Apologies for not blogging recently. That either means nothing is going on in my life or too much is going on in my life with no time to blog about it. Fortunately for you, it’s been the latter. 🙂 I’ve been playing a lot of Arvale II: Ocean of Time for iPhone lately, and I’ve got a few teaser shots for those salivating.

And a few notes on the game, and changes for the iPhone version. Obviously, this is a work in progress and some screens may not actually exist in the game, blah blah blah, you know the drill.

Slick new interface, with the map flowing into the whole screen now. Also one-button access to all the different menus, which is way, way better than the old branching menu system used in Arvale: JOI.

Inventory is still one button access from the main screen, but the tabs have been moved to the left side with really big buttons, easy on the fingers (or thumbs).

Battle system is pretty much the same, but the UI has been tweaked for much easier use. While playing through the game recently, I noticed that this game has lots and lots and lots of fighting, so this screen is pretty important to have done right. Especially on the harder difficulty levels.

Oh yeah, there are three separate difficulty levels. Although, I’m seriously thinking of changing Easy to Normal, Medium to Hard, and Hard to Insane (I only know one person who was capable of beating the game on Hard… and I think he’s pretty insane).

Level up and stats screen merged into one to make a whole lot more sense. I completely forgot that you can change your stats at any time during the game by simply visiting a Stats re-arranging guy in any of the towns. Awesome, for people like me who end up putting too much into strength to early and realizing that… well, you’ll find out. And no, those aren’t my stats, don’t ask 🙂

New Quests screen is one button from the main screen now (nice). Very similar to the new Quest list in Arvale: JOI 1.2. Honestly, I don’t think there are as many mini-quests in Arvale II as there are in Arvale I (which had a slew of ’em), but this gets used more often in the game to follow all of your actions in the main quest, which is much better than in Arvale 1. Also a nice little box appears telling you every time the Quest list is updated (I don’t think Arvale 1 did that).

Map screen is pretty much the same as Arvale 1. However, I find I use it less often in OOT as the maps are on a much more manageable scale (you can see most of what’s going on in the screen within 1-2 screens). When I do use it though, (for the colored tiles puzzles, you’ll see), it does seem much more useful.

I think that’s it for today. Hope that keeps you satiated for now 😉

A very patient piano player asked me back in December to arrange some of the music from Arvale II for Piano. More specifically, the title and ending music. I replied that I could do it when I have time, but it may be a few months.

It’s been a few months now, and I finally had a bit of spare time to re-arrange and put them together (since I was re-arranging the Arvale II music for iPhone already).

So… here you go (they’re in Adobe PDF format for easy printing):

Arvale II Title Arranged for Piano sheet music

And here is an mp3 of how it should sound.

Arvale II Ending Arranged for Piano sheet music

And here is another mp3 of how that should sound.

Notes for Pianists: I double-checked them a few times and aside from some readability issues (I hope you like ledger lines) and one reach that only a basketball player could make, they’re perfectly playable. You’ve gotta be a pretty advanced piano player to do it though.

If anyone does actually manage to play through either one, I’d love to hear the results, or a youtube video or anything.

And if you don’t play piano… well, at least you have some new Arvale music to listen to 🙂

You can stick a fork in it, it’s done! And it’s pretty tasty too! 🙂

Here are some of the more unique hors d’œuvres:

Arvale II: Waterworld

Arvale II: Oriental

Arvale II: Techie

I spent way too much time on doing these, and perhaps it was a bit of overkill to make the orchestrated and arranged quality so high for a little iPhone game, but… ah well. It seems the marketing texts were correct too, a touch over an hour of music for this game.

I hadn’t even heard some of these tunes in a long time, and I was surprised at how cool and unique some of them were and brought me on a little nostalgia trip to play Arvale II as soon as possible. Good thing there’s a lot of testing coming up 😉

Enjoy!

While digging through all my files looking for the original Arvale compositions (so I can make the re-arranged songs for the iPhone versions of Arvale II and Arvale: Short Tales), I’ve run across a ton of music for these games, some I haven’t heard in a long time.

But one tune of course stands out and appears throughout all the Arvale themed games, the main Arvale theme. I’ve compiled every occurrence of it that I can remember right here for your listening pleasure, simply click on the files below (or right-click and save-as). Enjoy! 🙂

The original Piano theme from the title screen.
Arvale: JOI Title

The more fleshed-out theme used for the title.
Arvale II Title (apologies for the quality, this hasn’t been re-arranged yet)

A reprise of the theme during the ending music.
Arvale II Ending

There was no title music in Short Tales, so I sprinkled the theme throughout different sections of the game.

When you visit the main Pub in Maestyl at night time
Arvale:ST Pub (again, this one hasn’t yet been re-arranged)

When you run into a battle in Chartreuse Forest during daytime.
Arvale:ST Chartreuse

When you hang around in Koden’s house a minute or so.
Arvale:ST Koden

Ah yes, and the minor version of the theme heard when your character falls in battle in Arvale: Short Tales.
Arvale:ST Death (not re-arranged, and can’t find the original :/)

And of course, the Jazzy swing version of Duncan Swing.
Catchy Cadence: Duncan

Hope you enjoyed the little aural adventure through Arvale’s main theme 🙂

I should be gearing up for the big move, but instead I decided to put together a short Graphic Adventure game demo for you all. Aren’t I nice? 🙂

The game is called Broken Blueprint Beginnings, and has been a work in progress for about 5 years. Varying with work from different artists, designs, programmers, and tons of other things, so I finally decided to nail it down. You may noticed a few mismatching art styles due to the smorgasbord or time and people that worked on it, but hey, it’s FREE and it’s just a short demo to show you what it can be in the future.

