In a shady corner of Kingsport Bay, at the outskirts of St Armando, Bwana and his trusted sidekick Kito struggle to make ends meet at their run-down gas station. Little do they know that they are about to be thrown into a spine-tingling adventure that will take them far from home and right into a twisting plot of corruption and danger. In the first chapter of The Journey Down, the search for a lost journal leads to forgotten secrets of the mysterious Underland. Follow Bwana and Kito as they puzzle their way forward and begin to uncover the true fate of their long lost father, Captain Kaonandodo. The Journey Down is a classic point-and-click saga with a black African twist. Get ready to embark on an epic journey of laughs and brainteasing adventure!
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| SirPrimalform | Dec 3 2012, 12:21pm Anchor | |
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theowaern wrote:I can hear it, and lots and lots and lots of other people have commented on it as well. I've just never really acted on it, and have had a difficult time pinpointing the problem.
Well I guess that's ok then. I was just a bit worried that I'd prompted you to do something that you might not have felt necessary! My comments were never meant as outright complaints, and I certainly wouldn't expect or even suggest that you go back and change it, but if it's something you wanted to do anyway...
I hope I haven't caused too much trouble/expense for your voice actors. D;
Thanks! |
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| theowaern | Dec 10 2012, 9:53am Anchor | |
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I've received and implemented new recordings for the concierge. Also, I've received new lines for Lina's in-plane dialogue but I have yet to actually get down and dirty with cutting them up and implementing them into the game - it's quite a lot of speech. We'll see how much of this actually makes it into our first iOS release. The new concierge-recordings will, at least. So, a quick status report from us then: Our iOS build is currently being played by reviewers all over. It has been submitted to the appstore and we hope to see it approved and launched some time before christmas. Work on Chapter Two is moving along but has slowed down a smidgen now during the last phases of our iOS launch, I hope we'll be able to get back on track with full focus on chapter two as soon as we're through that release. |
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| Krofinzki | Dec 10 2012, 7:11pm Anchor | |
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SirPrimalform wrote:Lina's were definitely the most minor thing, I doubt many other people noticed that TBH. I think most reviews mentioning the voice recording quality probably would have been thinking of the concierge (sorry Edward Day!).
No you're not the only one who noticed. I played this on my HTPC with my girlfriend sitting beside me on the couch and we both reacted to that sudden change in Lina's voice in the plane. For us Matoke also stood out as sounding a bit low quality compared to the other guys. After a conversation with Matoke we just sort of embraced that some of the voices would sound like this though, we figured it was probably recorded at home with random hardware. It felt indie and it felt ok. Here's eagerly waiting for Chapter 2! P.S: Inte EN ENDA Glenn på kontoret? |
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| theowaern | Dec 15 2012, 4:10pm Anchor | |
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Thanks Krofinzki! (Nej, sorry, ingen Glenn. Fel generation kanske) UPDATE TIME! So we just received word from the app store that TJD1 for iOS is "ready for sale"! We've set the launch date to the 19th, which is this coming Wednesday, so get your iDevices ready! (I realize anyone reading this has likely already played chapter one, but hell maybe you miss Bwana so much you'd like to meet him on your iDevice as well, no?) Anyhow this is great news for us and also for anyone eager to see more progress on TJD2 - because it means we'll soon be able to give Chapter Two our undivided attention. We've been crazy sidetracked by the iOS release, but finally that's about to change! In other news I got the new Lina-in-plane lines for that dialog, I cut them all up and re-inserted them. They sounded great but I can't for the life of me get them to sound the same as the REST of Lina's dialog inside the airplane. So, sadly we're not better off than were we were when we started. I had naively hoped that since the change of equipment now happened between dialogues, it wouldn't be as noticeable. It is however. And the change is now, if anything, more obvious. So, now I'm considering either scrapping the new recordings or actually asking Cassie to re-record ALL her lines inside the airplane. But it's A LOT of lines... So.. We'll see about that. I'll ping her and see how she feels about it. That's all from me now. Peace. |
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| SirPrimalform | Dec 15 2012, 9:27pm Anchor | |
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theowaern wrote:
