Honza, this is amazing! Your best yet! I'm in awe! I loved the setup and world building from the demo, but you doubled down on everything, it just all works so well. Truly masterful plotting. It was just so satisfying to get to the resolution, have all those pieces fit together so wonderfully. And god, that music and sound design is supurb, really stand-out stuff. You've gotta make a commercial game. If you made something this quality, two or three times the length with VO, you'd be topping GOTY lists for sure. You're all just too damn talented! :D
This is really awesome. It was graphically very pretty (reminded me of Gemini Rue), with great soundtrack. And the story with the twist at the end was perfect. Keep on with it!
Hey Shards of God team! We're both retro streamers and we decided to record a YouTube video for our channel playing this game. If you'd like to take a look at how we're enjoying it, here is the link:
Btw, Honza = Jan, they’re two versions of the same name, like William/Bill. Except here the short one, Jan, is the formal one… don’t ask why, it’s a Czech thing :).
Enjoyable. It really captures that feeling of 90s point-and-click adventure games except the puzzles weren't too obtuse. I think I'll check out your other games.
Thanks a lot, this was a great game, super mood! Fun humour! By the way, do you plan to translate this or your future games into other languages? Even with hobby translators? ^^
Thanks right back at ya! Your rating made my day, the game giving off ancient history documentaries/Planescape: Torment vibes is all I could have hoped for. Translations... maybe? Are you a hobby translator :)?
Yes, mainly for Hungarian. There is a nice community here who'd love the game, I'm sure. I can't PM you on Twitter, so maybe best if you have a look here (desktop advised) and feel free to get in touch if you are interested to make Shards of God accessible for more great folks. ;-)
Ok, thank you for the offer! I might still make some edits to the game's text, but once I'm 100% sure everything is set in stone and start considering translations, I will let you know :).
Can't believe you actually finished it this fast! I'm gonna take my sweet time with this version, and I do remember your hint about the shards and the scale.
I would never pay for a video game. People better make it out of passion and love or not at all, with money, bad people get the idea of well living by simply doing what sells.
Great work as always! The graphics are amazing, the puzzles are good and sensible and the story is epic. The resolution is satisfying and it's worth trying multiple things to get all three of the endings.
Excellent game. I loved the world and its lore (especially the way farming works!), as well as the relationship between Ava and Mother Tiabata. The art and music are gorgeous, too. To anyone who played the Adventure Jam demo, there's a LOT more to play here, and it's well worth your time.
Thank you for the nice feedback! And especially for confirming that this thing has actual GAMEPLAY - I can see how the demo could have been misleading in this regard ;)
Just brilliant. The music had me from the demo, the artwork is beautiful, the characters are charming, but above all the story is fantastic and had me hooked the entire time. Really great work, I can see why you didn’t manage to finish it in two weeks! I loved the subtle jab at Ava’s obsession with puzzles.
I found a very minor bug at the end of the game. If you pull the ‘thing’ again instead of doing either of the things you’re supposed to do, it replays the entire previous cutscene. Hope that makes sense.
This is a fantastic piece of work. If anyone is reading this comment, please know that it's well worth the optional price. The art is high quality, consistent and distinctive, the fluidity of the animations is masterful, the soundscape has wonderful atmosphere, and your writing is always very eloquent. It did feel more like an "interactive, linear story", but your writing is solid, so that's not a bad thing. I'm stunned you put this together so quickly! Literally my only critique is that there were a couple of typos here and there, but it didn't ruin my immersion and is completely understandable with how quickly you got the game out (which is now redundant, they've been stamped out!) Looking forward to trying out the third ending tomorrow. Thank you for making this!
Not offhand, but if I remember in the near future I'll send you a message! There were only two or three, it was really minor. One of them was just use of 'an' instead of 'a' or something, I think.
Wow, thank you for the nice feedback! I've listened to almost all of your stream now, love the voice acting. Especially Xavian with all of his personalities and accents :).
This was great, I enjoyed it a lot! I played the demo and I was delighted to see the full version is already out.
Really appreciated the lighter tone of the dialogues :)
Worldbuilding, art and music are stunning <3
Are you planning on publishing the soundtrack? I’d love to have it :)
I am not a big fan of these pixel art graphics. But I may point out that there is now a Linux version of Shards of God that works for me with MX-15 Debian Jessie 32 bit. This means that the game now also works on all Linux versions that use glibc6 2.19. Starting the Windows version with Wine still doesn't work for me. If there was a German translation, it would increase my interest in the game. Does the developer want the game to start in full screen mode? On my computer, the configuration file acsetup.cfg has the following content...
