[WIP] The Isle of St Marcus (DEMO added)

[dstarsboy]

A very short demo can be downloaded here.

Summary:
You are the new governor of a Dutch island colony in the Caribbean Sea during the mid-1600s. Your objective is to handle the colony's affairs, eventually bringing them military and financial glory. You can broker trade agreements, settle land disputes, deal with crime and much more all in a VN style of game play! Let's not forget courting beautiful subjects from France, England or the church to gain a powerful ally or a devastating enemy.

What will you do with your island?

Game map:


Main Characters:

[IonicMomo]

This looks really cool! (Yay! Historical fiction!)

I read the excerpt of the script and, so far, the dialogue-only thing works (for me anyway). It seems as though, as long as you can dispense all necessary information through other characters, like Abby the servant, the storytelling itself wouldn't be significantly affected by that technique. The only thing is that, without internal monologue, the player wouldn't really be in the main character's head...(Honestly, that doesn't bother me too much.) I imagine it would be a lot of work to keep up this style of writing, but I think it would make for a very interesting style for a VN.

Good luck!

[dstarsboy]

Yay, Ionic! Based on our games, I think you and I both definitely have a love for history!

Thanks for checking out the script, that's very encouraging. I think you're right about the amount of work, that script has, like, 30 seconds of game play and it's pretty convoluted and long. Doing daily introduction stuff may be ok but when it comes to dating the girls is probably where dialog-only will cause the most problem. I haven't gotten that far yet so we'll see.

[IceD]

You can also count me in , although my interest is more to play such games than make them

I see you've chosen dialogue-driven narration instead of traditional third person - it's a bit more kinky to be done, but surely gives different feelings on the run. In overall it's an interesting idea. I've also read the script, and so far everything looks good. I don't think that the game will suffer from the lack of third person narrative - you can always introduce things through your characters. If there will be such impact on dialogue, I'd suggest you try making it the top of everything - more nifty dialogues beetwen characters and commentaries on what's happening in the realm would be great!

The art looks nice, and character designs are lovely. I hope to see them colored. You've brought my attention and I'm looking forward playing this!

[Chansel]

It sounds really interesting ^^
I'm very interested to see how this develops further.

One little thing though. There's an option to tell Celeste that her name isn't Dutch. Well.. (just nitpicking here) Abby isn't either ^^"
But that's no big deal, really. Just thought I'd mention it..

If you need help with any Dutch translations or names or anything, feel free to ask me ^^ I'm Dutch, so it'll take no more than a second to help you out in that department

Xx

[dstarsboy]

@IceD Thanks for the input! I'll definitely have the sprites colored soon and I hope to add more descriptive dialog in draft 2 that will make the conversations have more depth.

@Chansel
EEEEEK!!!!! A real Dutch person! Sadly, you're going to be very disappointed in my crazy butchering of, well, anything to do with your country as my data is not very well researched. I think I even read that back in those days your country wasn't even the Netherlands, it was the United Provinces or something?! You'll have to forgive my lack of knowledge and feel free to point out anything you can spot that seems off and I'll do my best to correct it.

I did some very quick internet searches a week ago, back when I was thinking of names for my chars and Abigale (Abby) came up as English, Dutch, + about 10 other countries of common use, however, Celeste came up as French/Latin mainly so I thought I was in the clear but obviously not! Heh! For that matter, now that I think of it, I don't believe I've researched whether or not Byron or Duncan are common names in the Netherlands either. If you have any suggestions of cool Dutch names, male or female, that I can use, I'd love to hear them.

I added the "Celeste isn't a Dutch name." dialog option for those who are interested in knowing more about Celeste (it can be ignored if people don't care) and I thought that would be a good way to bring up some back story but I didn't even consider the other names, lol. Shame on me.

[Chansel]

EEEEEK!!!!! A real Dutch person! (...)

Haha, no worries
It's such a small country, so I can't really blame you for not knowing much about it XD
Honestly I don't even know that much about it myself. History classes were always so boring...

About the name 'Abigale'. Well, not to disappoint you or anything, but it really isn't very Dutch. It's more English.
It's because we pronounce the 'g' in a completely different way. Much, uhm.. harder?
Here's a link to a very good Dutch song with lyrics. This way you'll hear how our 'g' is pronounced ^^
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4ddL85RtB0
You don't need to listen to the whole thing. The first 3-4 sentences use the 'g' 3 times Also, the 'ch' is also pronounced as our 'g' most of the time (in this song especially).

But as I mentioned before, it's no big deal. I doubt anyone besides actual Hollanders will notice. Besides, there are a lot of English, French and Spanish sounding names here. So, yeah. You can get away with it. Same goes for Byron and Duncan...
Quick tip: We hardly ever use the letter 'y' in our words ^^" So that includes our names, I'm afraid.

As for some Dutch names, I'll send you a pm. I know quite a few (obviously XD) so it became a reasonably large list.
Feel free to use, or ignore it as you see fit ^^

[dstarsboy]

Wow, that list is amazing. I'm going to do a mass renaming based on your list, thank you so much for the help! Once I have colored sprites to post, I'll swap out the new names.

I'll listen to that song when I get home (no youtube at work, boo) I'm actually really curious about the sounds you mentioned.

Thanks again!

[cloudyssky]

This looks rather amazing. The art, the story, and gameplay are wonderful. Once you have a trial or the full thing out I'll definitely download ASAP.
Oh and quick question: Why do you have a relationship with Cyprus? Does anyone really care about Cyprus in the 1600s? ;P

[Chansel]

Glad I could help ^^
Just realized something, the song I sent you is actually the softer version of our loud g (if that makes any sense XD)
People in the north of Holland have an even louder one. But since I'm from the south, I kind of sent you that link since I'm used to it ^^"

[dstarsboy]

This looks rather amazing. The art, the story, and gameplay are wonderful. Once you have a trial or the full thing out I'll definitely download ASAP.
Oh and quick question: Why do you have a relationship with Cyprus? Does anyone really care about Cyprus in the 1600s? ;P

LOL, you're talking about the flag. I was hoping no one would catch that I simply took Cyprus' flag, flopped it upside down and painted it green to turn it into the "Taino Tribe" flag. Sheesh, everyone's a historian around here. heh, I'll try to get rid of the little green leaves to make it less Cyprus-like.

[Jake]

Does anyone really care about Cyprus in the 1600s? ;P

Obviously not, otherwise their relations would be slightly better...!

[cloudyssky]

This looks rather amazing. The art, the story, and gameplay are wonderful. Once you have a trial or the full thing out I'll definitely download ASAP.
Oh and quick question: Why do you have a relationship with Cyprus? Does anyone really care about Cyprus in the 1600s? ;P

LOL, you're talking about the flag. I was hoping no one would catch that I simply took Cyprus' flag, flopped it upside down and painted it green to turn it into the "Taino Tribe" flag. Sheesh, everyone's a historian around here. heh, I'll try to get rid of the little green leaves to make it less Cyprus-like.

Oh I could care less if what the flag looked like, I was just curious is all . I like the flipping of it though.

[azureXtwilight]

This is awesome! *Bookmarks*

[cloudyssky]

Of just curiosity, are you doing the art for this?