Published by Islona Entertainment Distributed by Epic Marketing Tel: 0 1793 432176 Fax: 0 1793 484097 "Sixth Sense Investigations" ============================ Product informations 1. Short game presentation ----------------------- "Sixth sense investigations" is a new large adventure for the Amiga range of computers , in the classic LucasArts style. The base storyboard tells of a quite crazy, but very calm, sensitive young guy who has the paranormal feature of being able to communicate with the spirit of a sarcastic dead man. A friend, who defines himself as a detective, profits of him by using his skills to solve the most bizarre problems of the rich people ... naturally only if well paid. The poor control that the detective has over the sensitive guy, and that this one has over the spirit, generates many crazy, funny situations which don't help them making many money from their particoular activity ... 2. Game specs and features ----------------------- Game title : "Sixth sense investigations" Game type : Graphic adventure (LucasArts style). Game style : Comedy; humor, gags, crazy situations and very funny dialogues are the base of the game. Time collocation : Modern-age ambientation (divised in 3 dimensions) Requirements : Amiga AGA, 2MB, 68020 Game graphic style : Hand drawn and cartoon-like. Game structure and size : The whole game counts 29 locations, 22 music tracks and various sound effects, 28 characters to interact with, 340 objects, 279 animations (non including the main characters ones !), 24 dialogues, Over 3200 Samples and really many many enigmas. The lenght and difficulty level have been set to high values, especially the difficulty as we would like the people to play a lot this game, not just buy it and complete it in 4 days. About the lenght, we're proud to say that we need about 8 hours to complete it : off course with full solution :). We guess a player with solution in his hands should need about 10 hours. Particoular features : We've put lots of effort in implementing a confortable GUI, to allow players playing intuitively, and MOST important, FAST : we didn't like that the majority of adventures forced the player to long waiting while the hero was walking around, or because he didn't find his way through the room, or because he didn't understood where the player wanted him to go, or because of the very slow mouse reply, that force playwer to wait eafter each click almost a second before the words appeard on the status bar. In Sixth Sense everything goes quickly and smoothly, especially mosue handling, for players to have maximum comfort. Clicking right mouse button on objects performs automatically the most obvious action, so the player often can spare to move the pointer to the parser and back to the object just to examine it. Saving goes fast and unlimited savegames are allowed, for most "defensive" style of playing ("let's go sure, let's save now" is a motto of lots of players). Details of non-important objects have also covered considerable importance : there are douzens of objects in the game that have no real use (ie : aren't needed to complete the game), but have been implemented with lots of detail, and the player can do often more actions on every single of them. An example is the DNA-test-tube in the laboratory : try giving it to doc, and he'll tell you a strange theory about playboy girls ;-) But the point where most effort has been put is the logic structure : we've lots and lots of enigmas, but they mustn't be solved seqeuntialy : most of time the player has 3-4 engimas to be solved at the same time, before going definitely in another part of the game. Often he can walk 7-8 locations without being blocked. Other than these "parallel enigmas", many "crossed enigmas" have been put : to solve one of them U must solve two subenigmas, in the sequence you prefer, then you come to a middle point, then you can sovle another two subenigmas in the sequence you prefer. Combining crossed and parallel enigma structures, and merging the players ideas spreading them on the three worlds (each one with its own way-of-thinking), gives as result a considerable freedom, reduces the moment where the player feels "blocked" ("I really can find no way outta here, let's look in solutions ...", that's a sentence noone should ever say playing a good balanced adventure) and helps discovering new details at each playing-session. 