By The TAG Team
A wise man once said, "Magic is the essence and soul of life, and the Wizard is her poet." Truer words have not been spoken, but in our world "magic" comes through the design of fantastic games, and those designers are the poets. Ever since Trickster played Hero’s Quest, The Adventure Gamer has had the pleasure of cooperating with the Coles, the legendary designer couple behind, among other things, the beloved Quest for Glory -series. The blog has especially benefited from the comments of Corey Cole, who has always had time to reveal insights about their adventure games and to recount experiences about working at Sierra.
With the happy coincidence of the combined playthrough of Quest for Glory III with CRPG Addict and the soon upcoming release of Hero-U, the long awaited new game from the Coles, the administrators of The Adventure Gamer have decided to dedicate the month to the past and future games of the Coles.
For the duration of our Hero-U Month, we’ve changed our banner into a beautiful design, specifically made for the Adventure Gamer by Lori Cole. In addition, the Coles have shared with us access to the latest version of Hero-U and we have a secret reviewer already playing it. In a few weeks, shortly before the planned release date of Hero-U, our secret reviewer will give us a small (and major spoiler-free) glimpse on what to expect from the Coles’ new work of art. I have it on good authority that there will be meeps.
Our interview with Corey Cole, arranged by Trickster back in the earliest days of the blog, was fantastic but Mr. Cole has been kind enough to agree to sit down with us for a community interview. Send us your questions for the Coles, either by commenting here or sending to to our e-mail (adventuregamer@googlegroups.com). We will be hand-delivering the interview questions on the back of a saurus. Get in your questions soon! We expect the interview will be published around the same time as our Hero-U glimpse.
We also plan to do a Quest for Glory retrospective, based on the memories gamers have of that legendary series. We would thus kindly ask all our readers to share with us memorable moments from the time you spent playing Quest for Glories and to recount the things in these games that have left an impression. We kindly ask you to send these memories to our e-mail (adventuregamer@googlegroups.com), so that the comments of this post wouldn’t contain any spoilers for the retrospective. The most interesting memories will be rewarded with CAPs and small prizes.
Of course, Hero-U is a game in development and sometimes games in developments slip. We'll be watching the release dates with glad anticipation and make adjustments in our coverage as necessary. Or, in the words of another great man... er... rodent, "Cheese, please!"
A wise man once said, "Magic is the essence and soul of life, and the Wizard is her poet." Truer words have not been spoken, but in our world "magic" comes through the design of fantastic games, and those designers are the poets. Ever since Trickster played Hero’s Quest, The Adventure Gamer has had the pleasure of cooperating with the Coles, the legendary designer couple behind, among other things, the beloved Quest for Glory -series. The blog has especially benefited from the comments of Corey Cole, who has always had time to reveal insights about their adventure games and to recount experiences about working at Sierra.
With the happy coincidence of the combined playthrough of Quest for Glory III with CRPG Addict and the soon upcoming release of Hero-U, the long awaited new game from the Coles, the administrators of The Adventure Gamer have decided to dedicate the month to the past and future games of the Coles.
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| It's almost finished! |
For the duration of our Hero-U Month, we’ve changed our banner into a beautiful design, specifically made for the Adventure Gamer by Lori Cole. In addition, the Coles have shared with us access to the latest version of Hero-U and we have a secret reviewer already playing it. In a few weeks, shortly before the planned release date of Hero-U, our secret reviewer will give us a small (and major spoiler-free) glimpse on what to expect from the Coles’ new work of art. I have it on good authority that there will be meeps.
Our interview with Corey Cole, arranged by Trickster back in the earliest days of the blog, was fantastic but Mr. Cole has been kind enough to agree to sit down with us for a community interview. Send us your questions for the Coles, either by commenting here or sending to to our e-mail (adventuregamer@googlegroups.com). We will be hand-delivering the interview questions on the back of a saurus. Get in your questions soon! We expect the interview will be published around the same time as our Hero-U glimpse.
