Iris is a prototype that only exists to demonstrate a specific game concept. There hasn't been a lot of optimization and polishing, so please be gentle :)

What is this game?
The game is an adventure game in which you control a woman in a world where something is totally wrong. Our heroine has a special ability that allows her to jump back to her childhood. In order to solve the main mystery you will have to explore this special ability to solve a number of puzzles.

Why create this game?
There was a time when adventure games ruled the PC market. As computer hardware was improved more action-oriented games were released and today the amount of new adventure games on the market is extremely low. This genre has brought lots and lots of hours of fun to almost everyone playing PC games in the 1990's and we find it unlikely that the current generation of gamers is so different from our generation that they won't get fascinated by an adventure game that doesn't have the 'action' prefix.

What do I control?
You control the heroine who is called Iris. You can freely switch between the present (2024) and the past (2006). When you are playing in the past the present will be on pause and vice versa. You will be able to move around the environment, pick up items, use/combine items, speak to people and give items to people. You play Iris in her present and past, so you don’t travel between the past and the present in such a manor that you can bring items from one time to the other.

Where does the game take place?
The game takes place in a fictional 'Chinatown' in the year 2006 and 2024. Our part of Chinatown consists of a little street with a couple of houses and a small square in the middle. In 2006 the sun is shining, the birds are singing and everything is in extreme harmony. In 2024 it's raining a lot, dark clouds are hanging over the city.

Enjoy!

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I decided to take a break from Crysis and shooters altogether to work on my single-player, action/adventure mod prototype. I plan to incorporate an engaging story within action adventure gameplay elements, without using guns. Something a little different that will draw the crowds from all the military and/or rebel militia mods out there. I feel as though the majority of mods today are just cannibalizing on one of the most popular sector in games today - the first person shooter. You see a lot of cannibalizing in commercial games and there's a reason for it. New intellectual properties with different gameplay are very high-risk ventures and sometimes aren't marketed right (see: Psychonauts). So they mostly stick to what sells, and what sells are first person shooters. So what we get as consumers are games that are just iterations of each other. Sometimes we'll get some innovation, sometimes they're just gimmicks, (see: Cold Fear with all-new boat tilting action!) but a lot of the time it’s just a Xerox of a Xerox. A copy of a copy. Blacksite 51 anyone?

Anyways, back to modding. Modders are only limited by their technical know-how, imagination and time they have to dedicate to a project. Yet there's still a lot of mods out there that tend to stick to cannibalizing past games. There's more to interaction with your environment than just shooting it. Try taking ideas and inspiration from outside mediums, from life. Something happens when you take the gun out of a player’s hand. The thought process goes from, "What can I shoot?" to, "What can I interact with?” It becomes a different kind of adventure- one that may be a welcome change. Now, it can be argued that the games with the most robust editing suites (Half-life, Unreal Tournament) are first person shooters so that's why there are so many mods that are FPS style. However, with sufficient work the possibilities of creating something fresh can surface. I did a little bit of digging through the catalogue here at Mod DB to check out what mods for Half-Life 2 dealt in adventure sans ammunition. Here's a few of the treasures I came across:

Weekday Warrior


The students at Guildhall SMU bring you a mod that whisks you away from the throes of reality into the magical land of ... boring drudgery at an office? Yes, that's right folks; this Office Space inspired mod pits you in the role of Doug, resident office slacker. Making your way around the everyday doldrums of the office, you are eventually tasked with retrieving some questionable documents for your boss in a 3D point-and-click adventure. Makes you think, if you had a game like this with writing as solid as The Office TV series, there might be some great entertainment in there somewhere. It was very refreshing for a Half-Life 2 mod considering I didn't fire a gun throughout the whole bite-sized experience and still enjoyed myself. Oh yeah, and they won last year's IGF best singleplayer mod competition.

Just another day at the office...


