“Daymare Town” is one of those odd little games that’s hard to classify. On the surface, it’s straight out point-and-click adventure, but there are also elements of puzzle game to it, with a soupcon of RPG mixed in. Made by Pastel Games, and particularly the brainchild of game/puzzle designer Mateusz Skutnik, “Daymare Town” has become something of a legend in the annals of browser games, and hopefully some folk who haven’t yet had the chance to enjoy it will read this review and give it a whirl.

Technically, when I refer to “Daymare Town” as a whole, I’m talking about three games: “Daymare Town 1″, “Daymare Town 2″, and “Daymare Town 3″, but since they’re all quite short I want to examine all of them, and really reflect on the experience as a whole.

The premise of the game is the same throughout; your never-quite-properly-seen player character is trapped in a strange, near-empty town, and somehow must escape. There is no music outside buildings, and no voicework; just the sound of howling winds and the call of the occasional bird. This may sound dull, but it really adds to the atmosphere of desolation, and the isolation of your character. In “Daymare Town 1″, you seem alone at first, but the more you explore, the more shadowy figures you notice watching you. Eventually, you encounter others also seemingly trapped in the town, but never more than can be counted on one hand.

”Daymare Town 1″ is, in some ways, the purest of the three, perfectly capturing the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in a strange, semi-abandoned world. But it’s also, by far the hardest. You have to click on EVERYTHING, and go back and forth multiple times; it’s extremely easy to miss vital items, or even doorways. In addition, the character also has to locate every bird they can, because…um…somebody likes birds. And some of them are near-impossible to locate. There are points when you will be stuck with no idea what to do because you missed an item that looked like a random squiggle or stone. Regardless, the atmosphere is deeply engrossing, and if you have any head for puzzles, you won’t quit until you’re out.

Of course, you don’t make it very far, because you immediately land at the gates of a new town. This town is a bit larger and more heavily populated than that of “Daymare Town 1″, but it’s also a lot more forgiving. No more mystery searching for birds, no more all-but hidden items, and a slightly more linear storyline. You’re slightly less isolated than in “Daymare Town 1″, since you immediately encounter and interact with different creatures, even bartering and trading with them. Notice I said “creatures”, not “humans”.

It’s also more obviously dark, involving moments like digging a maggot out of rotting meat, butchers walled up in their shops, and the Cherry Embassy (I am not going to say any more about that, because I don’t want to spoil it, but you will be freaked out). In addition, it also has a lot more choices. There are different ways to solve particular puzzles, and you can approach them as you choose. This gives you more of a feel of autonomy than you had in “Daymare Town 1″, and that carries you all the way through to the end.

Your escape from this town, however, ends pretty badly when you crash-land (don’t ask) in yet ANOTHER weird town. This one actually has a hospital, which is where you wake up after God knows how long. ”Daymare Town 3″ is so far the last in the series, though supposedly a fourth is in the works. In many ways, this game is the richest and most interesting, with the largest world and cast of characters. However, it suffers from what I’m going to call “Uninvited”-itis; you can pick up EVERYTHING, and need less than half of it to just finish the damned game. Of course, if you want to get all the achievements (another innovation for this third chapter), you’ll need almost all the items, but the hitch here is that you also have a limited inventory, and cannot drop things. It gets intensely frustrating trying to figure out what to carry, what to leave, what to buy, and what to sell. This is somewhat mitigated, however, by a refining of “Daymare Town 2″‘s choice system, in which you can decide how you want to proceed with your quest for freedom, and which items to use where.

On the other hand, we also have a bit of a return to “Daymare Town 1″‘s obscurity, although this time it’s in terms of the achievements rather than the story as a whole. That’s an improvement to “Daymare Town 1″, but it’s still beyond me how we’re supposed to figure out how to unlock certain achievements (including several where you have to give a number of items in exactly the right order to certain characters – get them out of order and it doesn’t count, oh, and you lose the items) without the help of a walkthrough.

Overall, “Daymare Town 3″ is unquestionably the richest of the trilogy, but my favourite has to be “Daymare Town 2″. While I love interacting with the other characters of this weird, Gahan Wilson-esque world, “Daymare Town 3″ does so to such an extent that you lose some of the howling isolation that made the first game such a unique experience. In addition, while “Daymare Town 3″ learned from its predecessors’ mistakes and offered a more linear, less elusive storyline, it added an achievement system which, in some ways, took the whole thing full circle. ”Daymare Town 2″, to me, offered the perfect balance of story, eeriness, desolation, and puzzles. It was also the game that gave me the most disturbing moment; there’s a point in the game where you have to enter a painting. In the painting is a house. In the house is another painting. Entering that painting, you find an identical house, with an identical painting. Entering THAT painting gave you an identical house…

It was late at night when I played that bit, and I was so genuinely unsettled I had to turn off my machine and go to bed.

All in all, “Daymare Town” in its entirety is an experience like no other. With unique, striking artwork, intriguing puzzles, and an atmosphere that can’t be beat, this is a town that’s definitely worth taking a trip to.

Hey kids remember this?