Sorry, I'm not sure what exactly you are asking/pointing out? Yes, there is now an official Linux version, so it should no longer be necessary to run the Windows version on Wine. I believe the game should start in full-screen mode by default - that's the preferred setting for me, but it's also possible to run in windowed mode if that's your preference. You already asked about a German translation once - it is a possibility in the future, but it's currently not a high priority.
Can anyone help me? I obtained the item so I can recreate the thing. But before I can do that, I need to modify the item. And I have no idea how to do that. I used with every PoI I could find at every location and tried to use everything I carry on it, and I can't figure it out. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I'm not sure I got exactly where you are, but if I understand correctly... could it be helpful that at one point, Plint says "Just stay away from the green ones. Or we'd have to burn your tongue to get you unstuck."?
This is a wonderful game. I love your worldbuilding, your writing and your art is also kind of ok... ;-) (Drop-dead-beautiful!!!!)
There were so many occasiones were the writing made my smile, so many little animations made my jaw drop (I love the moving of the cloth when the characters turn) and you managed to create a fascinating detective story. I wished I had a little more to do in solution/explanation phase of the case but for me you made that up by providing different endings.^^
Thank you very much, Esmeralda! Yeah, I was a bit worried about the explanation scene, maybe there was a way to break it down at least with some dialogue choices... but I've always wanted to do the "genius detective reveals everything" trope, and in the end I felt that the most elegant way to get through it was to let Tiabata speak, *uninterrupted* :). Oh and speaking of multiple endings... did you find the third, secret one :)?
It's Sunday, 16th of July, so is the game finished? If it's not, than oh well, delays happen, but I'd be happy to know.
By the way, Nitter works again, so I can check updates. To be honest, I miss "The Wich's Lullaby" updates, so I'll also be happy when you return to posting them. :)
No gamepad unfortunately, as far as I know the engine I'm using doesn't support it. I'm considering an eventual release on Steam, but initially the full game will only be released on Itch (this coming weekend already, by the way!).
Are there any news about the full game release? As a passive-only social media user I am left without access to any Twitter profiles in more than a week. And to make matters worse, now even Nitter is unable to display tweets. So suddently I have no idea anymore about what's going on in the gamedev world...
Little note for anyone else who might not be getting Shards of God to download at first: I just clicked the "download now" button and it didn't do anything at first. This, when other itch.io games have been downloading without much issue.
I for one was able to get it to work by clicking the button itch.io provides of "Downloads not starting?", and then ticking the box for "alternate download mode".
The box prescribes this for if itch.io is blocked by region, yes, but it also worked for me even as other games have downloaded well enough. Anyone new to itch.io like I am, give it a try.
Mr/Ms/Mrs. Vávra, no hard feelings I hope about a newcomer blabbing troubleshooting input here on the storepage.
Mr. Vávra is happy if this helps people download, so thank you :)! I just wonder what the issue could be, the download is a simple zip file that I uploaded to itch the same way I always do.
The UI was a little rough in places but game so far is superb! I really miss the Adventure game and I'd like to make some and to buy some again. I can only hope that any game I would write would be a tenth as classy as this is so far. It's really teaching me that you can reach for a higher standard in an adventure game and it is very suited to the medium.
Excellent graphics, but the UI needs some work. Long compulsory delays on some text (why? Sitting there spamming the mouse/spacebar desperately waiting for your game to stop blocking input ... isn't fun), and something broken with the mouse sensitivity (I have to move the mouse 10x across the table to move across the screen, only with this game. Something broken in your mouse handler in Windows?). Eventually too annoying having to constantly move the mouse, wait for delays, etc.
I'm not aware of the issue you mention, the mouse sensitivity is normal for me and I haven't had anyone else report it being lower. The "compulsory delays" are also most likely a technical glitch that shouldn't occur for most players. Do other AGS games work normally for you?
Edit: on second thought, there are three short paragraphs at the very beginning of the game which are part of the intro and are unskippable (each of them appears for roughly 4 - 5 seconds). Maybe you meant those? They will be skippable in the full version.
We needeth not these comments here, it is already well publicised, in order of sorting, not overwhelming the creator and readers - only constructive comments.
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This game is very good.
Blends really well the serious and humorous bits. I really recommend it to lovers of the genre and of stories.
Thank you for the nice comment, and also for the feedback in your rating! Much appreciated.
