“If you make it right, you can make a living making adventure games.” Independent Studio enComplot founder of Javier Cadenas Summing up for us his team’s optimism and confidence facing the final stages of development at Gamelab for The Season of the Warlock, a point-and-click adventure game made by fans, for fans.
Development on the adventure game has been in the works for several years, during which time the team also had to deal with industry misgivings about the point-and-click adventure genre, so they opted to self-publish the game, which is expected to launch on both PC and consoles next year.
“Hopefully we’ll finish development this year, we’re hoping to find a release window for next year. But there’s already a demo a few years ago on Steam that everybody can play and see how the game goes, you know, the voiceover, eventually the music, eventually graphics etc.
One of the most interesting things that makes Warlock Seasons different is its dual storyline, because at the beginning of the story there is a crossroads, and depending on the decisions you make at that point, the game will be completely different. “Depending on your choices, the main part of the storyline is roughly the same theme. The characters and background are the same, but the goals of each branch are completely different. And 100% of the puzzles will change.
It’s clear that such an adventure is a challenge, but to say that Cardenas’ emphasis on developing a click point is to move away from “moon logic,” which he sees as a mistake in communicating the game’s logic to players. “If you contextualize the game correctly, if you label everything correctly, if you give the player enough clues, they will understand how the design works.
Hopefully the studio will be able to finish the adventure and give us a firm release date soon.
