Adventure Gamers - Forums

I have posted an article on the Kickstarter page and the webpage, detailing the control scheme of Charlotte’s Dream. This is an old genre for a modern age, so the controls had to be updated.

Updating the controls of a classic genre

One of the challenges of making Charlotte’s Dream, was coming up with a quick and responsive control scheme, that was flexible yet intuitive. In classic adventure games, the controls were often a bit slow and cumbersome to work with, with dozens of buttons to choose from. In newer adventure games this problem was solved by simplifying the amount of buttons to about two or three. Yet by abstracting the controls this much, I feel that a lot of control was taken away from the player. And it sometimes made puzzles difficult, not because of inherent difficulty, but because of the abstraction of the actions.

Charlotte’s Dream makes use of “default actions”. If you left click any object without selecting a button, Charlotte will perform the most logical action on that object. For example, left clicking a door will prompt Charlotte to open or close it. Left clicking an item will make her pick it up, and left clicking a lever will make her operate it. You have the option to manually override the default action, by clicking any of the buttons on the control panel. So if you want to examine a statue, or talk to a statue, you can still do this. This makes the controls of Charlotte’s Dream very swift and intuitive to use.

Using items from your inventory is equally simple. If you left-click an item in your inventory, such as a key, the game will automatically assume that you will want to use it on something. You can then left-click on the suitcase, to open it with the key. If you would rather examine an item in your inventory, you can choose to do this manually.

Items can also be used on other items with the same amount of ease. For example, you can first left-click on a shard of glass, and then left-click on a piece of fruit, to cut the fruit in half.

But the game’s item system is far more flexible than that of most adventure games. For example, I have a corked bottle, a shard of glass and a piece of fruit (picture 1). I can try to cut this piece of fruit again with the shard of glass, but now we are going to do more with it.

The fruit is now cut in two again, and the juice smells rather toxic. Now I would like to put the juice from the fruit into the bottle. I’ll first have to take out the cork though. (picture 2).

Now that I have taken out the cork, I’m left with a cork and an empty bottle. The cork might come in handy somewhere else. I can now combine the bottle with the cut fruit. (picture 3).

I now have a bottle filled with poisonous juice (picture 4).

Now that I have a bottle filled with poisonous juice, I can do what ever I want with it (picture 5). I can drink the contents of the bottle, smell the bottle, or empty the bottle, so that I can fill it with something else. The bottle can be filled with any liquid that you encounter in the game.

Since the fruit juice is poisonous, drinking from the bottle would obviously not be a very good idea (picture 6). But maybe I can poison something else with it? Keep in mind that none of this is required to complete the game. But the game is flexible enough to allow players to come up with their own solutions to various problems.

This flexibility also extends to the dialogues. Players can ask npc’s about any topic that they have come across on their journey. If they have met a new character, or visited a new location, they can ask other characters about these things. Dialogue trees change constantly depending on the information that the player gathers.

This ensures that conversations with other characters are dynamic and with purpose, rather than a matter of exhausting every option in the dialogue tree. What you say to characters matters. And in the case of some characters, saying the wrong thing can actually get you killed.

Thanks Mr Underhill! I wish the game was in a demo state. A lot of content is already in the game, but it is not enough for an alpha or demo build sadly. But I will be posting more videos and images of the game soon.

This looks interesting. I backed it. Good luck with the kickstarter!

Oh man, dem nostaglia feels for 20 years ago.

Game looks simply AMAZING!

I feel like I have a connection with the developer coz I too was brought up on an Amiga and adventure games and am the same age.

Thanks for all the great feedback everyone! And yes Burge, it is exactly that lovely feeling of nostalgia that I’m going for. And there will be the occasional nod to the old Amiga in the game, I guarantee it.

Some concept art for the game.

Amazing concept and great write-up at Kickstarter. I’ve shared your campaign on my Facebook and Twitter page.   

Thanks Musclehustle! By the way, I just posted a short video on how a new room is made for the game. Check it out here:

The Charlotte’s Dream Kickstarter is now in its last two days, and we really need your support. Check out the Kickstarter page and back the project.

I get a massive Secret Of Monkey Island vibe from your game, awesome.

I love the music in the trailer on the KS page. Is it original and composed for this game?

subbi - 19 August 2015 11:38 AM

I love the music in the trailer on the KS page. Is it original and composed for this game?

Thanks. That is actually license free music, but I carefully picked it to fit the video. The final game will probably have music that better fits the retro vibe, although I agree the trailer music is really nice.

Burge - 19 August 2015 08:21 AM

I get a massive Secret Of Monkey Island vibe from your game, awesome.

Thanks! That is exactly the vibe I’m going for.