With tonight’s Release 2.4 of my hand-painted adventure “The Testament of the White Cypress”, the project is finally complete. Except for bugfixes, this is the finished version of Cypress. (This new release is available for Linux and Windows; a Mac OSX update from 2.2 is coming soon.)

Our last release showed a number of improvements to make Cypress easier to play and complete the entire story. In version 2.3 a new autosave slot was implemented, making recovery from mishaps quite easy. Tutorial pop-up hints became larger and featured more prominently, and the action now paused automatically when a pop-up appeared, to make sure it could be read and allow the user to choose when to continue.

Now for version 2.4, the story of “Cypress” has been expanded and completed with a new first-person account of events written from Geoffrey’s perspective, comprising some 30 new pages of in-game story text weaving events together and guiding the player.

• Geoffrey now keeps a Quest Journal in his backpack. The journal gradually fills up with notes on Geoffrey’s response to situations, and these also serve as a reminder of his next quest objective. Thus following the quest is now easier, and the player can review the journal at any time if unsure where to go next.

• Geoffrey now auto-aims slightly when drawing back his bow to fire an arrow. This makes combat easier, especially against wolves when they move laterally.

• Longer journal entries do not appear instantly; instead a notification is given that Geoffrey must make camp soon in order to write. The Journal entry and its notification then appear after camping.

• Several existing NPC conversation topics were expanded.

In addition, many bugs were vanquished on my last trek through Ildron!

• Fixed some hints disappearing.

• Fixed Arturo walking away during conversation.

• Arturo now goes to the house to unlock it for you.

• Fixed Arturo dropping a quest item in inconvenient location.

• Fixed black border on right side in final level

This is the final release, except for bugfixes! Please enjoy the
finished quest, and please report any questions/comments to me at
[email protected]