Independent Gaming: Heartland Deluxe

Monday, November 20, 2006

Originally an OROW competition entry that won the prize for best writing, Heartland Deluxe now includes cutscenes and a panoramic view but it's relatively short length will disappoint many adventure game veterans.

The author admits that the lock puzzle is random, plus an abrupt end to proceedings does little to improve the situation. A commendable effort nonetheless.

Name: Heartland Deluxe
Developer: LimpingFish
Category: Adventure
Type: Freeware
Size: 20MB

Posted at 7:18 AM by Tim

Post a Comment

Anonymous said at 11/22/2006 12:33:00 AM:

who types ... like this? ... developers should try ... typing a whole paragraph ... pages and pages of ... vaguaries and cliches ... i am the way! ... am i supposed to be interested? ... screen scrolls wildly to the left whenever i try to click "inventory" ... why doesn't the right mouse button work on the inventory screen? ... hotspots vanish for seemingly no reason ... pretty sure this isn't ... how ellipses are intended to be used.

Anonymous said at 11/22/2006 12:49:00 AM:

2 dessgeega: try 2 right click-it helps)))

BUT!
i've stuck with the phone bell! nothin happens...

Anonymous said at 11/22/2006 01:57:00 AM:

Is the lock combo really random or did I miss a clue somewhere? I've been trying for a while without much luck...

Anonymous said at 11/22/2006 02:24:00 AM:

what, does right-clicking make the cliches go away?

Anonymous said at 11/22/2006 03:05:00 AM:

Ah thanks, finally finished it. I'm not really sure what to make of the story. It's too vague and too short. The Presentation is really good though. Also, I think I prefer the old slideshow mode over the 2d panoramic thing. Oh well, I guess I'm just prone to motion sickness.

Anonymous said at 11/22/2006 05:18:00 AM:

It's truly hilarious to see dessgeega complain about someone else's sloppy / affected writing style.

Anonymous said at 11/23/2006 02:24:00 AM:

You must have a very highbrow sense of humour.

Anonymous said at 11/23/2006 05:24:00 PM:

Thanks for playing my game. Sorry about the technical problems, all of which I've tried to address in v1.1.

As to the paragraph issue, it was a design choice to keep the text to single lines within the lower gui, so as not to obscure the main screen. As the game is 640x480 large paragraphs of text would have taken up a lot of screen real-estate.

Any critiques on my writing style are valid, and you are, of course, entitled to express them :)

Thanks again for taking the time to play.

LimpingFish

Anonymous said at 11/23/2006 05:57:00 PM:

well, breaking up the text on the bottom of the screen makes sense, but the letter in the typewriter? it seems obfuscated simply for the sake of being obfuscated, and it breaks the suspense of disbelief.

and i feel like there's too many tapes to click through for the little amount of content contained in them.

Anonymous said at 11/24/2006 04:53:00 PM:

Yes, the typewriter page is purposely
vague, as it's meant to represent just skimming over Coombs' text.

The nature of the tapes is just my misguided attempt to pace the feed of information to the player.

I do see your point, though. :)

LimpingFish