I just added something very awesome to our #AdventureJam game: a dialog system!

This shows how we’re taking a different direction with this game than Dave’s Dream, which was a bit mysterious, metaphorical, abstract, with no dialog.

Oozie will have dialogs. While this game keeps some mechanics of Dave’s Dream as well as continues the story, it is more comical and mainstream I’d say. We removed the gun part, and now Oozie has a time machine device instead. Technically, he doesn’t die in this game either, but I didn’t have time to make it clear yet that when he falls into a pit, he uses the device before hitting the ground.

So yah, we got rid of the dark, cynical mood of Dave’s Dream. Oozie is a hippie, and he’s here to bring in some humour and personality.

So you’ll notice that the dialog system is not your usual point-and-click system seen in old-school LucasArt / Sierra adventures. The selection of dialogs is done through arrows, or dragging the text, and clicking on the text selects it. I choose this system to make sure the dialog system takes minimal space, and for a few big reasons:
#1 - I like to give more estate to the artwork… well this is my artwork, so it’s pretty crappy, but I like the idea that graphics should be less obstructed by the dialog system.
#2 - You can click on objects while you’re talking. THAT’S RIGHT! In old-school adventure point-and-click, you’d be stuck in a dialog until reaching the end. But in this game, you can click on things while you’re talking. One example where that could be useful is if a thief wanted to steal from someone while distracting with a dialog. In this example here, you can click on the dog. He’ll bark, and it might affect the dialog. This is a somehow novel concept that I hope to experiment with and hope to reuse for future adventure games.
#3 - This is mobile friendly. It’s pretty easy to swipe the text and scroll through your selection that way. This game is in Flash, so I hope to make it into a mobile game via air if it’s popular.

Thanks for reading, and please follow updates on this game if you’d like to know more.