3. Introduction to the game's storyboard and structure --------------------------------------------------- After the introduction (that shows one of the numerous failed attempts to make money through investigations), our heroes will suddenly fall in deep troubles while trying to solve a case based on strange explosions and robots appearing in a cheese store. From this event on, the situation gets worse and worse; Ben is kidnapped by unknown entities, awakes in a jail and will discover that he's now in a parallel robotic dimension. Frank will try to understand what happens, and, with help of a friend scientist, will manage to accomplish an interdimensional jump, trying to appear in the robotic dimension to save Ben. As we all may expect, something goes wrong, and Frank appears in a forest, which really doesn't look as belonging to a robotic dimension ! As a matter of fact Frank is now lost in the Toon dimension, populated by lots of unemployed animals. From now on the whole game develops on the three worlds at the same time : the player will control both Frank and Ben alternatively, and the scene will often swap between the three dimensions, as also many enigmas need interaction between the three to be successfully solved. A depressed lover robot, a thief pig, an hysterical rich woman will be some of our heroes important meetings in the three dimensions. This pretty complex situation makes the game interesting, filled with unexpected events and pretty hard to be solved. Naturally all this dramatic sequence of events is presented to the player in a comedy form, with a global atmosphear of humor and crazy logic. The three dimansions are : - Earth dimension : normal city environment, featuring DOTT like gfx, very bent lines, smooth colors and nonproportional perspective. Merry music. - Robotic dimension : high tech environment, filled with robots, no wood and no humans here; high pollution and disorder. Hand-drawn gfx, but with dark, metallic colors, much less smooth&sweet approach than in the other two worlds. The robotic dimension has been conquered by the mysterious Emperor Paltrytine who is bored because in mastering robots he finds no excitement. He has decided to construct a large access to parallel worlds with the aim of having fun for some years with new types of wars (this is his only hobby). The big obstacle to this funny project is the low level of resources in his dimension, so he's able to create only little interdimensional tunnels. Paltrytine is now sending small groups of robots through these tunnels with the aim of stealing the raw material necessary to conquer the universe! Of course, lucky as we are, Earth is one of the first dimensions that were chosen to be conquered by the great Emperor ... Other than trying to come back to Earth, our heroes should also do something against Paltrytine! - Toon dimension : very simple cartoon gfx (simplier as Earth world), similar to Warner-Bros cartoons. Perspective is more normal than earth one, but lines are very rounded, and surfaces are more uniform (like cartoons). Peaceful small town environment; strong unemployement; only animals live here (ie : the characters are animals). Frank will arrive on the Toons dimension and, to be more precise, in the Toons galaxy, on the Toons planet of the Toons sun system. The planet is very little (50 km diameter) but the gravity of the place is equal to the terrestrial one. This is the craziest dimension, logic is a premium, and the player will have to fight to make his way through the though enigmas we've prepared. As a mater of fact this is the last (chronologicaly) accessed dimension, and features situations where 4-5 engimas have been encapsulated and crossed toghter, allowing the player to solve them in a free sequence. 4. Vega introduction ----------------- "Sixth sense investigations" has been developed using Vega, our attempt to reply to the lack of adventure-games for Amiga. Vega is an adventures conversion/development system that could allow us to convert many PC adventures out in the market today (Day of the Tentacle, Hand of Fate, and so on) in a short time and with good technical results (see below). Naturally also the creation of many quality new games is made much easier by Vega. The Vega graphic adventures developing system is composed by many indipendent editors and compilers (which generate various kinds of datafiles) and by a unique player that generates the adventures from the informations in the datafiles. It's very important to notice that Vega has not just being used to develop the game, but it has been completely programmed by us. By its structure and nature, Vega is, at least ATM, an internal-usage package (here I mean that we'll use it to create graphic adventures, but, ATM, we won't release it as "authoring system"). As indication of some of Vega's capabilities : - Scrolling, main character and mouse pointer at 50 fps. - Every background animation can have a frequence between 1 and 50 fps. - Zoom of main character and of any external one. - Automatic search of the route between two points, this ensures a good playability, as the hero always goes where the player wants him to go, even in complex locations. - Complex objects control (objects changing many times in many different locations), super fast mouse answer, LucasArts alike dialogues. - Runs on any unexpanded A1200. - 256 colors playing area, with various sizes. - Demo scenes. - Multiple main characters control (switching system). - Very fast loading/saving. - Sound effects and voice support - Comfortable game's user interface, including dialogues, multi-shape mouse pointer, mouse shortcuts, for an easy, intuitive, fast and efficent game control. With Vega we would like to create&convert many adventures for our beloved machine. Naturally all will depend from the success our first title ("Sixth sense investigations") meets, we really hope you like it !