Adventure Gamers - Forums

is proud to share the launch of Forge: Chapter One, the new demo for the Loom Sequel.

If you’re eager to give it a try and don’t care for the blabbering, just CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD IT.

For those who aren’t familiar with the project, please visit the Story section of our website http://www.forgegame.com. There you will find a synopsis of Forge’s mother-game, Loom, along with a brief explanation of what our fan-made sequel seeks to accomplish.

Our project had his own thread on the old boards, but since I’ve posted here, the least I can do is giving a brief explanation:

Forge is an adventure game in the style of early nineties LucasArts’ games. It’s a full-length game, which will require some hours to be completed. Following the steps of his predecessor, Forge will be less interactive than most of the adventure of those days, because there will be neither a text-parser nor a verb GUI as the main interface. All basic interactions will be done with a single-click, but a special GUI will be used to “draw schematics”. Schematics are some sort of spells that can be cast by the main character thanks to his special gauntlets, allowing him to control reality and achieve wondrous effects.

But I think it’s time to give you something to “nibble”. Let’s start with a couple of backgrounds:

Here you can see GUI and the home of Prof.Penumbra, that will help Rusty in his quest.

This is the Guild of Miners, in all its splendour.

And this one’s a charming view of one of the caves.

You can find some more in the Gallery section of our website of course.

Some tech info:

Resolution: 320x200
Colour depth: 16 bit (there are rarely more than 256 colours on screen at the same time, though)
Music&SFX;: ogg, 128kbps
Dubbed: complete, only English
Translations: multi-language
Engine: Adventure Game Studio

Current team members:

Abisso: game designer/coder/touch-ups
Selmiak: webmaster

A lot of other people have been outsourced in these years: graphic artists, animators, musicians.

We’re in desperate need of:

-Spriters (pixel-art)
-Background artists (pixel-art)
-SFX technicians
-Public relations publicists / journalists

I strongly encourage you to check our Demo and visit our Forum to drop a message in the Project Assistance Sub-Board. Or just send me a PM or an email if you don’t intend to sign in.

This demo is the last before the full-game release and it looks exactly like the 1st chapter will in the complete game.

I hope it will trigger a cycle of enthusiasm and help us fill the missing positions in our team. Even now any contribution is more than welcome, be that a donation (check the Donation Section of http://www.forgegame.com) or an offer to volunteer your skills.

Donors will receive:

-CREDIT! It goes without saying that you’ll receive credit for your generosity on our website / forum / completed game.

-CUSTOM REQUEST! Want to see something personal in Forge? You’ll have the chance to ask our team to include something meaningful to you, be it a bit of dialogue, an item, a special animation, etc. We do have to keep this within reason ( e.g., no chickens with pumpkin heads ;p ), so conditions do apply; but we’ll work with you to make it special.

-BRAG! You have the right to tell people: «Hey, I worked on that game!» wink.

-PERSONALIZED THANKS! I’m in no way a fan of standardized “thank you” messages written by bots, so you’ll receive a heartfelt and personalized one. The answer will be sent to the email address linked to your paypal account. In case you didn’t receive any reply, the email probably got lost in the web jungle, so feel free to contact us and claim it!

-PRIDE! Even without the perks above, you’ll know you contributed to a project that means a lot to a group of Loom fanatics out there; and supporting art and creativity is something anyone can feel good about.

And now that you’ve received all the necessary info, why don’t you give the demo a try?
If you’re eager to give it a try and don’t care for the blabbering, just CLICK HERE TO DO SO.

Stay tuned for more information, and of course, I’d love to hear your opinions about the game.

Thanks for reading.
-Gabriele “Abisso” Nannetti

I loved Loom, and this looks pretty faithful to the style of that game, judging by the screenshots… I’ve downloaded the first chapter and look forward to trying it.

I’m surprised no one else has commented on this!

This game looks really cool!  I hope it comes to fruition one day—seems like it’s been around forever.  I’ll definitely give this demo a run though.

Can’t tell you how much I love these graphics.

Hey guys!

For as much as Loom has been popular, it’s still somewhat of a niche game, so I’m not that surprised that my topic passed unnoticed till now.
Please help me spread the word about it! The more people know about the game, the more likely is someone of them is interested in joining the team.

Also, I know that development has been slow, but what’s more important is that it has been constant, isn’t it? This baby turtle will reach the sea, someday.
It’s hard to create something on (almost) zero budget in this kind of society. I wish all people working on Forge (including me) had a basic income guarantee in their respective countries, but as we don’t, we can only dedicate our spare time on its development.

Thanks to all of you for your interest and feedback. The game has been made for you, so if you’re satisfied, I am as well.

Ab1sso - 14 January 2014 08:16 AM

Hey guys!

