I have just released Goblin Quest, my latest text adventure game created using the Adventuron system. It’s the first game I’ve finished that wasn’t released as an entry for a game jam.
Goblin Quest was my first design for the most recent Adventuron game jam, which focused on treasure hunt style games with limited text. As such, it mostly follows the rules of that jam – other than the intro and endgame, the responses are limited to six words. However, there are some cutscenes with line after line of six-word responses, which probably stretch the rules a bit! It was for this reason that I decided halfway through the treasure hunt jam to go with a different game design, as I didn’t feel that these multi-line exposition sequences were really within the spirit of the jam rules.
I have also added graphics to this game – graphics weren’t allowed in the treasure hunt jam, although I did release an updated graphical version of my jam entry, Goblin Decathlon, after the fact. For Goblin Quest, I used a different style of graphics from my previous games – rather than creating basic pixel art from scratch, I went analogue and drew the graphics with paper and pencil before transferring them to the computer and editing from there. I’ve talked about my graphics creation process in a previous post; while I do find it a challenge due to not being very artistic, it’s become one of the most enjoyable parts of game design for me. I also find that graphics make navigating text adventures a lot easier – I’m prone to getting a bit lost when every room looks like a couple of lines of text.
I’ve been working on Goblin Quest on and off since I finished the graphical version of Goblin Decathlon, and am thrilled that I’ve managed to get it finished and released this weekend – just in time, as there’s a new Adventuron jam starting on Wednesday, and so I’m looking forward to getting my teeth into a brand new project!
