Simon_ASA
Simon joined
I usually work on my own as a freelance artist, on self-published and indie things (games, films, books...). My current main projects are The Black Cube series (ASA, Catyph, Myha, ANTERRAN...) and Mon Village est Magique. You can also watch some of my short films on my Vimeo, and if you like my work, your support would be very helpful on my Patreon.
Reviews
I love this engine, it's perfect for beginners or for devs who want to focus on storytelling more than visuals.
Pros:
Easy to use, flexible, allows to create quickly all kinds of Myst-like games, possibility to add water/smoke animated effects, included 360 panorama plugin, a lot of help provided on the website makes it easy to learn simple lines of code in VisualBasic even for non-programmers (you can also create games without a single line of code!)
Cons:
Outdated engine, no high resolution supported, slow and sometimes unstable when running games with a lot of features (such as 360° views), not possible to release standalone games (manual installation is a necessity). Additionnally it would seem that there is no more support from the developer?
You understod from my review: despite the cons listed, I really enjoy the time I spend everytime with Adventure Maker, which made it possible to me to create my first commercial game, ASA: A Space Adventure. I'm still using it from time to time!
Roonsehv is, as you probably know, a Myst-like... in the world of Myst.
The developers of Babel Studio (and the game director Denis Martin) are true fans of Myst who decided to create a kind of sequel, in a parallel world. If the idea was challenging (because Cyan could have refused that they use their licence, even if the game is free), the result is impressive.
Denis and his team have learned their tools while working on the game, they have written the story themselves, invented the puzzles and created an original soundtrack. On top of that, contrary to most of the games of the Myst series, Roonsehv is not a 1st person slideshow game: it is a realtime 3D game created with the Unreal Engine 3, and the result is breathtaking.
If you are a true fan of Myst, and need to dive again in this amazing series while Obduction is being developed, then you should definetely try Roonsehv, and you can probably add 1 point to my note: 9/10.
I have removed 1 point because the game is not very easy if you are not familiar with the genre and the Myst series. It is much better to know the story of Myst, Riven, Exile and the others, in order to benefit of the great work that was done.
To conclude and talk of the bad points, some of the puzzles are not always pefectly designed, and the clues given to solve them are sometimes hard to read (papers on the walls) because of texture compression. Well at least it was the case on my PC. And personally I become quickly sick with the FPS view in most games, and Roonsehv is one of these games where you look around you all the time.
Despite these few issues, everything will take you in a beautiful journey in a mysterious world full of strange devices to understand and activate. Don't forget that it's totally free, made with passion, and will benefit of an English translation.
