The Journey of Iesir *Demo*

[Daniel Thomas]

The Journey of Iesir *Demo*

(please read below about the demo)
The Journey of Iesir takes place in a land reminiscent of the medieval ages, yet has a story that integrates ideas as old as the legendary Vikings, and as modern as the hippie movement in the 1970's.

The player takes the role of Michael, a wandering playwright among other things, and he sees Iesir and its troubles through the fresh eyes of a stranger, yet he becomes pivotal to the events that unfold in Iesir.   Seeking both adventure and inspiration for his new screenplay, under the guidance of his mysterious Mentor, Mikael seeks out a Viking called Daniel Trondhjemsfjord, who needs help with a task that seems adventurous.  What seems like a simple quest of stealing a old Viking painting soon turns out to be more then Mikael could have ever imagined...

Who is his mysterious Mentor, who has set Mikael on a path that leads him to places he never imagined?  How do the recent viking attacks along the coastline fit into Daniel's past, and Iesir's future?  Why is there a demon-possessed, moose-headed alchemist in town?  The game delivers a rich and detailed plot dealing with some hefty issues along with a a large dollop of humour. The Journey of Iesir is a tale of discovery and change on many levels.

Screenshots

About the Demo

This is a pitch demo of The Journey of Iesir, an ambitious project started 6 years ago with the intent to go commercial with help of funding. We never made it all the way but we figured we would release the demo that came out of the journey.
As it's a pitch demo and released "as is" there are some rough edges, for an example the cinematic are pure sketches.
Either way we hope you will enjoy this!
We gladly answer any question about the production, journey and experience! Just type it below!


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Download Here!

Dialogue options turn gray if there is no new text.
Mouse pointer is context sensitive - it has outline glow if new/more dialogues are available.
Press Space to highlight hotspots in the scene.

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Features
* Fun and quirky puzzles
* Vibrant and fun art in 1024x768 resolution
* Animations that bring the characters to life, full of expressions!
* Living environments with effects to enhance immersion
* Mini-games(!)


Credits Dream Cauldron
Daniel "zyndikate" Thomas - Lead artist, Animator & project manager
Dave "CaptainD" Seaman - Writer
Tino "Knoodn" Bensing - Scripting
Eric "Viking" Galluzzo - Music
Daniel Swearengin - Sound design
Albin Bernhardsson - Scripting
Yaroslav Shmelev - Programming
Bartek Wojenka - Production and Business

With additional help from
Santtu Ahola - Programming
Simon Eltz - Animator
Nikolas Sideris - Music
Ryan Timothy - Programmer
Daniel Muller - Animator
Marcus Gaigg - Writer
Geoff Hawthorne "strange visitor" - Script and puzzles
Calin Leafshade for AGSBlend plugin

Testers
Arjon van Dam
Cristopher Sacchi
Daniel Mclaughlan
Phil Normand
Robert McManus
Selmiak

[Cassiebsg]

Looks great! Can't wait to be fired so I can have time to play all these great stuff!

Thanks for releasing it as Demo.

[Creamy]

That's gorgeous !
The graphics have a Disney quality to them.
Incidentally, the girls in the last pic remind me of the 3 sisters in Beauty & the Beast.

Spoiler

[close]

[Athanor]

Wow, what a wonderful surprise! When I first saw the early screenshots of your game, I really hoped to be able to play it some day. Now that day arrived - that's great.

[Slasher]

Thumbs up

[Andail]

Great news, Daniel!
Me and many others have been keeping an eye on this project for decades. Or at least many years.

Without exaggerating I'd say that this is the prettiest game AGS has seen so far. Whether you like the style or not, this is simply as pretty as it gets.

Now, it's a bit early to comment on the rest of the gameplay/plot, and since this kind of comedy isn't exactly my cup of tea I'll just wish you a huge good luck and hope you can row this magnificient project to shore, as we Vikings say.

[Daniel Thomas]

Thanks guys, hope you have a good time playing it as well

@Creamy: Spot on, was the reference I used

@Andail: Unfortunately the demo is all there will be as we the team decided to stop working on the project. There is a lot of material done that isn't in the demo - We should probably make a post with stuff that we made after the demo for people who are interested. I mean, there is no good having stuff done if you can't show it
This include not only art, music etc. Also a custom game engine we started with our game specifically in mind and to catch up with tech (although, now CW and team has done a good job doing that. But this was 2 years ago and we couldn't just wait.)

[CaptainD]

I'm incredibly sad that the demo is all people are going to see of this game , but it's still nice to have it actually out there and we can get some feedback on how much people enjoyed it.  Like many amateur dev teams we made many mistakes both as individuals and as a team, but hopefully the demo will show just how much potential was there, it just didn't all come together in the end.

[selmiak]

hopefully the demo will show just how much potential was there, it just didn't all come together in the end.

this is sad! 

[shaun9991]

This is sad to hear, Dave Without a doubt the most beautiful AGS game around. Downloading the demo now!

[Viking]

Regardless of not getting the full game done, this was definitely a blast to work on; and everyone on the team was absolutely great.  I ended up writing, orchestrating and producing 40 minutes or so of music, of which about 20 minutes made it into the demo.  (The rest either didn't work with the scene, was just test music, or went with scenes that are past the end of the demo.)

Maybe someday, when we're all retired and have nothing better to do, we'll get back together and make the full game.  But until then, enjoy!

[Andail]

Oh, I completely misunderstood. I take back my "great news!" comment immediately.

Sad to hear you've cancelled the project. I guess this was an extremely time consuming and demanding project, looking at the high production values and your ambitions.

[jwalt]

Spent over two very enjoyable hours with the demo. Left me wanting to continue. Sad that you've canceled it! I don't expect that six years is a record for working on an AGS game, but that probably contributed to the project's dropping dead. Impressive game, on a lot of levels.

[Miguel R. Fervenza]

The production values are amazing. Awesome art (one of the best that I've seen in an adventure game, little or big), characters, music, sound design... It's really sad that you can`t complete the project. Thanks a lot for sharing the demo.

[Slasher]

Such a shame....Pass the hankies

[Daniel Thomas]

Glad people are enjoying the game!

And too much party pooping!
Let me elaborate a little on the project. As I see it we completed exactly what we set out to complete - which was this pitch demo. The plan was from early on to get this project funded so we could get people working full time. The game was ambitious for this reason and we aimed for high production value.
Where we didn't get all the way was getting a publisher funding it, which is really not in our control. We had a few interests, we had some talks, but in the end it came down to cost and risk.

Last resort would have been continue doing it as a freetime project. We made calculations on this, and as people suspected, taking on this production value as a free-time project would take another 4-5 years to finish if everything went as planed.

I don't, and no one in the team should, see it as a failure. We finished what we set out to finish as a hobby team, and we ended up with a ~2-3 hour game with good quality.

[Mandle]

Wait... the "demo" is 2-3 hours long?!

Is there no way you can just rewrite an actual ending to the game, find a friendly indie publisher (like Screen 7) and release it for real?

That's way long enough for a full game...

I understand that reducing the full vision of the game to a lite version leaves a sour taste in the mouth of an artist...But, if it could be rewriten slightly to make the lite version workable...

[Daniel Thomas]

@Mandle: I Don't see the point really, the demo is available for free and it has the 2-3hours already, so just play it and enjoy

[Monsieur OUXX]

It's relly sad news that the game won't be finished :-(

[jwalt]

Wait... the "demo" is 2-3 hours long?!

I think I may be the only one that mentioned time of play. I tend to be pretty dense with puzzles, so it may not be taking other folks that long to play it. Looks like time of play information might be useful to Daniel Thomas.