NPCs

#1

I was wondering if there are any plans to expand the number of “friends” in the game, like for example adding a few more people to town, villagers to Forest village or a completely new village, perhaps? Or adding some more dialogs?
For some reason I really enjoy interacting with Frogatto’s various characters.

#2

I think Jetrel has something planned for the forest village, but I’m not quite sure what. It’s got really shiny art, though. :smiley:

#3

Yea, I second this. The characters in the game have their own unique personalities. I love the dialogue.

#4

:-[ I’m touched.

FWIW, virtually all of the dialogue is mine, although there’s been a certain amount of input from dave+marcavis.

I think both dave and I (and actually, neoriceisgood too) started out in “dorky programmer writing” territory, which is deceptively hard to overcome; mostly because you have to go out of your way to have opinions about taste. As alluring as it might be to just brand frogatto as “well, it’s silly, so the idea of the dialogue having quality is meaningless, and therefore anything goes,” that’s simply not true. The result is pointless schlock like (insert good example later; this is the thing that makes amateur games feel so shitty).

It’s hard to say what constitutes quality, though. Hard to make a good recipe for it.

I’d actually love to see dave do a lot more writing, because I think he has it in him to be extremely good at it, from various snippets I’ve seen. I think the only thing that ever hurts his writing is that for some frogatto characters, he stoops down to treat them as though they’ve got childlike intelligence. Which I think is actually a rather bad formula for children’s writing in general; instead, it’s better to give frogatto characters “an intelligent, adult voice, but coming from the standpoint of their rather odd setting”.

Frogatto isn’t a kid’s game; violence aside, we’re hoping to make it kid-safe, just like looney-tunes was, but our target audience is twenty-something gamers, and that’s who we need to write to. It’s easy to fall into thinking it’s a kid’s game, and should be dumbed down, whilst you’re writing - I’ve done that, even with my own aforementioned “mission statement” hanging over my head.

#5

I always appreciated films which were amusing for everyone watching them. You know what I mean. The movies we used to watch as children for instance; they were funny for children b/c of the slapstick aspect and b/c of the delivery of the lines. But the actual content of the lines and the meaning behind them was more appreciable to the adult audience as they have the faculties to discern. But everyone always had a good experience with this in mind. Disney did well with this balance

Children and adults want to be entertained. Well by god let them have it. (as far I’m concerned anyways)

The trick is making that work. We do make our game for adults. But for children, the graphics and the overall charm of what we already have, should prove appealing enough to everyone to make them interested in the game. Adults are trickier and less prone to giving glossy things a shot, thus it must be said that we write the story with them in mind, primarily.