Incredible completed work. Even better than I expected from the jam demo. Also I did guess a certain plot point correct.
Happy you liked it, and congrats on the guess, but can you please edit your post to avoid spoilers? Thanks!
What an absolute gem! Top notch writing, graphics, music, and puzzle design!
Thank you!
Honza, this is amazing! Your best yet! I'm in awe! I loved the setup and world building from the demo, but you doubled down on everything, it just all works so well. Truly masterful plotting. It was just so satisfying to get to the resolution, have all those pieces fit together so wonderfully. And god, that music and sound design is supurb, really stand-out stuff. You've gotta make a commercial game. If you made something this quality, two or three times the length with VO, you'd be topping GOTY lists for sure. You're all just too damn talented! :D
Thank you so much Dave, I'm very flattered! And, well, yeah, a commercial game is the dream :).
This is really awesome. It was graphically very pretty (reminded me of Gemini Rue), with great soundtrack. And the story with the twist at the end was perfect. Keep on with it!
Thank you, will do!
This concept is so good.
- Art is on point great retro pixel art
- The story has me hooked!!!
- A mystery set in a Dune-esque world? Sign me in!!!
Thanks, glad you're having a good time!
Hey Shards of God team! We're both retro streamers and we decided to record a YouTube video for our channel playing this game. If you'd like to take a look at how we're enjoying it, here is the link:
Nice, looking forward to the next one!
Btw, Honza = Jan, they’re two versions of the same name, like William/Bill. Except here the short one, Jan, is the formal one… don’t ask why, it’s a Czech thing :).
Enjoyable. It really captures that feeling of 90s point-and-click adventure games except the puzzles weren't too obtuse. I think I'll check out your other games.
Thanks, hope you enjoy those too!
Thanks a lot, this was a great game, super mood! Fun humour! By the way, do you plan to translate this or your future games into other languages? Even with hobby translators? ^^
Thanks right back at ya! Your rating made my day, the game giving off ancient history documentaries/Planescape: Torment vibes is all I could have hoped for. Translations... maybe? Are you a hobby translator :)?
Yes, mainly for Hungarian. There is a nice community here who'd love the game, I'm sure. I can't PM you on Twitter, so maybe best if you have a look here (desktop advised) and feel free to get in touch if you are interested to make Shards of God accessible for more great folks. ;-)
Ok, thank you for the offer! I might still make some edits to the game's text, but once I'm 100% sure everything is set in stone and start considering translations, I will let you know :).
Great game! The final version was worth the wait. Great endings (love a secret ending)
Thanks, Emma! :)
There is no ending to thine sentence.
Can't believe you actually finished it this fast! I'm gonna take my sweet time with this version, and I do remember your hint about the shards and the scale.
Take all the time you need, and get some sleep :)!
A magnificent job both in the graphic aspect and in the soundtrack.
The animations are great, and the story is exciting.
Don't stop contributing with some money to the creators because it's worth every penny.
Congratulations.
Gracias Tranqui!
Thank you :)!
I would never pay for a video game. People better make it out of passion and love or not at all, with money, bad people get the idea of well living by simply doing what sells.
Thanks to everyone for the kind words. Here is the OST for your aural pleasure: https://soundcloud.com/pacodiago/sets/shards-of-god
Great work as always! The graphics are amazing, the puzzles are good and sensible and the story is epic. The resolution is satisfying and it's worth trying multiple things to get all three of the endings.
Thank you, Steven!
i can't believe there is a 3rd ending, i like this game even more now!
The third ending is my favorite :)
Absolutely gorgeous art, I have yet to play this (just bought it) but based on the comments below I'm in for a treat :D
Oh wow, you bought it *before* playing :)? Thank you very much!
Excellent game. I loved the world and its lore (especially the way farming works!), as well as the relationship between Ava and Mother Tiabata. The art and music are gorgeous, too. To anyone who played the Adventure Jam demo, there's a LOT more to play here, and it's well worth your time.
Thank you for the nice feedback! And especially for confirming that this thing has actual GAMEPLAY - I can see how the demo could have been misleading in this regard ;)
Ic liketh not the relationship for Ava being a brat and for Mother Tiabata not cutting it down.
A very cool and elegant game. Well done :)
Thank you!
Just brilliant. The music had me from the demo, the artwork is beautiful, the characters are charming, but above all the story is fantastic and had me hooked the entire time. Really great work, I can see why you didn’t manage to finish it in two weeks! I loved the subtle jab at Ava’s obsession with puzzles.
