Between Heaven & Hell

[Madguy]

Hello!

You might remember my adventure game "AfterShocked!", which came out a couple of years ago.. the post-apocalyptic comedy game that parodied the civil rights movement.  Yeah it was pretty weird.

About half a year ago I started working on a new game, "Between Heaven & Hell", using the AGAST engine, which powered my last game.  Basically, it's about a man's journey through Limbo.  But, BHAH isn't a traditional adventure game, rather it's comparable to Out of This World, Heart of Darkness, Prince of Persia, Flashback, Oddworld, and Blackthorne-- but mostly Out of This World.  If you like the sort of action/puzzle gameplay present in these games then you'll probably go insane for this one, if only because no one makes these kinds of games anymore.  Seriously I think this is a really untapped niche genre.

It's far from done at the moment-- about half of the basic gameplay is complete, and when that's finished a lot of cinemas will need to be added (with real actors!) as well as the soundtrack.  The current release date is "when it's done 2005", so, ehh, mark your calendars!

More info is at my website.  The screenshots may show up a bit dark, but I'll fix that for the final game.

[Candle]

Screens look good , what are you using for your char's ? Real people ? or poser ?

[Madguy]

I'm using real people and my own animations, I've never tried Poser before.  The guy in those screens is actually me!  I had friends record me running, jumping, ducking etc. and then I put it all into the computer using crazy 21st century supertechnology, as seen in such state-of-the-art games as Mortal Kombat and NARC.  Actually my animations are quite a bit smoother than in those games since I have about 20,000 times the memory to work with.

[Erwin_Br]

I'm using real people and my own animations, I've never tried Poser before.  The guy in those screens is actually me!  I had friends record me running, jumping, ducking etc. and then I put it all into the computer using crazy 21st century supertechnology, as seen in such state-of-the-art games as Mortal Kombat and NARC.  Actually my animations are quite a bit smoother than in those games since I have about 20,000 times the memory to work with.

Really? That's amazing!

I don't think that's ever been done before in a home made game. At least, not to my knowledge. Impressive.

--Erwin

[Jezze]

This is something I am looking forward too play because I am one of those guys who have played Out of this world (or Another World which it is called here) for hours cursing at each time I made a mistake... what made OOTW so great I think was that it had a wonderful atmosphere, the beautiful graphics (considering the time it was made) and also the unique real-world puzzles... I think you should think of how to make the player feel as he is actually living in this world in the same way as OOTW did it.... if you accomplish that, it will be a hit... there is a game called Seiklus that also accomplishes that task very well also... google and download it...

[Madguy]

Seiklus is a cool game, I agree it does feel like a living breathing world (and from a former ZZT game maker too, I'm a part of that group myself).  Yeah I'm trying to accomplish this, really I think it's all in the little details, like flies buzzing around etc.  My version of Limbo is pretty untraditional and though there's not a ton of back story, I think there will be just enough to keep you interested and immersed in the game world.  But believability will only be taken to a certain point here.  When I play Out of This World from beginning to end, for me it's like watching a big action movie, so I want to run with that also.  Expect lots of explosions, an evil flying woman who pops up to harass you, and a possible hoverboard sequence.

I don't think the whole digitized people thing is really amazing or anything, just time-consuming to accomplish, especially those damn walk cycles.

[stu]

This is already looking rather good and very original; if those "real life" characters move as smooth as they look, this will be great to play. Backgrounds remind me of The Neverhood; which is no bad thing. You mentioned cutscenes - what download size are we looking at? Will this game be released on CD?

[Madguy]

Probably no CD release, too much of a hassle for me.  As of now I'm somewhere around half finished with the gameplay portion, and I'm up to 20 MB, so I'm guessing that will be around 35-40 total.  Music could end up being another 30.  The cutscenes won't be video or anything, but they will feature large moving images at times so I'd say this game could end up in the 100 MB range.  It may seem large but it's still a lot smaller than most demos released today, plus you'll definitely be getting your download's worth.  And with everyone's high speed connections these days I doubt the size will be much of a problem for most people.