Odd
 

Dear all.

This may be shocking news for you, but the Earth and the universe that we know is actually nothing more than a mental ward. There is a real world out there, called Rus-Tog'Stol, with people who aren't mentally disabled, like we are here on Earth. They put us in this mental ward, because we're too selfish and aggresive to function properly in their society, where there is no police, no laws - not even money. Sane people do what they're supposed to do without these things.

How do we know this? Because we have a friend, he's Norwegian, and he has actually been out there. His name is Odd (Odd is actually a common first name in Norway). One day, when Odd was hiking in the beautiful fjord landscape of western Norway in search of interesting common rocks, he stumbled upon this curious outhouse, which turned out to be a portal to Rus-Tog'Stol. Odd was sucked down the hole, through a complex system of interdimensional tunnels, at a tremendous speed, until he finally ended up on the beach of the ancient town of Å'ke. Here, a psychiatric nurse explained to Odd why they had called for him: Some patients had managed to escape from the Earth, and since the patients' bizarre actions were completely illogical for sane people, they weren't able to catch the patients. So they called for Odd to help them. And here begun a fantastic journey.

When Odd came back, he told us his story, and we all agreed to tell this incredible story on to you in the media form that we love the most: as an adventure game. We're fortunate enough to have engaged the amazingly talented artist Ado Ceric, who's doing a fabulous job in realizing the fantastic scenery that Odd has described to us. We haven't come very far with the game - in fact, we're still in Norway (we all have other jobs to attend to). Nevertheless, we hereby invite you to have a peek at the work in progress:

http://www.lysator.liu.se/odd

To be able to continue the work with the game, we need help from another skilled animator. Please contact jerker.hammarberg[(at)]gmail.com if you would like to contribute. For feedback on the game, please reply to this thread.

Wow the art looks amazing! The GUI mechanics however were quite frustrating but otherwise I really look forward to this game!

Thanks for the feedback, Mapoco. In what way was the user interface frustrating? Do you have any ideas on how it could be improved? We really want the interface to be as smooth as possible for as many as possible.

Ha ha, that was great. I look forward to the full game. I played the Mac version, may I ask what engine you used to make the game, or did you guys do the whole thing from scratch?

I didn't have any problem with the interface, myself, but I can see how it could be frustrating at first. It's almost like the verb coin interfaces from games like Curse of Monkey Island, but with the addition of right clicking. I got the hang of it quickly enough, and I think all games require a bit of time for players to get used to the controls. I didn't find anything wrong with the actual mechanics of the interface.

Thanks! Yes, we made the whole thing in C++, except that we're using SDL, a cross-platform library for graphics, sound and input.

I think we'll make it an option whether to have the verb menu on the left or the right mouse button. Personally I like it on the right, because it's like opening a context menu in Windows, and it leaves the left button for walking.

(Just played your Nearly Departed demo too, that was pretty neat! I think you really got the puzzles right - that's where I think the weak spot in our game is.)

Thanks!