), if you're not yet convinced to try it.

Hell yeah :-)

Thanks for the vote. In the end Snakes didn't get into the Top 100, but I'd like to think at least it was close. :)

I think you deserved at least a top 100 - quite surprised actually  :(

Didn't get it either  :concerned: Course, my game isn't nearly as awesome as Snakes. Yet :P

Thanks. I thought we had a fairly good chance to get into the Top100, but I guess things like the fact I started an account on IndieDB only very recently and I'm not known for any other game (yet!) worked against it.

On the other hand Alex van der Wijst, who created Snakes with me, has made some great and highly regarded point & click adventure games in the past, like The Winter Rose, Charlie Foxtrot and The Galaxy of Tomorrow (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/05/11/charlie-foxtrot-the-galaxy-of-tomorrow/), or Besieged. But he doesn't invest time in publicity and spreading the games around the net, so I fear his work isn't that well remembered anymore.

That's the trouble isn't it? The internet is a big place, and if you're not at least a little bit of a -excuse the French- media whore, you'll slip through the cracks. Well, it seems that way sometimes. You look at Wolfire games: they may have some clever programmers and artists, but the reason they're so successful is that one of the team does PR full time and isn't afraid to make a fool of himself in front of the camera. No offence to John, quite the opposite in fact, but you see what I'm getting at.

It's difficult when you're working alone to find the time to sell yourself. You really need to at least be on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube (this big 3) and then you should participate in a few indie websites (tigsource, indieDB). And finally, you need to find time to spam online publications. There's a tipping point somewhere I'm sure, but when you're nobody it's a bit of an uphill battle.

Or perhaps it's better, to just make your games as good as you can and forget about publicity... but if that worked, would big companies be putting billions of dollars into marketing when they could be making better productions? The free market model assumes that the consumer has perfect knowledge, but nobody does.

Sorry about the rant :whome: I do think Snakes is worth a lot more interest than it's been getting though.

I think that's a good rant about indie game PR realities. Quality and originality doesn't necessarily make your game widely visible and desirable - it's not like the players are short on things to spend their free time on.

However, small-team independent development still seems like a totally fair deal to me. You retain full freedom and ownership, and don't need to view the games as "products" (if you don't want to). Sometimes a game can even catch on and spread naturally (largely due to a lucky designer/audience chemistry).

I guess there aren't that many people that are playing and discussing Snakes, but I'm still satisfied with its reception. It got a decent number of reviews - all very positive, including a 4-star one at Gamezebo. It also ended up on the newest PC Gamer covermount - surely a sign it's a well-liked game.

If it makes you feel any better, only one of my games has every been reviewed anywhere, and that was by a friend  :-\

Still, I haven't made anything on a par with snake. Yet  :eyebrows:

Happy holidays, everyone! Here's a little something we've created for people who want an additional memento to remind them of our game:

(http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/7296/soundtracksmall.png) (http://snakes.hardydev.com/?page_id=189)

Includes such contemporary hits as Blood Blood Blood, Evil Fishes, Life Flashes by Before The Alcoholics Eye and The Salty Aftertaste of Revenge. As well as the most controversial song of them all - Girls Are Bitches by Ashley Johnston

Most of the music was created by Thomas Regin (http://www.northbysound.com/about.htm) known for his soundtracks to Dave Gilbert's Blackwell games and Emerald City Confidential. Overall, almost 30 minutes of suspense, jazz and other kinds of horror.

Grab it (http://snakes.hardydev.com/?page_id=189) before the fish melts!

Here are 3 interviews we did about Snakes of Avalon. Each one is very different.

The interviews feature both of us - that is myself and Alex van der Wijst (The Winter Rose, Charlie Foxtrot and The Galaxy of Tomorrow). And Thomas Regin - the composer - shows up for a second too.

on Captain D's Blog (http://captaind-pc-gaming.blogspot.com/2010/09/captaind-interviews-esteemed-agsers.html)
on Cultural Zest
(http://www.culturalzest.com/2010/09/21/snakes-of-avalon-interview/)
and on The Adventure Game Studio Blog (http://ags-ssh.blogspot.com/2011/01/interview-part-13-snascovel-of-abaron.html)

That last one is the latest one (posted 2 days ago).

Actually, now that I think about it, I could really use an explanation of what happened.

Still, great game.

We intentionally left some of the events to interpretation. I think the most important stuff is told directly enough, but it's difficult to perfectly balance.

To give an example, I would enjoy a story like Neil Gaiman's Coraline even more if we were never entirely told what the world of the "other mother" is really made of, what hides beneath it, and what the "other mother's" motivation is. The solution of the mystery was far less gratifying than its introduction.

Looks like nice ^^ How do you do the cutscenes animations (manage in-game or made with an animator software) ?

All animations in the game (besides the background ones) were created in Flash and than imported into the game's engine (Adventure Game Studio). They are the work of Alex not me - I just messed around with his work from time to time - e.g. the strange visions in the intro.

main problem -> light puzzle ; why? -> "moose head = green"?? whaaa???

I'm not 100% sure what is your question, but if you mean the symbol on the map then I'll just say that locating the starting point of your route on the map is always crucial if you want to find 'The X' at the end of it.

Snakes got picked by IndieGames.com as one of:

- Top 10 Freeware Adventure Games of 2010 (http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2011/01/feature_top_freeware_adventure.html)

- 20 Free Indie Games You May Have Missed in 2010 (http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2010/12/20_free_indie_games_you_may_ha.html)

Anyone really missed Snakes? ;)

Hey,

Snakes appeared on TIGSource's main page (http://www.tigsource.com/2011/02/20/ags-awards-2010/)!!! And they're not alone...

I really recommend everyone to get cracking on those AGS Awards nominees. They're all very interesting and fun. And there is less than 2 weeks until March the 4th!

Snakes of Avalon sadly didn't win anything in the AGS Awards 2010 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s7B1a9BYDk) despite the 9 nominations it got, but we received a lovely surprise in winning in the Best MAGS game of 2010 vote 2 days ago!

For the uninitiated, MAGS (http://www.mags-competition.info/index.php?page=about) stands for the "Monthly AGS" competition that Snakes was originally made for. Our game competed against all the other MAGS titles from the past year competitions and beat down such popular titles as Eternally Us or HARD SPACE:

http://www.mags-competition.info/index.php?page=games&only=2010&pagetitle=Best+MAGS+Game+2010

In celebration of this great event, we're giving free drinks at the Avalon bar to every player that plays Snakes of Avalon. :beer: