By Jim Rossignol on June 26th, 2009 at 5:52 pm.
Gregory Weir, he of the peculiar and splendid I Fell In Love With The Majesty Of Colours, has created another exquisitely minimal, decision-led adventure. This time it’s about raising a dragon, obviously. But what might be entirely obvious is that what you dragon eats, and how they decide to interact with human beings, is going to ultimately decide their fate. As with Weir’s previous games, it’s got a distinct beauty to its pixellated, multiple-pathed tale. You can play it here. And you should.
26/06/2009 at 18:09 jsutcliffe says:
The Mrs. showed me this last night. I raised a lovely green dragon that helped people and became my fwiend. <3
26/06/2009 at 18:26 Gap Gen says:
How many homes can you find? And how many behaviours? I could only find two homes on my first look.
26/06/2009 at 18:29 Sic says:
I get retro, but EGA retro is a bit harsh on the noggin. Why not do mid nineties VGA retro like Blackwell Chronicles?
26/06/2009 at 18:43 Gap Gen says:
OK, I found all the homes (the two available do different things).
26/06/2009 at 18:54 mike says:
I also went for friendly green. Not sure if I can be assed to go through it all again. Well maybe once more… for the breathing fire on everything =p
26/06/2009 at 18:56 Gap Gen says:
There’s a rather excellent option involving the heal breath and a more evil intent.
26/06/2009 at 18:59 Ging says:
I screwed up the nice green by growing plants out of peoples houses… I also helped their crops grow – that particular dragon died.
I did evil flame breathing and evil blue too… I clearly cannot make a “good” dragon.
26/06/2009 at 19:04 Christian says:
Hmm…as nice as these games are: when do people learn and accept that it’s not very convenient for everybody to have the ‘z’-key bound to something important?
You know, some people have their ‘y’s there and need to perform quite impractical gestures (or a third arm) in order to play.
So please, don’t try to be innovative concerning your control-scheme, standard arrow-keys or WASD plus Space is fine, thank you.
Looks nice, but can’t really enjoy due to the finger-acrobatics I would need to perform :(
26/06/2009 at 19:09 Ging says:
Christian: I’m confused as to why you’d need to do any finger acrobatics – the ‘z’ key is used for jumping, the only other buttons you might need to press while using it are the arrow keys, even with a QWERTZ board, you need to reach your finger up and across a bit to hit z… hardly acrobatics!
26/06/2009 at 19:10 houseinrlyeh says:
As another owner of a QWERTZ keyboard, I also feel left out of the experience.
26/06/2009 at 19:16 Christian says:
Yeah, it might be that I’m over-reacting a bit. But I need to use the ‘c’-key to eat, and it just bothered me to keep my hand stretched over the keyboard (I like to have my fingers on the buttons all of the time so I can press then quickly when needed, I guess it’s a habit from FPSs *g*).
Having them nicely next to each other as on a QWERTY-board is just more relaxing. I just think it’s a bit unnecessary to have it layed out like that.
Mind, I do enjoy free games (and respect these fine people devoting their time to make them), and “I Fell In Love With The Majesty Of Colours” really was a nice experience..it’s just these small things that sometimes ruin it a bit..
26/06/2009 at 19:18 Wilson says:
I see ZXC controls in quite a few ‘old fashioned’ style games with only three controls. I’m guessing that’s the feel he was going for, it’s just a little unfortunate that your Z is in a different place. It’s why we like being able to remap controls I suppose.
26/06/2009 at 19:33 Gregory Weir says:
I’m going to add Y as an alternative in the next update.
26/06/2009 at 19:34 Z says:
The walkthrough is a massive piss-off. Don’t tell me to have fun finding the 6 different behaviours. I’m checking the walkthrough because I CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHAT THE BLOODY 6TH ONE IS!!!11!!eleventy!
26/06/2009 at 19:45 Z says:
(is overstating his rage)
26/06/2009 at 19:50 Baka says:
Well, the Zett-Thingy is easily fixed.
Just press ALT+Shift simultaneously and you’re switching between QWERTZ and QWERTY on the fly. Works like a charm, at least under Windows Something.
26/06/2009 at 20:00 Bret says:
Dangit.
Can’t find the fourth fire. Played through twice so far, once as a saint, once as a sociopath. Fun!
26/06/2009 at 20:49 chiablo says:
As much as I enjoy retro games, and games that provide a good solid retro throwback in their design… I have to wonder if they sacrifice playability in order to try to cater to the retro crowd.