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| A series most of us loved |
We also plan to do a Quest for Glory retrospective, based on the memories gamers have of that legendary series. We would thus kindly ask all our readers to share with us memorable moments from the time you spent playing Quest for Glories and to recount the things in these games that have left an impression. We kindly ask you to send these memories to our e-mail (adventuregamer@googlegroups.com), so that the comments of this post wouldn’t contain any spoilers for the retrospective. The most interesting memories will be rewarded with CAPs and small prizes.
Of course, Hero-U is a game in development and sometimes games in developments slip. We'll be watching the release dates with glad anticipation and make adjustments in our coverage as necessary. Or, in the words of another great man... er... rodent, "Cheese, please!"
New banner, yay! I love it, it's so suitably "adventurous"!
ReplyDeleteActually, wouldn't it be neat if the banner changed more or less regularly - to represent the latest game of the year, for example? That Monkey Island one was incredibly low quality anyway.
This is something we have tossed around a bit. "Monkey Island" is perhaps the most important series of games for understanding the perspective of the reviewers, but changing things up isn't a bad idea at all. I expect the biggest problem is that none of us are designers.
DeleteI agree, changing up the banner would be cool. I'm not a designer, but given enough screenshots of the relevant game(s), I could put together a panel-style banner (kind of like CRPG Addict's, actually).
DeleteI have a lot of screenshots, and a small amount of artistic talent, so I could always assist if you need.
DeleteI think we'd be open to exploring. For my part, I was considering something along the lines of "Mark Watches" where we'd update the banner to match the mainline games we were playing... but that may be too much work. So, for example, the current banner would include scenes from Inspector Gadget and Quest for Glory III.
DeleteI am also into changing the banner once in a while. Making the banner reflect the games being played might be too much (and we might not get decent screenshots before having played the game). Some simple possibilities might be a) notable adventure games we've covered thus far and b) highlights of the current and the previous gaming year.
DeleteI love this banner so much.
DeleteWhen I saw the banner at the top of the page last night (much more impactful then when I saw the banner art by itself a few weeks ago) I was very pleased. It's great, and perfect for the site even beyond Hero-U month.
As for going forward, if someone with some talent is willing to put the effort in to make a new banner occasionally that would be magical.
Rather than changing it constantly, maybe a compilation of shots from the best games from the previous game year would be doable.
A hearty Happy Hero-U Month to all!!!
That banner is great! I'm very much looking forward to Hero-U. I backed the kickstarter, but I didn't get a beta tier, so I'm a little jealous that someone else here gets to play it sooner! I'm not up to play any more of the main blog games for a while yet.
ReplyDeleteQuestion:
ReplyDeleteOriginally Hero-U was to use a fairly simple RPG engine, to save on development time. You ended up moving to a much more complex engine eventually, which in part is responsible for the lengthened development time.
In hindsight, how does this compare with the other big option you decided against - doing the game from the start as a Sierra-like 2D graphical adventure RPG? Would a 2D adventure engine like this proven ultimately cheaper and faster to work with? Fans would've loved it either way, although new players might have been put off by a lack of 3D...
How would Hero-U be different, had you gone with a 2D Sierra-like engine? What more would it have allowed? Conversely, what does your final engine allow that you couldn't have reasonably accomplished with a Sierra-like engine?
I assume the "community interview" will be a single post, so I'll answer this more fully when we do that. But here's a preview:
Delete1. Actually we're using the same game engine we started with - Unity 3D. We never planned to use a different engine, although I looked at several. But what we're doing with it "under the sheets" is very different from where we started.
2. The team determines the technology. We couldn't find the 2D animators to do a Sierra-style 2D game, which is the main reason we changed. Also we are using Unity because our original developer had a base for the game under Unity. When he dropped out of the project, our new developers preferred to go in a different direction that ended up morphing into a full 3D world.
3. As a 2D game in that style (e.g. using Adventure Game Studio), Hero-U would have been much smaller, and we would have had trouble making combat be an important part of the game. Each scene would be one screen, whereas each can be the equivalent of multiple screens in Unity.
We are collecting interview questions, but feel free to answer any you like here. This party is for you!
DeleteThank you, I see where you're coming from. I look forward to learning more!
DeleteMyst Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252280491/myst-25th-anniversary-collection
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome. For what it’s worth, I wholeheartedly approve!
ReplyDelete