Actually I was rather neutral with it.
After all I didn’t want to appear to enthusiastic about it, ‘cause… Well I’m thirty five, second kid on the way ‘n all… And as the game looks like to be targeted at the players half my age… It would look kinda…
Well, y’know…
Awkward…
If I wouldn’t like the game I would start nitpicking.
Something along the line of “Those dragons don’t look dragon to me. They’re dinosaurs.” or “It’s such a no-brainer deciding not to bring a gun to the world filled with carnivorous reptiles. And the Darwin’s Award goes to…”, or “Has a degree in biology and doesn’t know that being endo-/exothermic is dependent on metabolic rate of the organism…”
And I ain’t doing it.
I mean sure it's a badly animated 'garage' game clearly with a naff budget but the amount of effort to make something that's enjoyable without a huge crew is impressive.
Yea, I know. I’ve assumed it from the start, and as such I’m not talking about that. But rather about “what’s going on under the hood” (“bonnet” if you prefer). Of course I have to put a note here, that I didn’t actually saw the game code, and it’s only my assumption of how it’s made, based on observation of how it’s working.
Flags for instance. (to those who don’t know: flag is a variable used by the game engine to check whether a player preformed a certain task, or action essential to the storyline and/or certain event in the story had occurred, that will alter the storyline in some way.) Let’s take Remy’s story as an example. To see his good ending, you need to meet with Emera in the political district of Tatsu Park and not mock Remy’s ear; then go to the library and see the scene with Remy and Adine, and finally in his home look three times at the pictures on the table. Then while having the conversation in the park you have an option in dialogue “I remember you said you always wanted children”, which hooks up Remy with the children in the orphanage, right?
Well, on my second playthrough (and I don’t mean “normal” second playthrough, like finishing the game and starting again, but after deleting the profile files, and creating a new profile) I didn’t looked at the pictures, but still I had that option. So essentially the game engine assumed that I did something that I didn’t. Either because of a bug, or the game doesn’t use flags for that (or at all). Other time with Adine’s good ending my character referred to the Administrator as Izumi. But the thing is, my character had never learned that name. (maybe because I aimed at that time to have flawless run – only good endings, and the name has been revealed in Remy’s bad ending. Again I haven’t seen it then, but the game engine assumed I did).
The game don’t even have that “lock”, that prevents running multiple instances of the game at the same time, and that is something so obvious, that it’s introduced in the WinMain() function
Then again, even C. Petzold in his “Programming Windows” books, which are considered to be a bible for Windows programmers kinda forgot to put a “cbSize = sizeof(WNDCLASSEX);” field while declaring a window class. And mistakes like that are just a step from causing bluescreens. Even on XP which didn’t actually had a bluescreen.
But I digress…
It's clearly a personal thing for the creator (He's basically put his Heart and soul into the characters, especially Lorem.)
I know. And I’ve said… Well, technically wrote, that the characters are making the game worth buying. General principle is that you can have a shitty story, and so on, but if you have good characters, they will carry your story regardless. And this is the prime example of that.
I really had lots of fun interacting with the characters in the game, and I've been recomending it to everyone amongst the polish dragon-lovers forums ever since I've finished it.
Still the true ending did left me wanting...
Don't kill the edge and become like the rest.
Don't lose the faith that made you who you are
Don't kill the edge that manifests inside
This world is mine; it's where my thoughts collide...