One game in particular is Tomb of the Aztecs (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/05/27/retro-squared-tomb-of-the-aztecs/). The game obviously was created with a powerful graphical engine with ray-traced lighting… but they they display it in ridiculously low resolution.
I do enjoy games that were built from the ground up to be simplistic in their presentation, such as Dwarf Fortress, or Spelunky. But it almost seems like developers are taking the lazy route and just calling their games “retro” in order to get a larger audience and avoid creating graphical resources.
26/06/2009 at 21:02 Christian says:
@ Gregory Weir: Wow. That would be very nice indeed :)
@ Baka: Hmm, I must say I feel a bit embarrassed now (working in IT and all). But then again I think I learned something today. Thanks for the hint..works fine.
26/06/2009 at 21:16 Bonegnawer says:
@Bret
Fires
- the oven in the kitchen room
- candle in colourful spiders room
- lamp on the top room of the right tower
- torch in the well / wine cellar
HTH
26/06/2009 at 21:16 Ian says:
Nice, but I don’t see me going through to try different things like I did with “I Fell In Love With The Majesty Of Colours.”
26/06/2009 at 22:05 Bret says:
Found all five regular behaviors, and all the basics.
Are there just 4 endings, or are there more?
26/06/2009 at 22:33 Dan says:
I don’t get quite the feeling from this that I did from Majesty that he has thought of all the possible outcomes, but I love it anyway. I admit I tend to confuse Weir’s games with those of that other artsy pixelly guy (I Wish I Were The Moon), which probably isn’t helping.
Anyone figured out what the flower is for in the hero stage? The dragon seems to reject it no matter what, regardless of what type of dragon I’ve made.
26/06/2009 at 22:59 Jeremy says:
It’s for the Wild Guardian, he’s my bud. We trade flowers.
26/06/2009 at 23:27 Carra says:
I was going to be a goodie good dragon. Then some naughty guy caught me. Then I breathe fire on all the bad man. Fun!
27/06/2009 at 00:35 FunkyLlama says:
I’m just not feeling the love for this one :(
27/06/2009 at 04:28 Caiman says:
You people complaining about crazy control schemes have clearly never played Halls of the Things. Or any Design Design game for that matter. If you’re going to do retro, you have to do a completely unintuitive control design to get the feel right.
27/06/2009 at 05:16 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
I’ve gotten Fiery, Necromantic (by an amusing accident), Reclusive, and Wild behaviors and am still wondering how the get the others.
Maybe I ought to try greening up the forests without redecorating the town.
27/06/2009 at 10:18 Aldaris says:
Same as Dorian, olny I did necro completely on purpose.
27/06/2009 at 10:20 Aldaris says:
damm, green forest-helping without hurting the town gives you a wild watcher.
27/06/2009 at 11:33 The Hammer says:
Whilst it’s not as dreamlike as the Majesty of Colours, it’s also very agreeably retro in what it’s doing. I can’t say I like the jumping around in the wizard’s house much, but asides from that it’s very engaging. I mean, it’s about dragons! Yay!
Also, I love the ambience.
27/06/2009 at 12:39 Billzor says:
Love it. At first I was a little disappointed that the hero has very little interaction with the environment, even after reading the little stop-scenes that explain what your currently trying/going to do. My making him jump around reminded me of the Terrance & Philip show characters from South Park, but I digress. I think now I’m seeing that hero level is still about the dragon, like the narrative says, but it’s also about you the player taking responsibility for what you created. Under the cut-scene narratives, you know what will happen after eating people or generally disrupting their society (bad dragon), and you also know what happens if you help their society (good, although I did get a necromantic watcher-type dragon, which didn’t seem either good or bad. Didn’t see that coming).
Sad, though, that if you created an bad dragon you can’t have your bad hero choose to be a villain. During the game I didn’t really think about it because of the word “dragon” and the word “hero.” Traditionally the “hero” kills the “dragon,” because bad dragons are just bad dragons, right? Can’t reason with monsters. Only recently has there been any narrative about the dragon not being the bad guy.
Still think the hero level needed something more. Not sure what, though.
27/06/2009 at 14:06 Lukasz says:
@Bilzor
My hero became my evil fire tyrant servant so he kinda became a villain
27/06/2009 at 17:52 CakeAddict says:
First time around I was a red fire breathing dragon killing everybody, he died with a swift arrow.
Second time A necromantic ruler of some sorts.. the hero joined him in his evil pursuits.
I like these kind of things you can’t go wrong with me when there are nice choices to take in a game.
