Fan Mission: Thief's Remorse by Airship Ballet (2015/10/30)

[Airship Ballet]

Mystical Merry's Metaphysical Mapping Co. Spooks You Again!

Thief's Remorse

Screenshots

 

 

The days grow shorter, colder, and I grow more desperate with each morning spent in the gutter. I resort to this only when I have to, only when I've no other choice. I need to steal something.

Title: Thief's Remorse
Theme: Spoopy
Release: 2015/10/30
Mapper: Airship Ballet
Build Time: ~28 hours

My God. I'm genuinely begging you. Next year, either don't challenge me to make a halloween map in a fortnight or sedate me, because, like last time, I'll leave it for my two free days and do the whole thing in one go. It's bad for me. You're killing me.

Uh, anyway, here's a spooky halloween map. There's sneaking involved, but it's something more of a rollercoaster than a traditional sneaking map with ghosts. I really wanted to go out there with this mission, since getting a bit creative with Exhumed last year made me realise the potential for some more abstract, bizarre stuff that could be done pretty easily in TDM. It's full of scripted spooks, events, and even requires you to pay attention to what you're told! Depending on what you do, and how much of a monster you are, there's a whole four different ways for you to come out of your trip to Nowhere.

It's pretty big, surprisingly so: I got more and more ambitious as I went along, just like I always do. As a result, well, I'm the only person who tested it. So, uh, I'll be around for bug fixing. I mean it's totally playable without issue from start to finish, but I haven't gone around trying to break it in order to release it before Hollaween.

Above all, have fun!

Download links

remorse.pk4

Edited May 18, 2016 by Airship Ballet

[Airship Ballet]

Oh god. Would somebody mind changing the title for me? im so tired

 

Wait, nevermind, got it <3

Edited October 30, 2015 by Airship Ballet

[Bikerdude]

Added to the in-game downloader, but gonna need a description and some better screenshots @800*600, ta.

[Oldjim]

Unusual concept

Only two minor comments other than it was difficult to get past the cross shaped beams near the start are

that it wasn't immediately obvious where you should drop the ring because the objective referred to the nobles grave and the furnace key just appeared in the inventory

and it was a nice twist in the end

Edited October 30, 2015 by Oldjim

[Gast]

Congrats, this is a brilliant mission. The use of light is so original, I liked that a lot.
I must mention that when starting a new "stage" of the level I often have to bypass an invisible obstacle.

[Airship Ballet]

Added to the in-game downloader, but gonna need a description and some better screenshots @800*600, ta.

It already has a description, just an intentionally vague one.

 

Screens

it was a nice twist in the end

Someone got in troouuuuuble.

Congrats, this is a brilliant mission. The use of light is so original, I liked that a lot.

Thanks!

Edited October 30, 2015 by Airship Ballet

[RPGista]

Downloading it now!

[nbohr1more]

This is completely insane.

 

I may not have the courage to finish this thing.

 

 

 

 

It's like the worlds creepiest telling of "A Christmas Carole" except the spirits are pestering a thief rather than a miser...

 

I'll have to recheck but there was at least one area where it was pitch black and I was trapped there for eternity until I used r_showTris to

find my bearings...

 

 

 

[Sotha]

Completed it now.

 

Comments:

 

 

*Very nice storytelling.

*Completely dark ambients made me lose bearings on a few occasions.

*Excellent usage of lights, fogs, sound and ambients. Especially the way to the furnace was nightmarish.

 

Appearance: Good. Would have been Great without the completely dark ambients. I can see how the total darkness was required, but it sort of went into the way of gameplay in an unpleasant way. Playability trumps Aesthetics always in my books.

Gameplay: Good. Most of the mission felt very linear as they were only story-telling corridors. But the few sneaking areas were pretty solid. Some tool use would have been nice and the AI patrols were ultra-simple.

Halloween: Great. The mission certainly has a nice halloween story to tell.

 

 

 

Thank for the nice mission!

[RPGista]

Just finished it. What can I say, amazing work, brilliant little story.

