Preview: The Uncharted Roads of Marco Polo (PC) ~ The Road To Development

Today I have something quick unique to present to you. Not too long ago, I met somebody on a Facebook group about point-and-click adventure games who was developing a new title. The game is called ”The Uncharted Roads of Marco Polo” and it looks extremely interesting to me. I suggested creating an article for the developers and they agreed. So, here we are. I’m writing a preview article for a game that only released some screenshots and a small trailer video. But there is more! I had the chance to talk to one of the developers of this game called Josip Makjanic and we are going to talk about the uncharted road that took him to this development. So, with that said, it’s time to dive into this article and invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article.

 The pitch

So, what is this game about? The developer provided me with a bit more information about the game. Basically, the game is a point-and-click adventure game like Broken Sword and Monkey Island. You can also compare it to Captain Disaster, Another Code R, Time Hollow, Ace Attorney, Professor Layton or the CSI games.

The game takes the player all over various landmarks in Croatia to solve puzzles and have a grand adventure. The story will be based on historic locations and figures. At this moment, the game is in its pre-alpha stage and has over 60 locations planned together with various characters to populate them. The puzzles will be in the style you would find in the Broken Sword or the Monkey Island series.

Pre-Alpha means that the game is in a sort “draft” phase. It means that everything is being prepared to go into the production of the game. Compare it to baking a cake, the moment you plan to bake a cake and make a list of which ingredients you will need and for whom you are making the cake… Those are things you would do in the pre-alpha stage of development. You can read more information about the development cycle on this Wikipedia article.

Personally, I love games that take place in unusual locations around the world. So, this game takes place in Croatia and is being developed by Svarog Interactive. This 4-man team is also based in Croatia. Now, the guys from there also send us a little teaser video that you can find right here:

I have to say, this teaser is extremely impressive. Right away, I noticed that the art style resembled the art style in the first Broken Sword games. Like the Broken Sword games, the locations are extremely detailed and colorful. Unlike the Broken Sword games, the animation like the leaves and the flies on screen… Well, the location feels more alive than ever. I find it rather enjoyable that everything looks quite realistic and those flies, man, they look so goofy I love it.

If you compare the Pre-Alpha video to the screenshots I shared on top of this article, you notice some big differences right away. First of all, the dialogue system looks a lot cleaner. You get dialogue boxes with character portraits on top. Also, you notice that on the bottom right corner, you have a bag. Most likely, this is where your items are going to be stored. So, you won’t have to go to the top of your screen for that. In addition to that, in the right upper corner, you notice that there is a gear icon. This will most likely be a way to go to the pause menu.

Sadly enough, since this game is still in extremely early development, there is nothing more I can show you or talk about. I can’t wait to see more and I’m going to follow the development of this game quite closely.

Yet, if you want more and you speak Croatian, you can read this article with one of the developers by 24Sata. Now, there is also this YouTube video where the developer talks about his road towards development. While the video is in Croatian, there are English subtitles provided. Sadly, the subtitles just stop around the 5:11 mark, so there are 2 minutes without subtitles ☹.

Now, before we continue with the interview with Josip Makjanic, one of the co-founders of Svarog Interactive, I want to share some links where you can follow the project as well. They have a Facebook page and Twitter page.

Let’s talk

Jonez: Welcome Josip Makjanic, co-founder of Svarog Interactive. Can you give us a small introduction about yourself?

Josip: Hello Jonez. My name is Josip Makjanic, a co-founder and Game Designer in Svarog Interactive.

Jonez: In our conversation over mail you told me that this isn’t your first game. You worked on impressive games like Serious Sam 4 and Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope. Serious Sam is an amazing series from Croatia, your home country. Was it always your dream to develop games?

Josip: Yes. I was always fascinated by it. I started making video games not so long ago, but I sort of designed games in general since I was a kid, by designing them on paper, writing stories and creating concepts. When I lived in a high school dorm I used to make versions of Warcraft, Diablo and even Counter Strike on paper that we played with dice, and people from the dorm would come and play in our room.

I was always fascinated by it and loved creating, so today, with some experience behind and with some good friends by my side, I thought it’s time to start working on our own video games.

