See, I really don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.  Sure, I love working on TestGame and all, but with all the other things I have to do, sometimes it kinda falls by the wayside.  To remedy this, Paul (the real Paul—the one Paul in TestGame is based on) came up with the most awesome plan ever. 

This mega-super-ultra-plan hinges on one simple fact: I’m reeeally single-minded and easily obsessive.  I’ve also recently fallen in love with Firefly.  (I know, I know, I’m reeeeally behind on this, but such is life.)  This means that, having watched the whole series already, but desperately wanting to watch it all over again, and wanting someone to watch it with me (Must. Spread. Firefly.), I decided to try to rope Paul into watching it.  But, and here’s another key part, Paul doesn’t want to watch it. 

So here’s the awesome plan of awesomeness: Paul sets me a few goals for TestGame, and when I reach those goals, I win an episode of Firefly and he has to watch it with me!  Now I get to feel accomplished doing something I love and when I do a lot of work I get a reward!  I really could not be happier with this. 

As you might have guessed from the list of new stuff, I already got one episode (and it was a double length one, too), so what this means for you is that you get a tooon of new TestGame to explore! 

To start with, the game is steadily moving forward.  We’ve got a new room this month, new dialogue, more plotness.  After about a year and a half of production, Paul finally gets to find Lily again. 

Also!  I now have a general plan for this second section of the game!  I only sort of had one before, but now there’s even an overarching puzzle or two in the works!  I really like this having a direction thing. 

And of course there’s some more work on things earlier in the game, like backgrounds and, oh yeah, the part of the first major cutscene that I’ve been working on putting in the game since the beginning of forever. 

Anyway, go ahead and try the game out!  Let me know what you think!  Suggestions are always welcome (unless I don’t like them).

TestGame v. 19

(no extra programs needed to run this file)

Things to do/new features of note: 

·        New Room!  You can now actually go into the castle! (Well, into the courtyard of the castle, anyway.)

·        And in this new room there is…new dialogue!  New plot advancement!  Holy good lord is there ever plot advancement!  Plus, the setting up of a brand new overarching puzzle!  Huzzah!

·        Another new screen!  This one’s been in the works for a couple of months now—at the end of the first cutscene when Paul enters the forest, Lily does something new!

·        Three new items!  You can only have one of the three at a time during the course of one game, but yeah.

·        And another new item!  This one comes from (get this) mixing two other items in your inventory!  This new item lets you do tons (well, some) of new stuff that was already in the game and you didn’t even know about it!

·        Background work: path to castle screen, front of castle screen, forest outside Paul’s door.

·        Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze when visiting the vine screen after cutting the vine.

All the graphics and design are by Lizo.  The dialogue was written by Lizo, with significant input by Paul.  The background music is by Lizo.  "Let's Go Skateboard" is written and performed by The Word Problems.  Adventure Game Studio (the program used to create this game) can be downloaded at http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/

-- Lizo Medina-Gray {12-01-2006}