In other news I got the new Lina-in-plane lines for that dialog, I cut them all up and re-inserted them. They sounded great but I can't for the life of me get them to sound the same as the REST of Lina's dialog inside the airplane. So, sadly we're not better off than were we were when we started. I had naively hoped that since the change of equipment now happened between dialogues, it wouldn't be as noticeable. It is however. And the change is now, if anything, more obvious. So, now I'm considering either scrapping the new recordings or actually asking Cassie to re-record ALL her lines inside the airplane. But it's A LOT of lines... So.. We'll see about that. I'll ping her and see how she feels about it. I say stick with the old Lina dialogue for now then. It was definitely the least noticeable bit of vocal weirdness (for me at least, and I consider myself pretty fussy about these things). Congrats on finishing the iOS version! I won't be buying it though, the only handheld device I have that can play downloaded games is my 3DS. |
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| s_d | Jan 2 2013, 2:10am Anchor | |
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Congrats on the upcoming Steam release! I'm curious... did Valve take your Linux version, as well? There are no Linux system requirements on TJD1's page there. Not that I care too much, being both a Desura guy as well as already owning TJD At any rate, on top of eagerly awaiting Chapter 2, I'm also rocking out to the soundtrack with my little 3yr old (who loves jazz!). |
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| theowaern | Jan 8 2013, 4:42pm Anchor | |
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SirPrimalform: Thanks! Yeah I decided to go with the old ones and not pick any more at it. I think we're pretty good right now. s_d: Thank you! It's only 20 hours away. Exciting! Yes, we will be launching for Linux on Steam as well, though not at the same time. Mac and PC are all set to go tomorrow, but Linux is going to have to wait a little bit so the storm can settle first. So, a quick status report. All seems ready for launch tomorrow. I just pinged our Steam-dudes/dudettes and everything seems ready to go on their end as well. We will be launching at a 20% discount price and will later simply have the same prices on Steam as we have here on Desura. I've talked to Scott here at Desura and he says setting up Steam keys for everyone who bought the game via Indie-Royale shouldn't be a problem, so we'll be trying to get that in order as soon as we've launched and are able to generate keys. Same goes for people who bought the game via indiegamestand, though I haven't talked to those folks yet (I just hope to be able to solve that somehow). As for iOS, we got some great coverage over on toucharcade and maclife yesterday, other than that it's been kinda slow and hard to reach out, but we're doing quite ÓK, I think. So, I'm guessing I'll be caught up in spamming the next couple days so might not post here again until the steam release has settled, so I leave you with this link: |
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| s_d | Jan 10 2013, 8:42pm Anchor | |
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Also sales from an Android release at some point? I saw the little robot logo in the Steam trailer I suspect the game looks eff'ing gorgeous on the super high-res Nexus 10 tablet... |
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| r0ckarong | Jan 13 2013, 2:37pm Anchor | |
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Just finished the first chapter in a little under two hours. Damn, time flies when you're enjoying yourself. I love the art style and the music is absolutely fantastic. I purchased it through Steam on Linux and it ran (except for a few framerate issues) flawlessly on my Ubuntu 12.10 64Bit machine. I know you probably get this the most: When will we be able to get the next one? I'm desperate to play it right now. Please keep this up and thanks so much for native Linux support. I wouldn't have bought it without it. The game reminds me so much of many of my favorite classic adventures it's silly the whole athmosphere and music give me a weird cross between Grim Fandango and Monkey Island and I can't wait to see what you guys do next. |
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| troab | Jan 14 2013, 8:27pm Anchor | |
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Just finished Chapter 1 and have to say I really enjoyed it! How long are we going to have to wait for the rest? Any chance of offering a "season pass" on Steam so I can just buy them all up front and automatically get them as they become available? The game's style is very cool - in adventure game terms it felt like Grim Fandango meets Monkey Island meets Runaway. |
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| JohnPQ | Jan 15 2013, 1:49pm Anchor | |
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Just got Chapter 1 off Steam for my iMac. I really enjoyed every aspect of the game and am looking forward to Chapter 2. The whole feel of the game is spot on. It has been a while since I have been excited about a point and click game. (not meaning to discount the game form, I like them but good ones are rare nowadays) |
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| Scrouternox | Jan 16 2013, 10:27pm Anchor | |