Jonez: On the road to the developping of “The Uncharted Road of Marco Polo”, you created two other games called “Day in Dementia” and “In Memory”. Both games have a similar concept and art style. As a side note, I have to say that I’m touched by “In Memory”. The story behind it, a game to honor the dead of your mother, I have one word for you: respect. Respect man. Now, I noticed that both games were created in Construct. Are you using the same engine for this game?

Josip: Thank you. 🙂 Both of these games were made in Construct 2, and were created as a personal project. I don’t even know if I could call them games, but rather some sort of experiences that meant a lot to me personally. Marco Polo is being developed in Unity since it gives us more freedom from the technical sides of things.

Jonez: In our conversation, you talk about an open-world RPG. So, this point-and-click game isn’t the only title you are working on? What is this open-world RPG game or is it more a testing ground for possible future titles?

Josip: We are huge fans of Point & Click games and huge fans of RPG’s. We grew up on those games and always wanted to make our own worlds that others can enjoy with us. So, we are working on an open-world RPG system and have stories and concepts, but, we don’t like to rush ourselves, as we know how ambitious and big these projects are, and we would, of course, need a much bigger team. So before it happens, and we hope it will, there are other, smaller projects in mind, but we are going in that direction.

It’s very important for us to first understand how everything works and make many tests so we don’t waste time or get lost in the projects we’re developing, which makes the development much more enjoyable and better organized. So yes, we are making tests and preparations for other projects, but Marco Polo is a priority and is written as a trilogy. We are also huge fans of traditional drawing and animations, so I don’t think we will ever want to part with it. 🙂

Jonez: Now, let’s get back to The Uncharted Road of Marco Polo since that’s the game that I’m previewing with this article. I’m rather curious. Why about Marco Polo? If the game is set in Croatia and Marco Polo is a merchant from Italy. Of course, there is this debate about his birthplace might be Croatian as well… So, why the decision for Marco Polo?

Josip: The game is talking about historic figures and real places, and players will learn so much about Croatia from it, and while the game has many real things people can learn about, it’s story is fictional and we won’t get involved into that debate, but will rather focus on some other, more interesting aspects based on his life, and how to make an enjoyable story and experience in general. 🙂

Jonez: Are you developing this game full-time or are you developing this game on the side like the Corpse Party developers GrisGris? Also, how do you make sure that there is enough budget to create this game?

Josip: We are currently working in our free time, so that means that we also have other jobs, doing freelancing and helping each other out, but we believe that soon we’ll be able to work full time on the game, and when that happens, we will inform everyone about it. If we don’t get a publisher then we will definitely go Kickstarter with playable Demo, Trailer and some other interesting things in mind. So the game’s development is currently going smoothly without too many investments, but we will definitely depend on a publisher or Kickstarter later if we want to finish the game in a reasonable time.

We also don’t want to go on Kickstarter without having some quality content that people can enjoy before considering supporting us. 🙂

Jonez: You told me that there are, including you, 4 people working on this game. Can you tell us a bit more about the team and the talent in it?

Josip: Yes, there are 4 of us and we all have some projects behind us. There is Alen, our technical guy who makes sure all the systems work in general. Devis is our character artist and animator, and Andrija is our manager. I make backgrounds, write a story and making a game design in general, but we are all highly involved in each part of the development so there is a bit of everyone in every aspect of the game. Andrija, for example, came up with the idea of Marco Polo, so we all worked together to make a story that will fit the game’s mechanics.

There will be behind the scenes when it comes out. 🙂

Jonez: And as a final question, I would like to ask what are your favorite parts of being a game developer and what do you dislike in being a game developer.

Josip: I like how rewarding it can be. It sure isn’t easy to make a game and that’s why I started with those small ones. To build strong foundations and to be able to better understand it and move on to bigger projects. 

And the better I understand it and the more I know about the technical side, the more I can enjoy the creative parts of it, so I guess after every day of work you get rewarded with new knowledge and skills, and I find it very enjoyable.

The bad part of the development would definitely be one issue in the industry in general, and that’s the crunch. I’m not talking about a month or two of crunching, but about the developers who crunch for 6 months or more.

