It is New Year's Eve. I do not go out of the house on New Year's Eve, so this proved to be the perfect time to finish this wonderful demo of the new Lost Crown standalone game that will be released in Q1. Happily, the full game will offer a point and click option. Whew!
Because the only real difficulty I had in getting through the game was navigation. Even inside the church I had serious difficulty getting Nigel pointed in a direction I wanted, and then keeping him on track. I wound up just doing, mostly, short little turns and steps. Even then it was so tough that I considered quitting, but thankfully did not. The navigation problem will not be there when the full game comes out.
Another problem is that I discovered from the BONUS FOOTAGE that my game is way too dark. I remember when it first started they wanted me to slide a bar, but when I did nothing changed. Hopefully I'll be able to re-do that when I start over for the full game--because I'm positive that I missed a lot because of the navigation difficulty.
However! I encountered a couple of very good puzzles involved in turning on the lights. There was also an easy key matching puzzle which would have gone much more quickly if I had point and click.
Almost finished, so I'm not giving away much here
It's so nice to be able to take my own screenshots again! Yay! From these shots you can see how nice the game looks, even though my screen definitely was too dark:
Entering the Church
Just inside the entryway
With the altar behind
All over there are things we need inventory items to access, and clearly those will be in the full game when it releases.
I'm sure now that I was right that the character I met is a ghost. We have full conversations and it seems quite normal, but towards the end of the demo we get some major clues as to the actual status, although it isn't spelled out.
One thing I noticed is that the crows are not only everywhere--we will find out one thing that they are doing in the course of the demo--but when we look at the photographs on the wall of the vestry, nearly all of them have crows in the photos.
And I saw a really, really nice thing that explained something major about Nigel's first visit to Northfield Church back in TLC1. He meet the vicar, who has forgotten something. We find that something and it's a flyer for a memorial for Evelyn Ackland. Then we look at the photos on the vestry wall. Only one is in color, and it is the same character we met in TLC1. The photo is labeled Evelyn Ackland. So, when Nigel met him, he was already a ghost, thus explaining Nanny Noah's comment, "That was quick."
I really like that!
When you finish the demo, you will encounter a truly nifty snow globe, with the church inside and a clue or two lying around it. It's a really nice graphic:
Not endgame, but end Demo
Except for the navigation problem, I have to say that this is just a wonderful game! It's absolutely The Lost Crown! Fits in perfectly. I can't wait to play the whole thing!
And now for the BONUS FOOTAGE!!! On Saturday Jonathan and Matt Clark joined in a live playthough of the game on Steam, and the whole two-hour session has been released as a YouTube video! Don't watch until you've finished, but in it Jonathan and Matt tell a whole lot about how the game was made and about their future plans. (Warning: a couple of the participants use some rough language.)
I can't get the link to embed it, but here's the URL link. Jonathan and Matt join the conversation at 17 miniutes in. Enjoy!
NOT A GHOST: Silent Night
UPDATE: So sorry, the video appears to have been taken down. I'll leave the link up in case they put it back. But in case it doesn't come back, Jonathan said that if Blackenrock isn't out by Easter he's going to basically give up on life. He also said that they've already recorded all the voice work for the third TLC game, and Jonathan joked that he intends to get that out by 2060. Matt still is working on Bracken Tor, although he didn't give any kind of timeline for it. And Jonathan wants to do another Darkfall game, presumably Storm Warning. They discussed Glastonbury as well, coming sometime in the future. Both said that they have real jobs, and that's the reason it takes so long to get these games out. However, Jonathan said that he did Silent Night, from start to finish, in only three months. And he defended point and click, saying that if anybody criticizes him for it, well, he tried it the other way with this game, and all the feedback was, "We want point and click." So there!
Great fun! Great nostalgia and much much more to come!
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