For as much as Loom has been popular, it’s still somewhat of a niche game, so I’m not that surprised that my topic passed unnoticed till now.
Please help me spread the word about it! The more people know about the game, the more likely is someone of them is interested in joining the team.

Also, I know that development has been slow, but what’s more important is that it has been constant, isn’t it? This baby turtle will reach the sea, someday.
It’s hard to create something on (almost) zero budget in this kind of society. I wish all people working on Forge (including me) had a basic income guarantee in their respective countries, but as we don’t, we can only dedicate our spare time on its development.

Thanks to all of you for your interest and feedback. The game has been made for you, so if you’re satisfied, I am as well.

I know exactly where you’re coming from, having worked on several of the Sierra remakes myself.  Good luck!

This looks amazing! I don’t really like playing demos, so I will wait for the full thing. But the screenshots look perfect. I’m a huge nostalgic Loom fan, so I can’t wait for this.

RockNFknRoll - 14 January 2014 08:11 PM

This looks amazing! I don’t really like playing demos, so I will wait for the full thing. But the screenshots look perfect. I’m a huge nostalgic Loom fan, so I can’t wait for this.

If you “can’t” then don’t! 

After all, this is not exactly a demo. It’s the complete Chapter One, exactly as it will be in the full game (and except for minor eventual changes).
But of course, if you don’t like to “dissect” your gaming experience, this is perfectly reasonable.

@Lambonius: may I know which remakes you worked on? I’m a Sierra fan as well.

Thanks for the feedback!

Ab1sso - 15 January 2014 09:51 AM

@Lambonius: may I know which remakes you worked on? I’m a Sierra fan as well.

The one I worked on the most was the Space Quest 2 VGA remake from Infamous Adventures.  I also did a ton of work on the (unfortunately now-shelved) King’s Quest: Kingdom of Sorrow project.  Quest For Infamy is the game that I’ve had the MOST direct input into making; I’ve probably done in the neighborhood of 60 backgrounds for it and countless animations, as well as designed a few of the puzzle mechanics, written some interactions, conceptualize and developed some of the characters, etc.  People who liked the way we captured the humor of SQ2 in the new material in our remake will definitely be in for a treat with QFI.  There is definitely a similar tone of irreverence to the world and its fantasy-ish tropes.

So, I’ve played with the demo a bit, and I must say I’m not crazy about it.
The greatest issue for me is the control scheme. For point and click stuff it suffers from all the shortcomings of a smart cursor, and everything takes too many clicks - at least two per hotspot.
Beyond that, the magic system just seems needlessly inconvenient. I get that you’re trying to do a Loom sequel but the mechanic is basically like playing “Surgery” with your mouse. I don’t understand why I’ll want to be challenged that way, what you did is like taking Loom and making the player whistle the notes instead of inputting them conveniently.

Like several indie titles, the game is way too wordy - this is especially strange since Loom isn’t exactly known for the huge amounts of dialogue it contained.

I don’t want to put you down, the game looks and sounds great (except for some reason the volume is really low on my computer even with everything at max), but I guess I just don’t relate to the core mechanic you picked. It might be too late to make changes, but if not, you may want to consider changing it so a single click acts as though the object is already in the “selected” state, so hovering the mouse will show names of hotspots without having to click in a neutral region first. To select objects in order to do the gloves thing on them, have a long click bring up the object portrait, like a single click does today.

Good luck.

Good work! I played the demo and it looks very nice, much in the spirit of the original.

Perhaps, as somebody remarked, parts of the interface are a bit awkward.

What I personally missed was the sense of doom that hung above the whole world of Loom; and which is not really felt here. Loom was a very gloomy game; but maybe you were not aiming for this.

But probably the most problematic thing is zero publicity; I found out about the game by accident when I was bored and browsed through old topics on this forum…

@Lambonius: Oh, I’m aware of those projects, and I’ve been in contact with Steven Alexander for a little bit. Quest for Infamy is very promising: I completed the demo a while ago and found it both entertaining and coherent with Sierra’s style (with a twist).

@Antrax: first of all, let me thank you for the criticism. I appreciate the honesty behind it.
That said, please take into account that we released a Tech Demo 3 years ago exactly to check people’s feedback about the interface. We analysed the suggestions received, and applied the changes, making it more responsive and generally more forgiving. There’s not much more space for changes now, but remember that there are Modes to choose from. Practice makes drawing really easy, even with a bad pointing device; Keyboard makes it even easier (it’s virtually impossible to make a mistake and it takes just 2-3 seconds for each Schematic).
I’d appreciate it a lot if you could answer some questions for me. As I always say, if even a single fan is disappointed, I have to make all that’s in my power to change that. And in order to do so, I need to gather detailed info.
Which Mode have you tried?
Did you check the other ones as well?
What kind of pointing device did you use? Is it precise and in good condition?
Did you play in a window or in full screen? What resolution and filters did you apply?