It’s not healthy and I believe that the health of those developers should be in the first place and by organizing yourself better before getting into developing a certain project would save many from that.

It’s a huge problem and something we want to avoid and not be a part of, so that’s one of the reasons for our long preparations and organization before the project even starts. I maybe went a bit off-topic with it, but I believe it’s very important to talk about it

Jonez: And with that, thank you Josip for the interview and the answers! Thank you for answering my silly questions and talking about games and development. I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Josip: Here’s a few words for the gamers out there. It is a huge compliment for us to be compared to a classic such as Broken Sword, as we saw many of you talk about it, and we are happy that you love what you see at this stage of development. It will maybe remind you of it, as we see it already do but I just want to say that we don’t want to be another Broken Sword in the end, as Broken Sword is a timeless classic and we don’t want to compete with it, nor I believe we can.

But what I believe is that we can make an enjoyable experience that will make your time worth playing it, a game on its own that we would like to play too, and that’s what we hope to achieve.

We want to make games like they used to be, or at least, make them feel like they used to be, and even though we are not the most experienced studio in the industry, we will give our best to make them worth your time, and try to be better with each one.

Thank you. 🙂

Jonez: And as a closing note, you can follow Josip’s personal projects over at his CrobbitArts Facebook page!

Ending of the article

And with that, I have to call this article a wrap. I want to thank Josip Makjanic for the interview and the material he provided for me to write this article. I’m quite hyped for this game and I can’t wait to play a demo or see more. Yes, I have quite the weak spot when it comes to well-crafted point-and-click adventure games. I love them more when there is a certain charm to it, like with this game.

This game looks to have quite some potential. Currently, we got only some screenshots and a teaser video and it’s already looking quite amazing. So, here is to Svarog Interactive, keep up the good work you guys! You can do it!

So, I’m curious. Do you think that this game is as interesting as I think? Have you noticed something I overlooked? Tell me in the comment section down below. And with that said, I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

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Community Awards: The Real Neat Blog Award – December 2019

WordPress Community Awards are always amazing. It’s a great feeling to get various community awards since it feels like recognition of other bloggers for your work and it also allows you to create interesting articles. Today I have the pleasure to receive the Real Neat Blog award from Sanato1 over at his website. He writes amazing pieces on anime, music, games and many other things. Here is a fun fact, we both started blogging around the middle of 2013. Well, I was writing since 2010, but I only started to write in English a few months before he did. Something that’s quite cool is that he’s an attorney and writes about al those various subjects. It’s a really interesting read. Anyways, let’s get into the actual award and the Q&A that’s attached to it. 

The usual stuff

Here are the rules once again:

1. Display the logo
2. Thank the bloggers for the award.
3. Answer the questions from the one who nominated you.
4. Nominate 7 to 10 bloggers.
5. Ask them 7 questions.

The questions

1) Is there a game, book, or other work that you’d like to experience but that you can’t because it’s untranslated, not ported, or otherwise inaccessible?

That’s an interesting question. It would be extremely easy to look at various animes or games that didn’t get translated into English.

Of course, various works got subtitles but I’m too slow of a reader to follow subtitles and I honestly prefer works in a language I can understand since I feel that native jokes almost always get lost in translation. For example, if they use in a clever Japanese wordplay in an anime, they have to either translate it in the subtitles or let it slip by.

But, after some searching, I found something that you might not really suspect from me. There was this publisher in Belgium called Transposia. They used to localize games like Freddi Fish, Spyfox, Pyjama Sam, Putt-Putt amongst various other games to Belgium and the Netherlands. One of these series is Skipper & Skeeto which is originally called Magnus og Myggen in it’s native Danish language.

Sadly enough, Transposia wasn’t able to localize every game into Dutch. Various games only got realized in Danish.

Besides my native Flemish/Dutch language, I can speak French and English but I can’t speak Danish. While one of my blogging buddies is Danish, I think it would be a hassle to fully translate the whole game just to be able to play the game.

Surprisingly, some of these titles got translated into English, but those aren’t the adventure games. The translated titles are the edutainment games. But, they would be nice to add to my collection as well. But, that’s for when I have the budget to let them ship overseas from the UK.