27/06/2009 at 18:21 Lucky Main Street says:
I liked this one, but not as much as Colours. Mostly, you can amass an army of zombies, but then they do nothing to defend you! I would’ve liked some interaction between them, and the townfolk in general, and the hero.
27/06/2009 at 19:31 LionsPhil says:
Hmm. It’s no Colours. Oddly, the graphics are a massive step down, too: it’s got the horrible mismash of pixel sizes, and sub-pixel positioning, that usually mark out much shabbier efforts. And the dragon’s tail when it takes the flour is shoddy as heck next to Colours’ unfurling tentacle.
27/06/2009 at 20:02 LionsPhil says:
*ahem* Flower, even.
Completionists: don’t forget that you can be a completely ineffectual dragon who never eats, heals, burns, grows, or stomps on anyone or anything.
(This is about as interesting as it sounds, though.)
27/06/2009 at 23:09 Lucky Main Street says:
I guess I was also hoping for the different permutations of stages (colour, power, interacting with village, hero) to have more of an outcome on each other and on the final ending. Both Colours and Dragon, in their simplicity, really lend well to exploring permutations. I was never bored or uninterested in finding the different abilities or colours here, but it did seem like the previous stages should’ve had more of an effect on the hero stage, which they don’t seem to. Which is too bad, because XX does a great job of allowing influencing you to explore and create your own narrative. The little things like armour in the basement, the noose, the bloodied villagers, really allow you to think that there’s more going on than is explicit, but the surface narrative and limited interactions leave me feeling a little unsatisfied.
I’m really looking forward to seeing what Weir does next.
27/06/2009 at 23:09 Lucky Main Street says:
Shit, that XX should’ve said “Weir”. Bad editing on my part.
27/06/2009 at 23:53 Saeder says:
All of the behaviors and titles (SPOILERS, duh):
Behavior
Fertile – Leaf – Grow fields, trees
Fiery – Fire – Burn everything
Necromantic – Heal – Raise the dead
Rampaging – Any – Jump on people
Reclusive – Any – Do nothing
Wild – Leaf – Grow everywhere (buildings)
Title
Guardian – Town – Fertile, Necromantic, Reclusive
Tyrant – Town – Fiery, Rampaging, Wild
Watcher – Cliffs – Fertile, Necromantic, Reclusive
Scourge – Cliffs – Fiery, Rampaging, Wild
28/06/2009 at 16:35 KafkaTamura says:
Jumping on commoners makes a really satisfying sound.
28/06/2009 at 16:57 Jim Rossignol says:
And in the game?
29/06/2009 at 15:39 kevin says:
Can you link us to his personal website? Armorgames blocked at many workplaces and I imagine it would draw attention to his other good work more efficiently than linking to works you’ve reported on previously.
Really, I just want to play it on lunch break.
30/06/2009 at 05:03 Sky Jack says:
The music is oddly reminiscent of Brokeback Mountain.
05/07/2009 at 12:33 hi says:
how the hell i get 4th fire?!?!?@@@?!?!?!?@@?!?!;’
=]
07/07/2009 at 11:07 Nick says:
yeah how do you get the 4th fire!?
07/07/2009 at 15:02 Jayteh says:
Played it a few days ago when it came out. I was disappointed that collecting all of the elements(?) didn’t produce a special breath.
07/10/2009 at 02:51 Thorkarvald says:
I have been playing for days and can’t find out the 5th behavior…if anyone can help out.
04/12/2009 at 17:06 mwahahahaha says:
the game is fun i think the graphics are a great tribute to what gaming was. I liked the colors just as much. I made a pretty pink dragon, got the fiery breath killed, the evil wizard that captured me and became a fiery watcher ( burn the forest but not the city then head to the mountain). A lot of people are struggling with the titles and behavior so ill make a list of all SEVEN behaviors, how to get them and the titles. WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS
behaviors
fiery: get the fire breath and burn everything in your path
healer: get the healer breath heal the people of the city. DO NOT heal the people in the war there can be no zombies
necromantic: get the healer breath head to the war zone and make a bunch of zombies
wild: get the leaf breath grow the city, the crops, and the forest
fertile: get the leaf breath grow the forest and the crops but not the town
reclusive: get any breath type and do nothing
rampaging: get any breath type and jump/eat people
titles
guardian: do no harm to the people and make your home the castle . if you want a fiery guardian burn the forest wild guardian grow the forest and houses. necromantic guardian heal everyone but do not hurt the people . so there are some slight variations on the behaviors to get the title you want
tyrant: kill everyone and everything then land on the castle
watcher: same thing as the guardian except you land on the mountain
scourge: kill everyone and everything in your path then land on the mountain