As per the wordiness, it’s true that the game’s first part has a little imbalance when it comes to cutscenes vs. interactivity. This has been noted before, and it will be slightly adjusted in the next release; but most importantly, the game gets more and more interactive already in Ch.1 and stays like that through the following Chapters. The need to explain things after 24 years from Loom was strong, and we didn’t want people to be forced to play Loom again in order to recall the flow of events.
But as I already stated, what you complained about can be fixed, and I will do so.

Speaking of the rest of the interface, I have good news for you! During the last beta-testing, I had the idea to have the right click do “something”. The alternatives were:
1. Clearing the currently selected “thing”.
2. Acting as 2 clicks on the hovered “thing” (what you’re suggesting, basically).

I think in the end I’ll have the right click act as in option n.2, and the middle button (which not all mice and no touchpads have) act as in option n.1, which is less important.

@Dr.Bombay: please consider that this is just about 1/3 of the complete game. D(L)oom will become more evident, rest assured! The portion in the Outside already gives a taste of it, I believe, but Chapter Three is going to be particularly… “heavy” on the subject.

Publicity is a big problem, I agree. I’m alone in this matter: I’ve been searching for a PR for long, but with no success. Since I’m more “necessary” in the development of the game, I can’t dedicate much time to promote it as I need to work on the plot, the puzzles, the code, the sfx, and manage the rest of the team.

If any of you is interested in doing some PR job for us, please visit our boards at:
http://forgegame.com/forum

and offer your help. And suggestions about portals, platforms, forums, blogs, and any other place where we can spread the word about it are welcome as well. Truth be told, we kept a low profile on purpose for all this time (to avoid issues with the copyright holders): but this made it more difficult to find people to work on the game. And although I have a slightly bigger and stabler team now, I’d still like more mates to jump on board and help us speeding up the process. This requires spreading the word, of course.

So, at the very least, spread the word about the game through your contacts!

Thanks to all of you for the feedback.

Ab1sso - 31 January 2014 07:59 AM

Which Mode have you tried?
Did you check the other ones as well?
What kind of pointing device did you use? Is it precise and in good condition?
Did you play in a window or in full screen? What resolution and filters did you apply?

Normal, haven’t tried others. I use a touchpad that’s okay but is still a touchpad.
Played full screen, with the default filters because it looked good enough to me, which means 3x nearest neighbor filtering, 960x600 resolution.
I get the feeling I didn’t explain very well my issue with the interface. I managed to draw patterns just fine. It’s just that occasionally, my mouse would slip a bit, and then Rusty would remind me that I can’t go back yadda yadda, and then my reaction was “ugh, why are you being difficult, I know what I’m trying to do, get out of my way, game”. That’s what I meant by the wrong kind of challenge. Choosing the right pattern is the good kind of challenge. Accurately drawing it isn’t, IMO.

Another point of feedback is the tombstone puzzle. I think it’s a good puzzle, but it might be too hard for today’s average gamer, and right now it’s in a chokepoint and relatively early on, so people might get frustrated and ditch the game altogether.

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond to my feedback, and I wish you guys all the best.

Antrax - 31 January 2014 01:36 PM

Normal, haven’t tried others. I use a touchpad that’s okay but is still a touchpad.
Played full screen, with the default filters because it looked good enough to me, which means 3x nearest neighbor filtering, 960x600 resolution.

Ok, you definitely played in good overall conditions. Fullscreen helps the drawing process, and touchpads are usually even better than mice when it comes to Forge. Practice Mode might have been fitter for your gaming style though: you can wander around a lot and still get the drawing correctly with that one. The only drawback is easier puzzles (not all of them, but the Tombstone one is easier, for example).

But now I understand what you mean better. You question the necessity of such a system more than its actual functioning. I can’t say it doesn’t make me think: Loom itself could have been thought with a list of Drafts to choose from instead of the Distaff, but it was definitely easier than Forge’s drawing system. In the end, I might decide to make Practice Mode even more straightforward, but since some players like the challenge of drawing Schematics, I doubt that I’ll lower the difficulty for Standard and Expert Mode as well.

As per the Tombstone puzzle, that one is DEFINITELY bugged by too many red herrings. Did you manage to solve it by yourself? If you did, you should be proud of yourself, as many players resorted to a walkthrough. Expert and Standard Modes are almost identical in difficulty when it comes to that riddle, while Practice (and Keyboard) Mode makes it really easy.

Last but not least, there’s no need to thank me, really. I’m grateful for your feedback, instead. Not all the players take the time to share their thoughts about the game, so I really appreciate when someone does in such a constructive way.
Hope you’ll enjoy the complete game more than Ch.1.