2) What’s one work that really affected you or stuck with you in the last year, and why do you think it did?

If you mean 2018, well, to be honest… I have played so many amazing games, I can’t say one single game. Games like Death Mark or Shadow Of The Tomb Raider are two games that come to mind. Most games that stick with me have either an interesting story mechanic or have a really strong message.

Now, if you mean 2019, I honestly think you’ll have to wait until I reveal my top 10 games I played in 2019. But, if you have been reading my articles, I think I have given various hints about the games that are big contenders for the top spot.

If we are talking outside of games, that’s going to get tougher. Then I think I could say the Death Parade anime. Just the whole concept of the show is mindblowing and well written. The ending really touched my emotional strings. I also started watching it around the time that my pet cat Sparta passed away last year.

3) If you could revive one series of works that’s been abandoned or dropped by its creators for any reason, what series would it be and why?

That’s a tricky question and for several reasons. Sometimes it’s better left in the past to let the series or work end on a high note. Sometimes they ran out of ideas and it’s better to end it.

I could talk about animes like Log Horizon and No Game No Life. These animes have a lot of source material to create new season(s) but due to various reasons, haven’t gotten a new season. Now, I could also talk about my wishes for a new Indiana Jones game or a follow up to Time Hollow, Monster Tale, Stella Glow or Etrain Odyssey. But I’m not going to.

There are so many things that could be revived but they might never live up to expectations. I don’t want a sort of Duke Nukem Forever situation on my hands with the franchises I adore.

Besides, there are so many games, shows, music… out there, it’s getting insane. So, I’m the sort of guy the tries to experience as much as I can instead of trying to revive or keep a show alive. Yes, I vote with my wallet on what I want to see.

4) When it comes to music, do you prefer songs with vocals and lyrics or instrumental pieces, or do you have a preference at all?  If you prefer one type over the other, why do you think that is?

I don’t have a preference. But, I do notice that a lot of my favorite pieces of music have vocals and lyrics. Yet, I also have a lot of instrumental tracks that I adore as well. In most cases, these are tracks from shows or games that are quite nostalgic for me.

But, I think I’m going to talk a bit more in-depth in a future music article on this subject.

5) When was the last time you bought a magazine, newspaper, or another form of print media?

Now, if we also include physical copies of games; then I have to say the day of writing this article. I ordered two retro games for quite cheap online. If we are talking about things print on paper, then I have to say; past summer. When I bought an art book of a Wii U game and a strategy guide on a garage sale.

I used to buy gaming magazines often but my budget doesn’t allow that lately. So, I decided to save some money by not buying them anymore. It’s a shame since now that they are dying out, I might not be helping the cause by not supporting them.

6) Is there a holiday you don’t get to celebrate/take off because of family or work reasons but that you wish you could?

Luckily, I don’t have that issue. Since I work in schools, most of the holidays fall either on weekends or during school holidays.

And my family is rather small so we are able to celebrate almost every holiday together. And since this year, I can celebrate Valentine’s Day due to my meeting my soulmate this year.

7) If you had to create a new holiday, when would it be and what would it involve?

I would have a holiday to celebrate godfathers/godmothers and their godchildren. As a godfather myself, I find it a shame that a holiday doesn’t exist for that. Since I find the tradition and relationship extremely beautiful. Because it’s a sort of 3rd parent to the child.

Now, what would it involve? Something similar to Mothers or Fathersday? Where godchildren could make a small present for their godparents? And that the godparents could create/buy a present for them?

I tag and ask:

Now, as the rules state. I have to tag 7 to 10 other bloggers.

So, here we go:

1. LaterLevels
2. TriformTrinity
3. Well-Red Mage
4. NormalHappenings
5. BearedGamer82
6. LividLighting aka Lighting Ellen
7. KillerRobotics
8. VideoGamesNebula

And the 7 questions I want to ask you:

1. Did your view or look at games change since you started writing a blog?
2. Is there something you miss in the current gaming industry?
3. What’s your favorite part about writing a blog?
4. What’s something you wish you owned?
5. What’s something unique about your hometown?
6. Do you think that these kinds of tag questions should be themed?
7. How much time do you put into your blog daily, weekly, monthly, yearly?

