Heroine's Quest: Feature Preview news

Meet The Team

First, let me introduce the team behind Heroine's Quest! The core team consists of five of us:- Radiant, Corby, Dmitrii, Matt Chastney and myself.

Radiant is the writer and programmer for Heroine's Quest. He wrote not only the story, but designed the puzzles which go along with it. Currently, he is debugging the game to get it up to that final level of polish. He resides in the Netherlands.

Corby is the lead artist and animator on this project. Inspired by his surroundings in northern Canada, he came up with the idea and theme of 'Heroine's Quest' , and painted the majority of backgrounds and GUIs, pixel animated the majority of the 10000+ sprites in game (yes, that's over 10 000 hand-animated frames!), and had a hand in several portraits as well.

Dmitrii is from the US, and composed many of the tuneful and catchy music pieces. He also worked on portraits and additional sprite art.

Matt Chastney is also a composer for Heroine's Quest, and created the motif theme for Heroine’s Quest, upon which he has based many of his epic atmospheric masterpieces. He resides in the UK.

And I am Fizzii, and I worked on background art and portraits. I also organised several voice actors and put together the voice pack. I am from Australia.

We were also supported by additional contributors towards the art, programming, testing and even had a linguist assist us with the pronunciation of the Nordic names.

What is the Game Like?

So I suppose a thought that many people may have in the back of their minds is 'Heroine's Quest looks really cool! I wonder what it will be like...'.You've probably already got an idea of what the game looks and sounds like from our trailers and preview art, so with that in mind, let me share some cool features of the game with you:

1) The story, locations and characters are steeped in Norse mythology, with several puzzles inspired by the Prose Edda itself.

Heroine's Quest is full of mythology, and includes characters and many of their back stories from the Prose Edda (a compilation of Norse myths believed to have been put together by Snorri Sturluson around the year 1220). When I started working with the Heroine’s Quest team, I knew hardly anything about Viking mythology. For example, did you know that Thor had two magical goats which could be eaten and grow back the next day? It may not be relevant to the plot in Heroine’s Quest, but there are references such as this scattered throughout the game. Not to mention that many stories have been woven into the puzzles themselves, providing fluid and integrated gameplay.

Not only is the story influenced strongly by Norse mythology, but some of the music is also inspired by Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle (think, 'Ride of the Valkyries') and Edvard Grieg's 'In the Hall of the Mountain King'.

2) The characters all have back stories plus their own interests and needs/wants. They also have schedules and move around to different places at different times of the day.

Not only does each character have a purpose being in the game, but they have their own little story to tell. And you can help them out too, if you like, or you can choose not to. Or, if you like being a pest, you can even be a nuisance to some of them! Many of the characters are very likeable or funny to talk to, and there are even some which you may come to care about.

One cool thing which I have enjoyed seeing in the game is this: Characters aren't always stationary in the one place, and often move to other locations during the day. You can even follow them from room to room! This brings a lot of life and realism to the cities, and is not commonly seen in adventure games at all!

3) The game has a strong story from the get-go.

When I first watched the opening of a Heroine’s Quest alpha build last year (prior to joining the team), it was with placeholder art, and graphically, not even complete. Nevertheless, I was in fits of laughter with the introduction, and left with no doubt as to my heroine's purpose and what I needed to do to become a heroine.

And the pace keeps up. Radiant has done a masterful job at providing an engaging storyline, and you will be thoroughly immersed as the story unfolds.

So all in all...

We are working hard (or rather, Radiant is working very hard) to wrap up the game and finish bug fixing it. The game is currently playable right through to the end (with a very enjoyable ending), and we are really trying to make it as bug free as possible. So keep an eye out, and it will be released before you know it!