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Saw this game on a Giantbomb Quick Look and was interested from the start. Just finished the first chapter today and I love it, looking forward to getting Chapter 2 soon...hopefully |
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| theowaern | Jan 17 2013, 3:37pm Anchor | |
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So, the release-storms have finally settled. What a busy period this has been, holy shit. The last couple months have been crazy. Not only did we have our iOS and Steam releases, we also had a major crash of one of our Nordgame.com servers that had to be revived in a new location, not to mention the fact that in the middle of all this, we left our office so had to take our entire work environment and throw it up on the cloud in order to be able to keep on working (Pretty much everything had to be re-organized). Also we had to do more physical stuff like actually empty our office and drive all of our ol' crap to the dump... It's been a lot. Feels great finally having launched so that we finally can stop spending time on those kind of things. Not just the tech-side has been time consuming, but also time has largely been spent on general PR and communicating with all sorts of people involved in all sorts of strange ways. I'm glad it's sort of over.We had our first "real" chapter two meeting today, since christmas. It's awesome being back on track again and refocusing on actual development. It has been way to long. Hopefully I'll have some more pics soon. We're currently aiming for a release of chapter two on all platforms some time during the second half of 2013. s_d: Yeah we haven't forgotten about the android release, don't worry. But it's far from finished, to be frank. I'm hoping we'll get back to working on that during spring but not sure. r0ckarong: Hah yes there is indeed a lot of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango inspiration shining through in The Journey Down. Edited by: theowaern |
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| beatnik11 | Feb 3 2013, 4:28pm Anchor | |
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I also found out about this game through a Giant Bomb quick look and I just finished the first episode and all I can say is wow, you really hit the mark getting the perfect mood and atmosphere of a great adventure game. This seriously does feel like a long lost child of Grim Fandango and Monkey Island in true Lucas Arts fashion. The characters seem great, the art style is totally unique, and the jazzy/ska/reggae soundtrack is truly amazing, probably one of the best soundtracks I have heard since Grim Fandango. My only criticism would be the inconsistency of the voice acting, or at least how they were recorded. The main characters Bwana and Kito sound great, but then you go down to the diner and some of those characters found like they are being recorded through a tin can. Keep up the good work, I am really excited to see what happens in the next episode |
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| DemoncF | Feb 5 2013, 5:50am Anchor | |
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I picked this up when it was in an Indie Royale and just now got around to finishing it. I thought it was really fantastic! Great writing and art and shockingly intuitive puzzle design. I'm sure you've already had a lot of comments concerning the voice acting (though your three leads are really top-notch), so I guess the one thing that I'd like to see other than that out of Chapter 2 is perhaps making the entrances to new screens a little clearer. I found that the points I got stuck in Chapter 1 were almost always due to me missing the existence of an environment (being able to go into the plane or the freezer in the yacht kitchen, for example). That's a pretty minor complaint about what was really an awesome experience. Keep up the great work, guys. I can't wait for Chapter 2! |
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| theowaern | Feb 16 2013, 3:43am Anchor | |
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Been hella busy getting work done recently so have blatantly ignored all our social channels such as forums and twitter etc. Sorry 'bout that, but it means we're making awesome progress! The past few weeks have been spent with me patching together and designing the last couple missing rooms in the game, as well as making sure that the rooms we've already got fit together in a nice coherent manner. Not only visually but also technically. Unless you've built a point n click adventure game yourself - you can't imagine how tricky it is to get a bunch of locations to both look good, and to make sense spatially in order to be easy to navigate - it's a challenge. Mathias has been working on actual implementation, we've got the bare-bones part of the scripting done on the prologue as well as the first act of the game in place - it's moving along nicely! Henrik has been working on Bwana animations, which as with the previous chapter easily makes up half of the animation-work in the project. It's looking great! And it's fun to see the improvements we're making thanks to the lessons learned in chapter one. Here are some more pics - still works in progress, we keep moving exits and hotspots around constantly as we go along, so still nothing final.