I’m also looking forward to the answers of the other bloggers! While I could nominate a ton more of them, I think I’m going to leave it at those eight. Each of these blogs is an amazing read and I highly recommend them!

So, thank you so much for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

Review: Outlaws (PC) ~ LucasArts Pew Pew in the Wild West

Wikipedia entry

When I was on a garage sale trip in late June, I saw this title in a big PC box for 1€ at one of the last stands I visited. I was drawn to the LucasArts logo on the box. I didn’t think twice about buying it. When I got home, I took a picture of all the games I bought on that garage sale and people got hyped about Outlaws. A friend of mine even said that this is a game he wanted to see remastered. So, I got out my retro game PC, installed the game and started playing it. A few days ago, I finally finished the game so it’s time to give my review about this game. As usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the content of this article and/or the game. 

Old school shooter

In this game, you take the role of a retired U.S. Marshall, James Anderson. After he comes home from the store, he finds out that his wife and daughter are kidnapped by two well-known outlaws. When you find out that they killed your wife and are on the run with your daughter, the case is on.

I do have to admit, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the story while I played this game. While the cutscenes that present the story are very nicely animated for the time, it didn’t grip me. I’m not saying that the story is badly written in any way, shape or form. The cutscenes I watched were thrilling enough to continue playing the game. The voice acting was decent as well. The only thing that I didn’t like about the voice acting was how cliche some voices were. Also, there wasn’t enough emotion in some scenes in my opinion.

Speaking of the voice acting, there is also voice acting during the gameplay. A lot of enemies taunt you with some lines over and over again. The only thing that could be better if there were more lines said. Since, if you hear the same taunts spoken in the last level that you heard on the first level, you stop paying attention to them.

This game is your typical early-3D style shooter. Each level has an end boss and in order to reach the said boss, you have to look for keys to unlock the doors they hide behind. The first time I encountered a boss, I died after two hits. I got so frustrated with the game, I almost rage quitted. After I calmed down, I tried again but this time, I waited and learned the pattern of the boss. When I killed the boss, a cutscene played and that’s when everything clicked for me.

Not long after that, I learned that the yellow arrow on the map screen is the location of the final boss. This is a pretty handy feature. One that helped me several times when I got stuck. The map screen was a good friend in this game. It helped me several times to find new ways when I got stuck or felt that I was running around in circles. There are three things I would change about it. One, have a sort of marker where doors are where you need special keys for. Two, a zoomed out map would be amazing. And three, I would have loved the see the level names like in DooM somewhere in the bottom of the screen.

Something the map screen did well is show how many secrets there are in a given level and keep track of how many you found. This was good fun.

This game doesn’t have an autosave feature. You can save whenever and wherever you want. Just hit the “Esc” key on the keyboard and choose the option “save”. The only thing I could have loved to see improved is that the time and date was displayed when the save was made.

Reload that gun

This game has an amazing reload mechanic. In this screenshot, you can see how the revolver doesn’t have any ammo left. When you hold the right mouse button, you start to insert bullet by bullet in your gun. But, don’t worry, when you meet an enemy while reloading, you can just shoot. Even when your gun isn’t fully loaded. I wish more shooters implemented this feature. It speeds up the action so much and makes the gameplay more fun in my opinion.

I played this game on the medium difficulty. Let me tell you, this game can get intense. The game never gets too hard to be unfair. I have played a little bit on the hardest difficulty. Let me tell you, you have to use your cover or you won’t survive.

For the most part, the level design is very well built. I really liked all levels in the game. One of my favorite levels was the Canyon. Especially when you were able to shoot enemies from the cliffs. They have a separate animation for that and even a sound effect! It helped so much with building the atmosphere. In that stage, there was also one of my favorite stage gimmicks. There is wind blowing through the canyon. At certain places, when you weren’t moving; well, the wind moved you towards the cliff edges. There were a lot more stage gimmicks providing variety through out the game.

In this game, you shoot with a lot of different guns. I liked the revolver the most since you can shoot quickly with it. It helped me to clear out a lot of crowded areas. But, all weapons have their own use in certain situations. The only thing I did have problems with is the dynamite. It never lit on fire, I had to shoot it always when I wanted to use it.

