Dreams get shattered (sometimes)

It's always nice to have a dream to the impossible. To protect it without telling everyone, to approach it with all your means and the power of your heart. To keep it as it was, non-realistic. To occasionally watch it draw itself away from you, slowly and abruptly getting shattered in front of you, unable to react. And then, you are at a crossroad. You either go against even worse odds than before, or you slowly - gradually realize the aching truth. Perhaps, you wonder, it wasn't meant to be. Perhaps you were wrong about it from the beginning, but you somehow let the excitement get the best of you.

Perhaps perhaps perhaps.

Where were you when we were getting high?

But what if you're wrong. What if this is hardenship you're forced to overcome, and you're only being disheartened by a simple obstacle? Don't we all sometimes focus on the problem itself and not on its solution? Isn't the possibility that this could be the last obstacle to ever come between your goal, alluring to say the least? Thrilling? Doesn't it make you wonder how many times you've given up right at the end, never knowing how close you actually were? Why let your dreams be fictions of your imagination when you can give them physical presence and existence?

It's always a hard place to be, right in the middle. Especially when hope is gone.

While my Guitar Gently Bleeps!

Abstauber, a really cool funny and really nice pixel-artist, after teaming up for his game with Ben304 and all these cool guys, he now brings us the 'considered' impossible thing to be done with the AGS engine.

Click on the image to be amazed..

Smells like Guitar Hero?

Dave stands in the Corner

Mr Gilbert's words once again grace an interview page, this time in German site Adventure Corner, but the interview is in English!

Изумрудный город Vertrauliche

Well, Emerald City Confidential is so good, its got reviewed in both Russian and German. The auto-translations of these reviews can be quite funny and there's a great quote in the Russian one: "bored housewives will certainly come into raptures"...!

Meanwhile, you can check out ECC's Mobygames , Gamestats and Metacritic pages

Sagen Sie mir, was ist das Problem!

A german-IPed reader of this blog keeps giving articles low star-ratings. Fair enough, you're entitled to your opinion, but I'd love to see a comment (and you can do those anonymously) as to what the problem is occasionally... then I can fix it, perhaps! Or PM me on the AGS forums if you prefer!

Your dream becomes.... an adventure game

Title: Feuersturm 2: Der Unheimliche Zug
Author: FireOrange (Tobias Schmitt)
Release date: 13 may 2008
Playtime: 30 minutes
Size: 7Mb

The fourth game that was released within a week is one in German. Also the sequel to a series of many and, Andrew already predicted that, I missed the first, so, as also recommended by the author, I played that one first.

It's the same author as from the Second Moon series (published under the name das Tobi-AS) and having played these, I was pleasantly surprised.

Feuersturm is completely in the Lucas Art style, unlike Second Moon which is mostly photo manipulation, with the well known interface. With help from Loma, Raymann and BlueGryphon, the game has decent made graphics and very good sound quality of the opening dialog. The game is completely in first person view and the navigational arrows in the screens remained, but less obvious. Improvements on all points here.

The story is based upon a dream (or maybe a nightmare) and all plays around the time of a firestorm, destroying and changing the world as we know it. You have been sleeping for 60 years and you're now looking for your brother (still). The story itself is fairly easy to understand but the fact that it's a non-native language for probably most of us makes it a bit harder. Add the fact that this is part 2 (without part 1 you wouldn't even know what was going on) and the technique of flashbacks and you're lost. At one point I didn't know who I was or where I was in the game. Furthermore is one of the first puzzles in the game a password puzzle. You need some knowledge of the language there. My tip: try this site (also without adventure games good fun) and you'll be closer to the solution.

An English translation (if there will be any) will make it easier. It doesn't take the joy away from the playing because there are a few pretty good puzzles in the game that don't need any translation. What struck me most was the fact that every action has it's unique response. Not the standard: "not now" or "you can't do that here" but good responses to your action that made the puzzles even more enjoyable and playable. The scenes aren't overcrowded with items, but also not empty to make it look like a rush-job (which this game clearly isn't).

My conclusion: if you have a reasonable German vocabulary and you like a few good puzzles to solve with good graphics and sounds, this is a game to play. And if you're stuck at some point because you don't know the meaning you can always try interglot to find out. If that doesn't help, the game might turn into a nightmare for you.