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[Hubris Incalculable]

....whoa.

seconded

[Terrahex]

did we lose?

[Argembarger]

Yup

Only Rusty won.

Fitting, really.

[mnjiman]

We didnt lose, we hid in the sub.

[Jim Groovester]

Buuut didn't the whole core explode?

I hope I'm getting this right.

Also, Retro, great work finishing an adventure partially driven by user input or audience participation or what have you. It worked out very well.

[Retro]

Day 9846

My dearest Preston. I thought of you again last night.

I have told before of the dreams I so often have. Screams all around me, crying out. I cannot see their origin. Winds of ice and snow converge and threaten to drown me.

But then a hand reaches out through the storm and pulls me out. And I see that there was never a storm at all. Only brilliant white sunshine.

Each night in the dream as the hand reaches down, I think it to be yours and run to it. It never is. That is merely the trick dreams play on you, allowing you to imagine what you know cannot be.

The hand does not belong to you. It belongs to a friend of mine. You would recognize him if you saw him, but would not truly know him. He is more than his physical components would suggest. That is the mistake I once made.

My friend does not have a given name. He insists he has never needed one. There was a time when he thought of himself as ‘Adventure Guy.’ A curious association. More of a title than a true name. But that has since been discarded.

In our many conversations I have learned that my friend once believed he was human. He simply did not have reason to believe otherwise. And I have come to see him as more human in mind than could have ever been reasonably expected of a machine built for such a purely physical utility.

I find myself returning again and again to the question of how this could have happened. Was this a glitch, a hardware malfunction that caused new growth when it had never been intended? Or could perhaps all the robots of this model have had this spark of humanity in them that we had simply never noticed, or never allowed ourselves to see? …Or perhaps something greater?

I do not easily entertain the notion of the divine, Preston. You know me better than that. But there are times when I sit alone in my home and would swear that I can see something watching. It is only there for a hair of a second, then it is gone, and suddenly I feel as if it was never there at all. It looks familiar, but I cannot place from where.

I will not make any conclusions about what I saw. I would like to think of myself as better than that these days. Nonetheless, no obvious explanation presents itself. For now I will simply categorize the occurrences as ‘hereto unexplained.’

Whatever his origins, my friend’s respect for life is remarkable, even for those passed. In my first year with him he built a small burial ground on the mountaintop. I did not recognize all the names he marked. I do not inquire. He shares his own burdens.

We once hiked to the surface on a weekly basis, sometimes near-daily. That time has passed. I cannot make the trip nearly so often these days. He continues to return above without me. He says that he enjoys the adventure of it, but I suspect he merely wishes for time alone with his absent friends.

The oculoids call him ‘Mnemnem.’ I am not sure where the name originated, though as best I can tell he adopted it from one of the oculoids killed long ago. He does not wish to talk about it. I suspect there is a lot about his own adventures I do not know. Similarly,  he has refused to allow me to fix his wounds, for reasons he will not expand upon. But that is not for me to know. I continue to respect his decisions.

His interaction with the oculoids is fascinating. He is marvelous with them. They follow him around and have begun to associate meanings with certain vocal intonations. Their capacity to learn and adapt is simply remarkable. He is teaching them to use tools as well. They are not especially dexterous, but in comparison with their first attempts years ago, they have improved a great deal. In time, and with his continued guidance, they will master it.

I myself have been serving as a physician to the oculoids. Somewhat outside the realm of my usual duties as a ‘doctor,’ but like my patients I have been learning new things. The oculoids have never cared for their sick before; it was best for them to write off those who would not recover. I imagine their population will soon begin to bloom.

As for the oculoids themselves… They are happier than any being I have before seen. They are quite fond of myself, certainly, but they utterly adore my friend. He spends all his time caring for them, entertaining them, playing games, telling them stories.

He is a remarkable storyteller. I wish you were here to listen. I occasionally recognize elements that seem familiar, but he is too quick, blending plots together before I can catch the resemblance. It is highly entertaining.

Though my friend accepts no name, I have privately begun to think of him as Alexander. He reminds me of you so. But so has everything these last years, it seems.

He will of course outlive me. There remains enough electricity to keep him charged for decades to come. Perhaps by then the oculoids will not need a caretaker. Until then, he will fill the role admirably.

I have grown old, Preston. I am not yet sixty, yet I feel twice that. Time seems to pass faster here. Things wear out quicker. There is such life all around me, but I feel so slow and creaky. My time will soon come. I do not fear that day. I was given a new chance to live my life for others; I feel I have made the best of that.

I believe it is summer now, where we grew up. On Earth. I think of it so often, but I no longer ache for it. It is a fond memory to be cherished. But nothing more.

I miss you terribly, Preston, but I will let you go now. I am tired of dwelling on the past. The future looks so bright. Perhaps one day I will see you there.

Goodbye, partner.

Yours,
Claire Feringus, M.D.

“Granny”

[Retro]

So Adventure Guy is all done, and I owe you guys some thanks for helping me finish it. The original point of this game was to improve my drawing abilities (I started AG later the same day that I bought my tablet with no idea how to use it) while seeing what I could whip up storywise simply by throwing in lots of ideas at the start then pulling a coherent plot out of it, so I guess that worked out (well, arguably, from an art angle). Then again I didn’t expect the game to take over seven months to complete (seriously, I expected four, maybe five if things got drawn out), so whether starting this game and then proceeding to spend all that time killing my back drawing this thing was a good idea or not remains debatable.