I found a very minor bug at the end of the game. If you pull the ‘thing’ again instead of doing either of the things you’re supposed to do, it replays the entire previous cutscene. Hope that makes sense.
Thank you, happy you liked it! And thanks for reporting, I know what you mean, the bug is getting fixed in the next update :).
Great, thank you for playing! EDIT: oh, this a playthrough of the demo! That's nice too, but you can play the full version now :)
what.... ok im on it lol
This is a fantastic piece of work. If anyone is reading this comment, please know that it's well worth the optional price. The art is high quality, consistent and distinctive, the fluidity of the animations is masterful, the soundscape has wonderful atmosphere, and your writing is always very eloquent. It did feel more like an "interactive, linear story", but your writing is solid, so that's not a bad thing. I'm stunned you put this together so quickly! Literally my only critique is that there were a couple of typos here and there, but it didn't ruin my immersion and is completely understandable with how quickly you got the game out (which is now redundant, they've been stamped out!) Looking forward to trying out the third ending tomorrow. Thank you for making this!
Thank you Emm! Do you remember the typos? They escaped our vigilant eye...
Not offhand, but if I remember in the near future I'll send you a message! There were only two or three, it was really minor. One of them was just use of 'an' instead of 'a' or something, I think.
I think it was “What is it with you *an* puzzles”, right… ? Instead of *and*.
Wow, thank you for the nice feedback! I've listened to almost all of your stream now, love the voice acting. Especially Xavian with all of his personalities and accents :).
He's a complex character. 😅
This was great, I enjoyed it a lot! I played the demo and I was delighted to see the full version is already out. Really appreciated the lighter tone of the dialogues :) Worldbuilding, art and music are stunning <3 Are you planning on publishing the soundtrack? I’d love to have it :)
P.S.: the third ending 👌
Well, since you are asking, I guess I will publish it. Thank you liking it
That’s awesome news, thank you!
Missing a full stop.
Thank you very much, glad you liked it! I was going to suggest publishing the soundtrack to Paco myself, but you beat me to it :).
There you go, smoke-o: https://soundcloud.com/pacodiago/sets/shards-of-god
This could be a movie :) A lot of effort has been put into the text, detailed graphics, music, etc. I'm glad it's finally been released.
Oooo, gracias Ana! Sabia que podia contar contigo para tener un playthrough como dios manda!
Gracias Paco!
In my head, it kinda is a movie :). Thank you for playing, and congrats on finding the third ending!
I am not a big fan of these pixel art graphics. But I may point out that there is now a Linux version of Shards of God that works for me with MX-15 Debian Jessie 32 bit. This means that the game now also works on all Linux versions that use glibc6 2.19. Starting the Windows version with Wine still doesn't work for me. If there was a German translation, it would increase my interest in the game. Does the developer want the game to start in full screen mode? On my computer, the configuration file acsetup.cfg has the following content...
[misc]
;game_width=320
;game_height=200
game_width=960
game_height=600
gamecolordepth=32
antialias=1
cachemax=131072
user_data_dir=
shared_data_dir=
titletext=Shards of God Setup
[graphics]
driver=D3D9
;windowed=0
windowed=1
;fullscreen=desktop
;window=desktop
window=960x600
game_scale_fs=proportional
game_scale_win=round
filter=stdscale
vsync=0
render_at_screenres=0
rotation=0
[sound]
enabled=1
driver=
usespeech=1
[language]
;translation=ger ;)
[mouse]
auto_lock=0
speed=1
[touch]
emulate_mouse=1
Sorry, I'm not sure what exactly you are asking/pointing out? Yes, there is now an official Linux version, so it should no longer be necessary to run the Windows version on Wine. I believe the game should start in full-screen mode by default - that's the preferred setting for me, but it's also possible to run in windowed mode if that's your preference. You already asked about a German translation once - it is a possibility in the future, but it's currently not a high priority.
>Sorry, I'm not sure what exactly you are pointing out?
That I prefer to play the game in window mode. That looks much better for me.
And that a German translation is needed ;)
love love lovev love lvoevleovleolvoevloevloevleovloevl
One of such comments is good to have
Can anyone help me? I obtained the item so I can recreate the thing. But before I can do that, I need to modify the item. And I have no idea how to do that. I used with every PoI I could find at every location and tried to use everything I carry on it, and I can't figure it out. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I'm not sure I got exactly where you are, but if I understand correctly... could it be helpful that at one point, Plint says "Just stay away from the green ones. Or we'd have to burn your tongue to get you unstuck."?