The deserted old steel mill at Charnel road
Port Artue harbor, with the Biko finally safe in port
beatnik11: Thanks for the kind words! Appreciate being compared to those amazing games. DemoncF: Yeah making sure exits and hotspots are all easy to spot and still merge nicely with the environment is a challenge! We're doing our best. And as for the voice cast - yeah, lesson learned there. Don't settle for anything but perfect performances. |
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| Cheeseness | Feb 17 2013, 4:20am Anchor | |
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Great to see some new art! Thanks for the update, theo |
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| jfrisby | Feb 22 2013, 3:00am Anchor | |
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This is looking so awesome! |
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| s_d | Mar 10 2013, 12:39am Anchor | |
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Way stoked, guys! Thanks for sharing with us |
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| futanflqb7 | Mar 13 2013, 12:11am Anchor | |
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Man I can't wait for TJD chapter 2. As I said earlier the first one was artwork nearly perfectly manifested as a videogame, this and the dream machine chapter 4 & 5 are what I'm most excited for |
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| cxsquared | Mar 19 2013, 12:06pm Anchor | |
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I just finished TJD chapter 1 and it was amazing. You guys have done an awesome job really capturing the life and feeling of the old point-and-click adventures. In my opinion TJD has one of the best soundtracks I've heard in a game for a long time. Some of the sax licks during the game are just perfect. I felt immersed in the whole world of TJD with the perfect art and sounds of the game. The game just left me wanting more. I'm also super impressed that you go the audio quality and continuity with the voice actors recording on their own. That shows both the skill on your part and theirs. The only part that did stand out to me was Linda's lines in the plane. I'm currently studying Music Technology with a focus in game design and was wondering what tools and audio editing did you guys use on your end to implement the sound? Also, what were the challenges having the voice actors record on their own? Thanks for showing us all of your progress and I can't wait for the next one! |
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| Harvey86 | Mar 25 2013, 4:37pm Anchor | |
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hello guys! the music, the characters, the background arts, voices, writing, atmosphere, .. you guys did an incredibly good job! i always thought that part of my fascination with the 90's lucasarts games was that i was a kid when i played them for the first time, but tjd proved that i can still have the same amusement and interest at 26, it only needed the right game! the only minus i have to admit is the short length, but i know that it wasn't possible any other way, and it still had a good length (i just didn't want it to stop ever), the price (6 euros) was also more than fair.. i bought full price titles that seemed shorter,and that had not nearly the quality of the journey down.. all the best from turkey, your new fan, |
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| jfrisby | Apr 24 2013, 6:46pm Anchor | |
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I'm just going to go ahead and beat Theo & Henrik to posting this (from @theowaern on Twitter) -- Preview of JD2 music: Simon D’souza & an 11-piece band are playing live in Brighton, UK (if you're lucky to be in those parts): You should set up some some forums on your Skygoblin site! I'm not sure this page is that easy to find for people.. |
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| AstAnDK | May 2 2013, 5:59pm Anchor | |
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Hey guys I just wanted to thank you for this great game. I really liked the humor, art style, music and gameplay. There were two things though which would be awesome if you could improve on them. It would be great if double-clicking a location portal would instantly send you to the next location so you do not have to walk for so long when trying out things in different screens. Adding idle animations to more characters would also be great. I believe this could add a lot to characters in scenes and during dialogues. Thanks, I am really looking forward to the next chapter Daniel |
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