Well it looks like they’re building a brand new gnome hideout right in the middle:

Lately I was interviewed about the submachine series. Here are the results:

Submachine 8: the Plan

I just updated the Submachine Exploration Project to new version. Since I came up with a brand new architecture of this project, literally everything had to be redone. That took me entire month of January to finish. Now we’re sporting a brand new, fresh and shiny Subnet 3.0. Also added few new lcoations to the catalogue, so the experience is refreshened as well. Enjoy!

 

This year, as any before was marked with few intertwining year-long projects as well as occasional high-endurance ones. Let me recap for the sake of remembering just what the hell happened in 2012. [for the impatient ones: 14 games and 2 comic book albums happened].

1)

 

First of all, there was a project of creating a one small game per month. 12 games all together. The results are as follows:

• Pigeon Phew
• Daymare Invaders
• Mission to Uranus
• Garden Door
• Mr. Mothball 4: Zen Moth
• 10 Gnomes in Porto Petro
• Daymare Kite
• Mission to Mercury
• Castanea
• Lightem Out
• Mr. Mothball 5: under the Cherry Tree
• Where is 2013?

The reasoning behind this project is simple. I’m a completionist, I’m trying to get a closure on unfinished series, and there were few game projects just laying around on my hard drive, reminding me that they’re still not done. You can see couple of “mission to…” games, mothballs, two games expanding the daymare town lore, as well as few standalones. The mothball series is probably done, as I have no fresh ideas on how to approach this character anymore. The last one was actually a rebuild of an old small game that maybe few of you remember from this page’s header. The header game. But that was way back in 2008, so this game was waiting for an upgrade for four years. Daymare Kite was in the to-do folder since Daymare Town 2, Garden Door’s pictures were shot in 2011 and so on. The only ongoing series left is “mission to…” as there are two games left, and I’ll be damned if I don’t finish this as well. The remaining two are Sun and Earth (Pluto does not count, sorry) :D. Adding to that couple of regulars, such as 10 Gnomes and Where is 2013? and we have a full list. For the curious, yes, I still have unfinished small projects on my drive, yes, I’ll be making them eventually, but god forbid I’ll commit to making one per month anymore – that was… exhausting. Especially in the light of other 2012 projects, such as:

 

2)

 

I also created two big games from major series:

• Covert Front 4: the Spark of Life
• Submachine 8: the Plan

and with that, the Covert Front is finished and done. Phew. The story of Kara following German scientist Karl von Toten has run it’s course. A big sense of closure right there. On the other hand – the Submachine is as strong as ever. There was a minor confusion whether this would be the last Submachine ever, which it isn’t. Let me once again reassure you – the Submachine will go on INDEFINITELY. Sure, the main storyline ends at Submachine 10, but that doesn’t even mean that this series will be over. I’ll make standalone Submachine games from that point on, such as Submachine: 32 chambers, ancient adventure or FLF. We’re good here, don’t you worry. The sky is clear over the Submachine. Wait, is there a sky in Submachine?… :/

 

3)

 

Another big step forward in 2012 was the attempt to bring you even more quality – this time for a small price. The idea of creating full screen, standalone, browser-free games was in my sights for a long time.

• Submachine 8 HD
• Submachine 7 HD

Luckily I was able not only to overcome the technical obstacles, but I also figured out how to actually handle a monetary transaction of such item. I did it my way and I’m proud of this.

 

4)

 

Moving on, let’s not forget the pastel games. Me and my buddies from the company were able to create 5 games together:

• Rizzoli and Isles 2
• the Fog Fall 4
• Sneak Thief 5
• Monster Detective
• the Scene of the Crime: Dream of murder (not yet published);

The Sneak Thief series is finished with the fifth installment, however we’re planning a brand new series with Kamil Kochanski, the artist behind Sneak Thief, the Great Escape games and Halo & Pixy. You know, the funny, cartoony one in our pack. The new series is still a secret, but it’s coming, I can assure you. As for other series – time will tell. The future of those series doesn’t depend on me, but people writing and drawing them, so I can’t tell what will become of pastel games in 2013. Let’s wait and see.

 

5)

 

Are we done yet? Not even close. Remember when I said something about year-long projects? Here’s another one. This one was also a simple premise: create one-page comic every week. I started this project back in October of 2011, so to complete a full year cycle I had 42 weeks to go. And I did. The new 52-page album, entitled Tetrastych is going to be published in may. Here are few pages, which also explain the bizarre title of this album.

• Tetrastych sample pages

 

6)

 

However that previous project was not the most important comic book work of 2012. This one is. Again, a simple task. Create 46-page comic book album in 46 days. That would be one page daily for 46 days straight. The outcome is the newest Rewolucje album, and you can read more about this right here:

• 46/46
• Rewolucje 7: we Mgle

Now this one is my absolute best project of 2012, not only because of it’s bold outcome, but this one is by far my best graphical work to date. Let’s not forget that it also sports a killer of a scenario written by Jerzy Szylak. So… are we done?… No.