Nevertheless, Adventure Guy was a great experience for me and I have newfound appreciation for suggestion-based games. I’ll certainly be running something else eventually, though not right away. I’m going to take a while and workshop a bit until I have a solid setting. Going to do something a bit more open and less backstory-centric, preferably without the stereotypical amnesiac protagonist who begins the game by waking up. I’m going to keep using this thread to post anything relevant to that, I think. And maybe AG art test dumps when I get bored.

Some fun facts: Adventure Guy ran 231 days and 1189 panels (give or take a few, considering some panels were outside the numbering scheme and others, like inventory screens, I only sometimes counted). That’s about five panels a day. Round 16 makes up about 20% of the game, while being nearly twice as long as Round 15 (the second longest by far) and about 3-5 times as long as any other round (seriously, look at this monster). It was also by far the hardest and most time-consuming to draw. Thanks a lot, me.

I think I’m going to archive this on a site somewhere (eventually!). I don’t actually have a copy of any of this saved to my computer except a dump of the ‘print’ of the thread which I just grabbed and saved right now, so using a forum thread is not really the greatest place to leave it (especially seeing as how there’s a good chance I’ll be inexplicably banned within the month). I’ll come back with a link when I do. The rounds are all weirdly sized in relation to each other so I’ll probably break things up into more sensible chapters. Maybe 10? I dunno.

That’s it from me. Thanks again. If anyone has any lingering questions feel free to ask.

e- I just took out the 'thanks for playing!' from the last panel because it looked awkward. But I want to stress it again - Thank you for playing.

Buuut didn't the whole core explode?

The reaction rapidly froze the entire planet. Later it thawed (mostly). Wasn’t super clear, but the dangerous effect of the rushing wave of energy was, so I figured it was fine to not explicitly clarify off the bat.

[Rose]

Truly a masterpiece.

[RAM]

* RAM claps

[Haspen]

*Haspen sheds a tear*

Goddammit, best forum adventure I have ever seen.

Now go make a real game from it

[mnjiman]

Best freaking ending to this ever. It completes it so dam well. Holy shit man, I teared up at the part with the Grave Yard. Freaking Wow.


*cheers*

Was there any commands the players gave that throw you off and were not expecting?

[Jim Groovester]

So when you started this thing, where did you think it would go?

I'm wondering if Adventure Guy started off as a robot or whether that developed naturally through the course of the story, along with other plot elements.

[Retro]

Was there any commands the players gave that throw you off and were not expecting?

A couple. Some were awesome and some I was very reluctant to use. Example of the former: Giving Skree the Junior Adventurer hat completely surprised me, but it's easily my favourite command, and didn't really affect story at all, just characterization a bit, so I just threw it in. On the other hand, and this was the most daunting unexpected command, opting to circumvent Feringus' last order and save her against her will totally threw me for a loop. I hadn't honestly intended for that to even be possible - for the most part, even key story stuff, I did my best to keep things open to some degree, but you were never supposed to be able to hypothetically save her life, only her conscience. I just phrased her command as a simple 'run' for dramatic effect and wasn't even expecting any suggestions between then and the finale. I was really surprised when I came back to see that that was the desired course of action anyhow. But after I thought about it a bit, I realized how much better it fit the story and some of the themes, and I'm really glad it got suggested. Great example of the players bettering the story.

Also the make-a-sword thing, which basically came totally out of nowhere.

So when you started this thing, where did you think it would go?

I'm wondering if Adventure Guy started off as a robot or whether that developed naturally through the course of the story, along with other plot elements.

I started with a human explorer in a cave. I knew I wanted to subvert a lot of the initial expectations, but I didn't know what elements were going to be the ones getting subverted. The closest thing I had to a plan was the notion of throwing as many different elements as I could into the first week or two of story, then building something out of that. I had a lot of potential ideas for each plot subversion that I ended up going with; for example, AG being a robot was a possibility from as early as before the mirror was broken, but I didn't decide to absolutely go with it until his arm started to lose power and turned off. Most things were like that, where I had a few ideas but I didn't nail any one down until I got to the point where I needed to. Other stuff, like the second researcher being alive, I had decided was the case well before, and always knew that that was where Gentleman would be whenever you couldn't find him, and that him and the doctor were monitoring your progress and planning on manipulating you. One hell of a lot did get subverted, though: You were most certainly not a human explorer alone in an ancient natural cave system on Earth in the present day, in any sense.

Other stuff, like the music box controlling the weather, I just made up on the fly. That's a better example of 'throwing random stuff in and figuring out how they fit together later.' I put a music box into the second room because I think there is something very magical about music boxes and I wanted it to do something supernatural or be a key element somehow, but I had no idea what. Then someone suggested playing it at the top of the mountain, and I was like "sounds good to me" and then that's what it did.

I did have a loose story concept after the first three-four days, but nothing really got refined or solidified until around when I introduced the relevant elements. As far as I can tell that's the only real way to run a suggestion-based narrative where the story is a secret to the players. Otherwise you have to have everything planned out to a tee and then the players are hardly playing anything.

[Zako]

I smiled at the bird and the egg crosses. Sad, but somewhat cute nonetheless.

And fantastic story! WOW!!! Man, you should totally do another soon. And a great ending btw.

[Ultimuh]

Truly epic, I wonder what you are going to do next.
Unless you have gotten tired of this.