Anyway, Broken Blueprint is about a tribe of Frogs and Snakes living together in The Caves. You play as Hunka, the tribes Witchdoctor 🙂 It’s very reminiscent of the old Lucasarts Graphic Adventure games such as Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, etc. Or if you were a Sierra fan of Leisure Suit Larry, King’s Quest, Willy Beamish, etc. So if you love those games, you’ll be right at home with Broken Blueprint.

It’s full of humor as usual 🙂  Those who like the Arvale series and enjoy simply walking around and interacting with objects will definitely love this one. Experienced Adventure gamers can possibly breeze through the game in about 10-30 minutes. If you spend your time Looking at, Grabbing, Trying out inventory items on things, and Talking with each and every character and object (including every single Torch) in the game, you could spend over an hour or so just reading all the different responses.

To install:

Just download the installer and run the setup file and you should be good to go (Again, PC only, sorry). You can download the installer from the Games Page, or directly download: here.

[Update: I just tried it on an Intel Mac with Crossover Mac and it works wonderfully, If you have an Intel Mac you may want to download the Crossover trial just to play it ;)]

[Update 2: Some people with computers from the last decade (Windows 2000 and earlier) are having problems running it, getting errors about the display. This can easily be fixed by downloading the latest DirectX version from Microsoft.]

To control:

Gameplay is basically move your mouse around, and click on stuff to try out different actions. The basic controls are explained in the intro to the game so I won’t go into it.

More screenshots on the Games Page.

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’ve been prototyping a lot of different games and trying out a lot of different engines recently.

While doing so, I whipped up a quick little Arvale game which you can of course download for Free here.

It’s called Arvale: Really Short Tale. It involves Duncan after the events of Arvale: Journey of Illusion, and all Arvale fans will enjoy seeing him and Entoque again, I’m sure.

Veteran RPG’ers will most likely breeze through it in about 15 minutes.
Veteran Arvale players will probably occupy themselves for about an hour just checking things out 😉 (yes, there are a few Wheelbarrows)

Anyway, I’ll be prototyping a few more games over the next month or so, and I’ll try to share whatever I can with anyone who wants it. So I might as well set up a Free Games page here.

Install: Simply download the installer, and it should set it up on your computer just fine. (PC only, I’m afraid).

Controls: Pretty simple, mostly arrow keys and Enter/Space Key. Escape Key is the cancel button. You can also mouse around and click on characters (if you want, but I reccomend arrow keys/space as some mouse actions are wonky). You can also toggle Full Screen by hitting Alt+Enter if you really wish to. The rest, I’m sure you’ll figure out on your own. 😉

Just a quick post to say I updated the Catchy Cadence (you know, that awesome FREE game from PDAmill Game Studios) page with gameplay videos of each stage/song in the game.

Similar to this one:

So now you can see how the music jives with the actual visuals and gameplay. And for those of you who are stuck on a certain Waltz stage can view how it should be played 😉

I also made the hi-quality music samples downloadable with a simple right-click/save-as.

Go on son, check it out, you know you want to. 🙂

I should really post more stuff about what’s going on with me lately. You know, like a blog is supposed to. Anyway, Arvale: Journey of Illusion was recently ported and released for iPhone (around Xmas) and I’m very happy to see the overall positive response (Made number 4 in top RPGs in the US iTunes Store, has over 80 reviews so far, overall positive feedback, etc).

Since that is possibly the one game that I poured the most of my soul into more than any other title (including the story, level design, music, audio etc), I’m glad to see it reach a much larger audience and have it gain many more fans.

It almost makes me want to pick up the pen again and start designing Arvale III. Almost.

After a long time in development, I’ve finally released Jaybot’s Catchy Cadence with PDAmill Game Studios. We were also able to release it for FREE for everyone and anyone with a PC to enjoy.

Here’s a quick clip:

What is the game? Well, I could go on about how it’s an interactive music game designed by me and the talented folks at PDAmill Game Studios. But instead, why not just go over to their site and check it out for yourself?
Here’s the link.

Plenty of explanations, screenshots, and videos for you to enjoy there. Or you can simply download the game (since it’s FREE) and dive right in!

I’ve also set up a page on this site (see the Catchy Cadence link up at the top menu) with hi-fi samples of the music featured in the games, along with some thoughts on the writing and designs. Feel free to check it out!

Why free? Well, I believe that there are so many possibilities still untapped for Audio and Music in a Video Game, and this was just a taste of some of the intensely enjoyable designs that can come from really fusing great game design and music into a fantastic package.

Releasing it for free opens up the exposure for as many people as possible who wish to play it. The talented design team at PDAmill Game Studios whole-heartedly agree and were willing to take the steps possible to make the product happen, and make it available to everyone for free.