 

 

I thought the mission looked stunning. There was this feel of a sureal space throughout, of abstraction. I loved how the darkness was used in such a way as to make anything lit (a glowing enity, a beam of light, etc) so valuable. You are thrown into a nightmare landscape of small, haunted spaces (brilliant use of sound). I really liked how at first you are being tormented by the writter entity, you are going back and forth in a world he is creating, probably an imaginary world in your mind. And then you have the opportunity of visiting these distorted versions of places in the past, to "make them right". That hellscape in the builder world was awesome. The elevator ride there reminded me of the ending scene in Angel Heart. I loved the little moral question in the last room, the mechanist room. By that time I wasnt really thinking about loot at all, so it didnt even cross my mind to waste time on them. But that means you are rewarded in the end, you wake up in this beautiful treasure room filled with an amazing fortune, that the entity has decided to give you. I was not expecting this happy ending at all, I was pretty sure the writter would somehow keep you in his world for ever, but appearently there was really no malice in his mind. That in itself is cool, because there are many many horror stories that decide to end with the hero being killed anyway, likely when he was almost saved.

Conceptually the mission is great, the effects are amazing (transitions between spaces, changes in the environment, etc), the surprising way the AI is presented (the writter is really cool, a real creepy vision). Hard to believe something like this can be done in a few days.

 

 

Missions like this (and The Creep, for example) should really become case-studies for strong storytelling-oriented missions inside the TDM world, which Im afraid we have way too few of in here.

 

 

[Xarg]

Not seeing this one on the mission downloader... managed to get all the other ones?

[Bikerdude]

Doh, try now. Visibility wasn't checked, apologies.

[Xarg]

Yup that got it, cheers.

[MVT]

WOW - This does capture a mood.

[Oldjim]

Played through again and a few comments

I tried to be clever took a lit candle with me to see what was happening then after reading the first note went back to the crypt and dropped the crown and dropped the crown on the broken crypt but then I couldn't pick it up again so went back to where the first note was and a lantern dropped from somewhere.

Regarding the ring - I can't see why there should be a grave in the bedroom

However the concept was interesting and the result at the end was a neat twist.

Regarding scores I wasn't too impressed when judged against a fully fledged mission but given the time limits it was a good effort

Appearance was definitely good but I only scored the gameplay as average for the reasons above. For Halloween the concept was excellent and for that reason I rated it somewhere between good and great but because it really wasn't too spooky decided to only rate it as good

 

[fllood]

... what RPGista said.​​

Excellent surreal mission AB.

superb ideas and execution!

[Oktokolo]

This is an arthouse film implemented as a TDM mission...

 

 

The audience finds itself in the role of a casual thief who is tested by a paranormal entity. That could have been the recipe for the common action and popcorn experience. But instead the viewer gets to explore a series of well-composed surreal scenes that make sense but feel wrong at the same time. The interactive movie features light decision making but always manages to enforce a clear understanding of what answear is expected to be given...

The main character - the casual thief impersonated by the audience - is born into the harsh social climate of a medievalesque society where economical failure means death by starvation. He (or she?) regularly robs crypts to secure the own life month for month. As the story unfolds it is revealed that our thief never actually resorted to force to avoid final failure. The plot starts just after the thief entered a crypt in search for something valuable to grab. But just after the first scene the antagonist is introduced. A supernatural being featuring the mindset of a classic Disney christmas story shocks us with the rather bizarre request to let the dead's belongings rest by their bodies and starve to death instead. Of course the protagonist drops the loot instantly and hastes in panic to get out. Finding the exit gate locked he searches for another path and in bitter irony finds one by removing some ornamental plate from the tomb he just tried to rob. As he advances further into the labyrinth of the twisted mind of that paranormal entity he has to symbolically undo some of the thefts of his past to prove his insight and change to the perverse mindset forced on him. Powerlessly he complies, is naively tested and finally rewarded with the classic groteskly huge cache of riches.

Its not the plot itself that is remarkable but its presentation, its orchestration, the insane naivity of the overpowered opressor featuring the mindset of a child and a dictator. Almost hurting lights and absolute blackness dominate a lot of the scenes not missing their target. Without any violence does the author realizes the cruelty of a world without choice. It is a world where the censor is in your head - installed by the certainty of punishment enforced by an overseer with unsupervised power. As such it is also a classic orwellian piece that keeps being current regardless of the political and societal progress of the last centuries...

 

 

Regardless of the novell use of interactivity this is one of the short films actually worth watching - but be sure to do so undistracted.

 

Technically there could be some improvements:

 

 

After the cuts i often had to juggle around my pointing device to find the narrow viewport where i can actually see something. This was pretty irritating at first (i even suspected a freeze).

I was able to see through the gold pile in the final scene while being able to move only left and right but neither forward nor back.

 

The chosen medium is not the best-suited for a movie. I realized that i am watching a visual book after the second cut (pretty late - i know). But it kept feeling linear. It likely does so not in spite but because having the choices and technical controll over the protagonist. I think, it would have been a better experience if presented as an actual movie.