Iris


Iris is a prototype put together by a team of Danish students in one month. You play as Iris as she sets out to find her parents in the setting of Chinatown 2024 & 2006. Puzzles are solved by jumping back and forth from the dark, dystopian future to your bright, cheerful past. The mechanic may not be unique (it's similar to The Ocarina of Time and the light and dark theme used in many Nintendo games) but the universe and environments it sets you in immediately grab your attention. Iris is very short and rough around the edges but that doesn't disguise how well it is put together. The presentation reels you in from the beginning and leaves you wanting more. Voice acting is some of the best I've heard in a mod with well-written dialogue to boot! Hell, this unfinished prototype has more polish than probably over half the 'finished' mods I've played. Anyone attempting a story-based mod of their own would do well to check this one out.

Iris


Insects Infestation


This multiplayer mod dives into the world of the teeny tiny and pits ants against termites. Powerful mandibles, acid spit and poop are your weapons here. While I'm sure I didn't get to experience much of it, (no one playing this anymore?) what I did see looked good. The visuals and sounds made the experience so visceral that it all it needed was a hushed, soft spoken narrator to make me think I was in a nature show. Worth a look/second look if you’re searching for something different.

Ant vs Termites


There's more where this came from of course, but it's all hidden under a layer of gun-toting and explosions. It's difficult to think a little different and peruse a concept or gameplay style that might not be mainstream. At some point though, I think hardcore gamers are going to want more than just your run-and-gun variety. So, to all the fellow modders out there, push yourself into new directions rather than just sticking with the tried and true mechanics. You might just find yourself a hit.

Mods of 2006 - Player's Choice

Mods of 2006 - Player's Choice

Feature 81 comments

80,000 votes. 4,000 mods. Over the course of 2 months, gamers from across the globe came together to decide which mods rank as the epitome of what our...

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Iris installer

Full Version 5 comments

Iris Prototype 1.0 Setup: This game is a Half-Life 2 modification. That means that Steam and Half-Life 2 must be preinstalled for this game to run. Steam...

Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 58)
BionicCoyote
BionicCoyote

Sounds and looks like an interesting concept! Hope it still works!

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Resserection
Resserection

Does it?

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legendgrobo
legendgrobo

I've had so much fun playing this thing over and over. Shame it doesn't work anymore (for me at least).

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Akito8
Akito8

I am having major problems playing this mod and it looks so fun D:!

First off, right when I launch the game I get a white screen and a message at the top that says "Cannot Find Vids:LV50 Decompressor". I can still hear the audio in the background however so I suppose this is the opening cutscene and I waited. But then once the cutscene was over and the menu came up I was missing the Background texture (The menus background was just purple checkers) and finally once I started a new game it was in first person.. not 3rd person :/

Anyone know if there is some way to fix this??

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Emil_4444
Emil_4444

This was a very fun mod but i got stuck in both times in the biginning and it's easy to get styck offen that's annoing so 8/10 but keep it upp it was great to play tho

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XenoAisam
XenoAisam

is this RPG?

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Headcrusher
Headcrusher

you fail at reading the describtion.

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Luke-54
Luke-54

Kill me or not but i smell Beyond Good & Evil inspiration in this mod...

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ahref
ahref

hi,

i love the idea also however in the past and present words the area where you find the ball has a fence that is too high i cannot get down and am stuck in both time periods and cannot continue

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one-niner Creator
one-niner

Again, we're really happy that so many like our prototype. On the other side it has become clear that we haven't been communicating clearly enough, and that has lead to some confusion and disappointment. We sincerely apologize.

We, the dev team, are a bunch of students from various Danish universities and art schools that, parallel to our ordinary studies, have joined a game academy. Once a year we get together, sit down for a month straight and work our butts off creating a prototype. We get feedback from industry professionals and then we all head back to our universities untill next year.

The goal has never been to develop an entire game, but only to learn from the process of demonstrating our ideas and abilities. Most of us are about to finish our masters studies and then we will try to make a living from developing computer games. Some will end up in established companies, others will start something on their own and the rest will probably continue to work with games as a hobby.

Handing over rights to another team might be possible, but certainly tricky. We are 13 people that somehow share the IP. The actual code and content is property of the academy. However, if someone out there sincerely wants to take Iris further, please contact me. On Tomsweb.dk there is a mail form.

\tom
Producer, Iris

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R0CKET_B0MB
R0CKET_B0MB

Hey, just played your mod, and it is absolutely wonderful. Please keep this mod going! I'm gonna watch this mod!

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