Whispered World Demo

[counting_pine]

Bad Brain Entertainment have released a demo of The Whispered World. It's a 77MB download, unfortunately it's only available in German and there aren't any subtitles, but you might want to check it out.

[Gabez]

Is it any good?

[Thriftweed_]

It looks promising, wondering if anyone (someone who speaks german preferably) could give a brief overview.

[Alien426]

Well, I've played it for some minutes.

 

A few thoughts:

Upon unpacking the ZIP file you get a RAR (why anyone would do this is beyond me). Inside the RAR is an EXE. I half expected an installation to start when running it, but luckily the demo started.

 

There's a PDF (in English) that states "Please remember that this is just a demo of a game in progress. Much of the stuff you see is unfinished or temporary (like the voices)."

That's fortunate, since the used voice is... bad.

 

Other than that I think the game might be great. The little I've played looked nice (1024x768, well animated, well drawn) and sounded nice (the music by Marc Derell seems to fit the setting very well). Controlls are intuitive and very similar to CMI.

 

I'll play some more today and then we'll see if English speakers can complete it without knowing the words. It seems graphical enough, but dialogue might nullify that advantage.

[counting_pine]

I think I'd call myself an English speaker. I know some German from school, but have trouble understanding spoken German. Thankfully (from my POV), most of the dialog was repeatable. I think I could have coped a lot better if there'd been subtitles, but I got the gist of a good part of what was going on. I managed to complete it after a while.

As far as I can tell:

The object of the demo is to go out into the forest, but Sadwick needs a compass, and Spot needs a drink.

The two characters outside are Sadwick's brother Ben, and his Grandad, who is getting old and doesn't seem to recognise him (?). Ben has a compass, but has hidden it.

 

Graphically and musically, the game is quite nice - I think it reminds me more of Broken Sword than CMI. Given the game's early stage, I won't bother commenting on the voices, especially since I don't feel qualified to judge the acting quality.

I think the game engine and scripting could do with being a bit more robust. And while the characters seem to be alpha-blended into the background, Sadwick nonetheless has a slight reddish outline.

 

Overall, considering it's early days yet, I think the game shows a lot of promise.

[Alien426]

I think they should get rid of the brackets in the title. "Whispering Worlds" is fine.

[Jake]

It's not arty/pretentious/lame"clever" enough without the brackets though.

 

It's more fun to confuse people with some crazy punctuation-driven double meaning than it is to have a solid memorable title.

 

Your game is bound to be more successful if its title is in fact coded to essentially read as "we are more clever than you."

[Gabez]

Why release a demo of a game that doesn't have finished voices?

 

Typical badbrain... still, it /is/ nice to know that it's not completely bad, and the art style rocks. Reminds me a bit of Howl's Moving Castle.

[Alien426]

Why release a demo of a game that doesn't have finished voices?

I wanted to jump to its defense saying something about it being more like a tech demo, but then I realized that the web site they advertised in the demo doesn't go anywhere but an intro page with dead links. There's even a reference to some bonus content on that site in the demo (unlockable through a number you find there).

 

The release date is Winter 2006. And I don't think they mean "January 2006", but "quarter IV in 2006".

 

It's a very good demo (even though you can go through it in 5 minutes, if you know how) and it made me want the game. counting_pine is right about the objectives and using Spot is the key (ooh, custom spoiler prevention!).

 

You can rip the music with Dragon UnPACKer and the ID3ed composer's site is under (re-)construction, too.

 

The source of the official site loads a picture from writer/illustrator Marco Hüllen's site...

[scabb]

Zipping a rar? What? How?

 

Gabez: My Neighbour Totoro, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service > Howl's Moving Castle. See as many as possible before your Miyazaki kick becomes weak and unable to break through tough surfaces like brick or hard wood. I think I may have actually rated all of those films in terms of the order I like them too, which is wierd since I didn't plan to..

 

Sorry. That was completely irrelevant other than the compression comment. I'll shut up now.

[Gabez]

Yeah, I'm seeing Howl's Moving Castle this week in my local arts cinema... I hear it's not his best film, but I'm really looking forward to it anyway. I have a friend who has a huge collection of anime DVDs so I might be able to borrow some off him. We'll continue this discussion later in the films thread. ;-*

 

Anyway, yeah, back on topic... er... I read Wolfgang's blog the other day and I can't get over the fact that he made up his games on the spot in the chat and named one after his photocopier on a whim. Haha.

[counting_pine]

Just to let you know, they've just released a multi-language version (German and English). They've taken out the voices and made a few changes, don't expect a bug-free experience though. Well anyway, the new version is now just under 40MB, again with the rar+zip combination clawing back those vital few kilobytes.