That disappointed me, just like the sheriff badge pick up. While these are rare to find, I don’t know what they do. So, I had to consult the manual. Apparently, it’s a shield and a damage increase. I didn’t notice any change with or without the badge.

What disappointed me the most was the frustrating platforming parts. This game had a few, very interestingly designed platform segments but due to the sometimes floaty and unreliable jump, this got to some frustrating deaths and/or me having to do that jump section all over again. When you are playing this game, master the run and jump and the crouch and jump as quick as you can.

Something that didn’t disappoint me was the manual. The manual for this game is actually beautifully created and designed. It features some additional background stories and information about the characters you meet in the game. It’s also themed like the wild west, just like the additional leaflet for the troubleshooting problems with the multiplayer.

Speaking of the multiplayer, this game has it. While I wasn’t able to experience it, from what I read, it’s a decent addition.

Wild West music

This game is, give or take, a 15-hour long adventure. I have to say, I think I’m willing to play through this adventure again. The gameplay is a lot of fun. The game’s presentation is dated but still holds up for retro gamers.

The animation is pretty good too. But if we are speaking of presentation, this game excels in two things as well. The soundtrack and sound design. The soundtrack is amazing. Honestly, it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite soundtracks I heard lately. I’m so adding it to my library of video game soundtracks to listen to while I write.

The sound design is well done as well. I played this game with a headset that blocks out a lot of the sound from around me. So, I was able to fully immerse myself into the game. I have proof that I was fully immersed into the game since most of my play sessions of this game were around 2-3 hours without a break.

Earlier in this review, I touched upon the jump mechanic. Overall, the controls are pretty good. The game has a fast flow to it and I didn’t have problems with the controls. Apart from what I mentioned earlier, the jumps.

When you play the historical missions, some jumps that you have to do are a bit pixel perfect. But, I won’t go too much in-depth about that since I already complained about that earlier in my review.

Something that annoyed me the most in this game is that some areas are designed to get a player stuck. I had to consult a walkthrough twice since I got stuck on two different levels. And both times, it was with one hallway I didn’t check enough or in a place, I forgot to crouch.

So, if you get stuck in this game, don’t forget you can jump ridiculous distances and crouch!

Something that took me by surprise and made me happy is the fact that some enemies were female! Yes, female enemies in a shooter. Some were even bosses of a level. Thank you for doing that LucasArts!

It’s quite clear that LucasArts made this game since there are a lot of easter eggs and references in this game. You can find aliens, Indiana Jones, Sam & Max and a lot more easter eggs. So, if you enjoy easter egg hunting, pick up a copy of this game and start looking!

The final thing I have to say is that I find this game too short. After I had beaten the game and the historical missions, I found it bitter sweet. I wanted to play more but I was happy that I had beaten the game. If only LucasArts was still around, then I would be able to ask/nag for a remake or a sequel to this game.

So, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. I left some things out for you guys to discover. But it’s time to wrap up the article and get to the conclusion of this one.

Conclusion

The bad:

-The annoying parkour sections.

-Minor complaints about the map screen.

-No date/time displayed on the save screen.

-The voice acting was too cliche sometimes

-Too short!

The good:

+ Amazing soundtrack

+ Addictive gameplay

+ Great presentation for the time

+ …

Final thoughts:

If you look the negatives I listed, it’s quite clear that those are very minor problems. This game is so close to perfect, it’s annoying. The biggest problem to me was the annoying parkour bits that were difficult to do with the sometimes floaty and unreliable jump.

All the other issues are so minor, they weren’t too big of an issue to put a damper on the fun I was having with the game. If you enjoy games like DooM, Wolfenstein, Heretic amongst others, you owe it to yourself to check out this game.

I highly recommend this game to people who enjoy stealth games too. If you play it on the highest difficulty setting, this game is a great stealth game.

I’m so happy to have this gem of a game in a big PC box complete in my collection. This game is one I will most likely play again in the future since I enjoyed my time with it so much. Also, the soundtrack is pretty great and I can’t wait to listen to it while I’m on the road.

In any case, that’s everything I wanted to say in this article. Thank you so much for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article on my blog but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

Score: 100/100