No, further than that. "Before I can start fiddling [...] I need to shape it [...]."
Aha! There's a device in the Forge that should be helpful. Do you have access to it or it still wants to scan your eye?
You have something that grants you access to things, it works on the scanner too.
This is a wonderful game.
I love your worldbuilding, your writing and your art is also kind of ok... ;-) (Drop-dead-beautiful!!!!)
There were so many occasiones were the writing made my smile, so many little animations made my jaw drop (I love the moving of the cloth when the characters turn) and you managed to create a fascinating detective story.
I wished I had a little more to do in solution/explanation phase of the case but for me you made that up by providing different endings.^^
Great job!
Thank you very much, Esmeralda! Yeah, I was a bit worried about the explanation scene, maybe there was a way to break it down at least with some dialogue choices... but I've always wanted to do the "genius detective reveals everything" trope, and in the end I felt that the most elegant way to get through it was to let Tiabata speak, *uninterrupted* :). Oh and speaking of multiple endings... did you find the third, secret one :)?
Awesome! :D
Ic haebbe gotten that too.
I genuinely think this game is *excellent*! I've had a lot of fun playing it and solving the mystery ^_^
Thank you, happy you enjoyed it!
Hey! This looks pretty great! Is there any chance of a MacOS port happening in the future?
Thanks! Unfortunately there isn't, AGS (the game's engine) doesn't run on Mac :(.
Thank you! :)
No problem :)
It's Sunday, 16th of July, so is the game finished? If it's not, than oh well, delays happen, but I'd be happy to know.
By the way, Nitter works again, so I can check updates. To be honest, I miss "The Wich's Lullaby" updates, so I'll also be happy when you return to posting them. :)
Yes, the game is finished :). Enjoy!
Gamepad support? Will you release demo & full game on steam?
No gamepad unfortunately, as far as I know the engine I'm using doesn't support it. I'm considering an eventual release on Steam, but initially the full game will only be released on Itch (this coming weekend already, by the way!).
WONDERFUL GAME
THANK YOU :)
At least give it an exclamation mark.
!
Okay.
Are there any news about the full game release? As a passive-only social media user I am left without access to any Twitter profiles in more than a week. And to make matters worse, now even Nitter is unable to display tweets. So suddently I have no idea anymore about what's going on in the gamedev world...
Elon Musk is a dingbat.
Right now the most likely release date is next weekend, that is by Sunday July 16th.
Little note for anyone else who might not be getting Shards of God to download at first: I just clicked the "download now" button and it didn't do anything at first. This, when other itch.io games have been downloading without much issue.
I for one was able to get it to work by clicking the button itch.io provides of "Downloads not starting?", and then ticking the box for "alternate download mode".
The box prescribes this for if itch.io is blocked by region, yes, but it also worked for me even as other games have downloaded well enough. Anyone new to itch.io like I am, give it a try.
Mr/Ms/Mrs. Vávra, no hard feelings I hope about a newcomer blabbing troubleshooting input here on the storepage.
Mr. Vávra is happy if this helps people download, so thank you :)! I just wonder what the issue could be, the download is a simple zip file that I uploaded to itch the same way I always do.
Gamepad support?
I'm afraid the engine I'm using (Adventure Game Studio) doesn't include that :(. Sorry!
The UI was a little rough in places but game so far is superb! I really miss the Adventure game and I'd like to make some and to buy some again. I can only hope that any game I would write would be a tenth as classy as this is so far. It's really teaching me that you can reach for a higher standard in an adventure game and it is very suited to the medium.
Excellent graphics, but the UI needs some work. Long compulsory delays on some text (why? Sitting there spamming the mouse/spacebar desperately waiting for your game to stop blocking input ... isn't fun), and something broken with the mouse sensitivity (I have to move the mouse 10x across the table to move across the screen, only with this game. Something broken in your mouse handler in Windows?). Eventually too annoying having to constantly move the mouse, wait for delays, etc.
I'm not aware of the issue you mention, the mouse sensitivity is normal for me and I haven't had anyone else report it being lower. The "compulsory delays" are also most likely a technical glitch that shouldn't occur for most players. Do other AGS games work normally for you?
Edit: on second thought, there are three short paragraphs at the very beginning of the game which are part of the intro and are unskippable (each of them appears for roughly 4 - 5 seconds). Maybe you meant those? They will be skippable in the full version.
We needeth not these comments here, it is already well publicised, in order of sorting, not overwhelming the creator and readers - only constructive comments.