Of course this type of work immensly profits by voice acting - too bad there was no time for that (why the hell had it to be a speed build contest - one has to give the artists time to work, damn it)...

 

 

 

P.S.: I could not resist to try the other endings and found

 

 

- "He calmly placed the crown on the sarcophagus and was granted a lantern to light the way back. But after leaving the crypt he did not manage to get an income otherwise and freezed to death while begging on the streets"

- "At the end he was tested but could not resist the urge to be strong. He stuffed his pockets with the shiny stuff obviously worth more than a human's life to his oppressor. He knew he would be punished. And so he was. But he stays upright as an unbroken human - eternally imprisoned in emptiness..."

 

Also found a bug where one may snatch a candle holder (40 loot) at the book burning test but gets rewareded regardless.

 

How to get the fourth ending?

 

 

Edited November 3, 2015 by Abusimplea

[Melan]

Interesting mission. Maybe more choose your own adventure than I usually like my missions, but as a contest entry, it is well rounded and fun.

 

 

Based on Exhumed, I expected a total horrorshow, but surprisingly, the successful ending is more Christmas Carrol than "well, time to go and freeze to death, I guess". The story corridors are not too strong on gameplay, but they are definitely scary on the first playthrough. The sneaking portions are well realised, and strong on surreal, otherworldly elements. The things you can see in the mission look good; the minimalistic lighting illuminates just enough to get by, and doesn't illuminate more than it needs to. The moments of disorientation and panic are among the strongest in the mission, even though, technically, nothing is happening.

 

 

[FenPhoenix]

Here is my playthrough. I feel bad that I don't think I honored its atmosphere/mood enough. The teleport-to-black-and-looks-like-a-freeze thing sort of put me in the wrong place mentally, I think, so I ended up maybe not being quite in the immersed state of mind, I guess. Still it was a good story and a cool surreal little mission. I thought the main character was interesting too actually. Not your typical Garrett-type who just happily steals everything not tied down and doesn't care, but something a little different. Always neat to see.

Incidentally, I didn't find the fourth ending.

[Airship Ballet]

Here is my playthrough. I feel bad that I don't think I honored its atmosphere/mood enough. The teleport-to-black-and-looks-like-a-freeze thing sort of put me in the wrong place mentally.

Yeah man, that was the last straw. I've got a condescending video in the works as we speak.

[raymeld]

This was very different and very original and I'm marking it accordingly. Thank you for some fun , albeit easy ( even for me ! )

Just one small glitch ,

one headless man inside the house was marching on the spot!
It didn't matter much though as they were easy to avoid anyway.

 

[Bienie]

This mission was very surreal and confusing, but overall quite enjoyable and very unique (as far as missions go)

 

Maybe I thought it was a little too much "A Christmas Carol" as opposed to Halloween, but it definitely had its share of creepy! The 0 ambient light in the mission was used to great effect I think, aside from a few times where I had to spin the mouse around to find the light source. But slightly lit up things in the distance definitely creates a special ambiance The only other concern I had with the mission is as others have mentioned it played more like a movie than game since it was very linear.

 

[Xarg]

I also got a strong Christmas Carol feeling from it (so if that's what you were going for, mission successful!), the lighting was great, and the ambients were pretty damn good too. This sets a pretty decent bar for the rest of missions (first Hallow'een mission I'm playing), looking forwards to the rest of the entries!

[Cookie]

Great idea for a FM, nicely done.

 

 

This mission felt abit like Requiem, which is great. You did a really good job in creating the atmosphere through clever mapping. The protagonist is walking next to all the loot to pick up a book and he may not steal anything - you could feel the struggle of the thief while playing in that moment . Hope there will be more missions from you soon.

 

[demagogue]

This is the contest for bouncing keys, it seems.

 

I'm not quite finished, but I found it interesting, the closest other FM like this I know is Gaetane's Emilie Viktor, which is one of my favorites of all time, incidently. A couple of things you can find in both, like

the kind of glowing patrols of creatively custom undead AI, the grave or nature in a room, of the daughter at that, the use of daily objects to make progress, and the manner of teleports and storytelling.

I like that kind of stuff, so it's a good thing. I wonder if it says something about Continental European women, or maybe that's just a coincidence.

 

I'll give my impressions after I finish. Great style so far. Of course it's not a traditional map, but that's fine, good to have variety, and it's not completely without gameplay.