 

7)

 

This next project was a bit different. Yeah, I had to paint a cover and title-page graphic for it, but it was mostly an archaeological work of picking a good material from the sea of old crap. Everything had to be retouched in photoshop, as most of the originals were kind of destroyed by father time. This album shows my old ways from times when I wasn’t Mateusz Skutnik, the Submachine creator, but just simple Mateusz Skutnik. :D

• Komiksy znalezione na Strychu

 

8)

 

Bare with me, we’re almost done. Normally I wouldn’t list the following here, but this kind of out grew it’s premise and became a larger-than-expected thing. This is a series of 7 movies showing how to waterpaint a comic page. Well, maybe it’s not “how to” per se, it’s just a showing of how I do it. Nevertheless – a project of it’s own, realised during that period of Rewolucje 7 daily painting.

• How to waterpaint a comic page
• a shorter version (album trailer)

 

And with that, I’m done. That’s it. But wait, from the looks of it, is it true that in july I was:

1. Making Daymare Kite
2. making a one-page comic story each week
3. painting Rewolucje 7 – one page daily
4. creating Submachine 8

all at the same time??

Yes, yes it is true. That’s how it went down. That’s intertwining right there. And frankly speaking I forgot about another small project that I was slowly but steadily creating. The subnet got few small expansions as well. So there. Thanks for reading through up to this point, right now there’s a reward for you for being stubborn enough to dig through this list. Ready?

 

2013

Let’s talk about 2013. Get some insight.

To be honest, 2012 was exhausting. It was a year of closure (well, attempted at least), a year of different experiments, and now I have to take that all in, process the data and come up with a reasonable plan for the future.

plan A)

Is to create 4 games this year, these are, in chronological order:

• Daymare Town 4
• 10 gnomes in…
• Submachine 9
• Where is 2014?

Yes, I focus on my four major series this year. This is the top priority list of must-do games.  Besides this I also intend on doing:

• Rewolucje 8: in Space (Rewolucje w Kosmosie)

Of which I have already 46 finished pages. I could call it a wrap and just publish it as it is. I could. But I won’t. This album needs another 40 pages or so.

 

plan B)

Once I’m sure that plan A will be fulfilled, there are other smaller side jobs. Those include:

• further expansion of the subnet
• creating specific series oriented websites for all major ones, such as Covert Front, 10 gnomes, Daymare Town etc. I’d like to move away from the regular online games portal and create game hubs for each series. The one I did for the Fog Fall was received warmly and I think it’s a good direction for the future of our catalogue
• releasing HD versions of older Submachines, starting with Submachine 6 HD
• finishing the “mission to…” series
• other small games (also trying to empty my to-do catalogue)

 

plan C)

If time is kind enough I’d like to start painting another Blaki comic album. That would be fourth of the series and I’ve got it all written and sketched right here in my notebook.

And I think that’s it.

Once again – happy new year 2013.

It’ll be a good one.

 

 

 

play | polish review

Jeśli w onlajnowych flashowych grach nie przepadasz za zjawiskiem określanym jako „pixel hunting”, „Where is 2013?…” nie jest grą dla Ciebie. W przeciwnym przypadku możesz się rozkoszować urokami letniej Majorki.

Obok gier, w których tło jest renderowane komputerowo na wyższym lub niższym poziomie szczegółowości oraz tych, gdzie jest ono po prostu malowane (cyfrowo lub analogowo), są też i produkcje, w których wykorzystywane są fotografie rzeczywistych plenerów. Pastel Games od lat wykorzystuje tę technikę przy produkcji cyklu „10 gnomes” – gier, w których nie ma żadnej fabuły ani rywalizacji poza tą jedną: z samym sobą. Ot, w różnych miejscach przestrzeni mniej lub bardziej publicznych, autor gry rozmieścił 10 skrzatów, które należy skrzętnie wyłowić z najgłębszych zakamarków – szczeliny między cegłami w murze, mroku kratki ściekowej, dziurki od klucza w bramie… Na czas, który upływa bardzo szybko.

Podobnie zrealizowano „Where is 2013?…”, najnowszą odsłonę cyklu „noworocznego”. W poprzednich okazjach zwiedzaliśmy między innymi plenery komiksów z cyklu „Rewolucje” oraz gier „Daymare Town”, tym razem Mateusz Skutnik zabiera nas na Majorkę.

Cóż nas tam czeka? Otóż stajemy przed problemem braku prądu, z którego to powodu prawdopodobnie Nowy Rok nie może do nas przyjść. A konkretniej, mamy przed sobą budynek stacji transformatorowej. Za nim bliżej nieokreślony budynek, dookoła zaś – sad. Za jedyną podpowiedź służy kursor, zmieniający się po najechaniu na któryś z nieoznaczonych obszarów aktywnych (hotspots). Zwyczajowo zmiana kursora u boków (i u góry!) ekranu oznacza możliwość przejścia gdzieś-obok, u dołu zaś – powrót do bardziej ogólnego widoku (o ile wcześniej znajdziemy hotspot kierujący nas do lokalizacji bardziej szczegółowej).

play

21.12.2012. You got anything better to do today?