Odysseus Kosmos – Developer Diaries #18

Hey there, friends! Once again, I’m happy to see you back on board of “San Francisco”, a huge spacecraft travelling far, far way from planet Earth. Today I’d like to talk about the dialogue in the adventure genre and tell you some news about the project as well.
Naturally, the dialogues are an important and unforgettable part of classic quests! It’s a great opportunity to come up with a couple of gags from scratch. And of course, how could we forget about the verbal duels in my beloved “Monkey Island” series, that were the basis for a significant part of the game. Even in the non-conventional adventure games such as Life is Strange dialogues still are an important part of the adventure game play (basically the only important part).
However, after spending some time thinking about the options in “Odysseus”, I’ve decided not to use the traditional dialogue mechanics. This choice has been made partially due to the game’s setting and partially this was a conscious game design decision. As for the setting, everything should be more or less clear here. There is nobody on board except for Odysseus and Barton (so far). So I thought it wouldn’t be right to implement the entire dialog mechanics just for the sake of communicating with a single character.
Usually, dialogues are used to introduce a new character players encounter, to develop the game’s story or to let players learn more about the game world. In our project the story and setting are revealed through terminals and electronic tablets found across the ship, as well as through character’s observations and funny remarks. I wouldn’t want players to approach Barton over and over again to hear the same line or to click through the same old dialogue options. We found it would be better to add new scripted dialogues at the point with a story twist that the player will hear just once, but this way the dialogues will surely make them smile. So if you like funny dialogues - I assure you, the game will not disappoint you.
Now, a few words about the project news. The third episode is scheduled to be released in July! We are not going to release the third episode at the beginning of the month because we are planning to wait at least for the end of the summer sale. The update will be released in the second half of July. The game itself is already in testing. Please note that some new achievements for the third episode will be added at the Store soon, but you cannot get them yet - don’t worry, everything is under control, this is necessary for the tests.
Another important news: we are planning to to add German localization for the pilot and the first episodes (with the second and third episodes in development)! The translation is made by a wonderful person - a translator Daniel Poljak who agreed to give us a hand with localization, thank you so much!
Also we are planning to add a version for Linux. We are not completely sure about the compatibility, so there probably won’t be any active promotion for this feature, but at least the game works correctly on Ubuntu.
That’s it for now! Make sure to stick around for the third episode. It’s almost here! Thank you all for your patience and good luck.