Theseus: Journey to Athens (Indie Adventure/RPG)

Antiquity Games

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3/5 Free Demo updated to bring it in line with the full version! It's available on Itch.io, enjoy!

2/28 RELEASED ON STEAM AND ITCH 2/28/19

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NEW DEMO RELEASED 12/22: https://antiquity-games.itch.io/theseus-journey-to-athens

Strap on Theseus' sandals and help him explore his birthplace, Troezen. The demo ends when you set out for Athens; the full game will be available in January for under $10 and has approximately 3 times the content.

Major updates to the old demo from 5~ months ago:
- New art assets
- Original soundtrack
- Improvements to gameplay mechanics/interface

Set in classical antiquity, this game features old-school adventure and role-playing mechanics. Your choices will have consequences. The primary goal of this game is to bring the ancient source material to life; if you appreciate classical antiquity and mythology, then this game should fit the bill.

Key Features:

Over 20 unique locations to explore, based heavily on classical texts like Pausanias' Guide to Greece.

Beautiful modern artwork created by artist Klaudia Jankowska (https://klaudiajankowskaart.myportfolio.com).

Original soundtrack composed by Michael Landers.

Detailed choose-your-own-adventure style cut scenes, decorated with historical artwork.

Turn-based combat with many different opponents and items. Party
mechanics are included, but will your noble companions be willing to travel side by side with the wretched ones?

The ancient sources tell many different tales about Theseus and his journey to Athens. Now, it is your turn to step into Theseus' sandals. What will you seek to achieve, and how will you conduct yourself as you make your way to Athens?


New trailer 12/18:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O9F-XYAcII



Sneak peek at the Sanctuary of Asklepios, just outside Epidauros:

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/983640/Theseus_Journey_to_Athens/

Finally got the Steam page up and running, I'm very proud to reach this point in the game's development!

If you are looking forward to this release, please take a moment to place Theseus: Journey to Athens on your wishlist. I understand that for small Indie titles like this, it's a very important thing for the Steam algorithms.

Between full-time work and a recent holiday abroad, I haven't taken the time to give regular status updates. A lot of progress has been made since the free updated demo was released for Christmas, and I will be sure to post new screenshots and content information soon.

On another note, Steam is giving me a headache about changing the release date. It's not possible to release the game shorter than 2 weeks after the launch of the store page. I will therefore release in mid February; it says February 1st right now, but I will push it back another couple of weeks from there once I get the site to cooperate with my browser.
 
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/983640/Theseus_Journey_to_Athens/

Finally got the Steam page up and running, I'm very proud to reach this point in the game's development!

If you are looking forward to this release, please take a moment to place Theseus: Journey to Athens on your wishlist. I understand that for small Indie titles like this, it's a very important thing for the Steam algorithms.

Between full-time work and a recent holiday abroad, I haven't taken the time to give regular status updates. A lot of progress has been made since the free updated demo was released for Christmas, and I will be sure to post new screenshots and content information soon.

On another note, Steam is giving me a headache about changing the release date. It's not possible to release the game shorter than 2 weeks after the launch of the store page. I will therefore release in mid February; it says February 1st right now, but I will push it back another couple of weeks from there once I get the site to cooperate with my browser.

In future if you would like this to be on the news page go to contact on menu bar then go to contact us. Congratulations btw!
 
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It looks very nice, the setting and perspective reminds me a bit of Titan Quest. Was the art made entirely for your project or is it 3rd party?

Good luck with Steam launch!
 
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In future if you would like this to be on the news page go to contact on menu bar then go to contact us. Congratulations btw!

Thanks. RPGWatch was kind enough to feature my game on the front page when I released the free demo last year, and the analytics on Itch show that a lot of people visited from RPGWatch and downloaded the game.

I was tempted to ask for the new Steam page to be advertised yesterday, but I didn't want to push my luck by requesting front page coverage too often!

It looks very nice, the setting and perspective reminds me a bit of Titan Quest. Was the art made entirely for your project or is it 3rd party?

Good luck with Steam launch!

Thanks, so far the new Steam page has gotten a good amount of views!

The art is all new, it was created for this project. I contracted with a talented artist by the name of Klaudia Jankowska, who lurks on some gaming forums and does freelance work. She's good with communication and works at a good pace, so I hope that she will be available and willing to work with me on future projects.
 
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Phaia-and-pets.png


Theseus met many unique bandits and monsters on the road to Athens. Among them was Phaia and the Krommyonian Sow. Krommyon was an area near Corinth, right on the road between Epidauros and Athens. The sow was said to be a man-eating pig raised by an old lady by the name of Phaia.

As usual, the ancient texts are not in agreement about Phaia and her monster. For example, Plutarch preserves a version of the myth where there is no beast. Rather, Phaia is a bandit who received the nickname “sow” due to her poor manners and evil life.

Our game most closely follows the account preserved by Apollodorus. In his Bibliotheke, it is said that Phaia was an old lady who looked after the sow, which was named after her. This version is depicted on extant pottery, which shows the lady commanding a giant pig to attack Theseus.

Of course, perhaps all this is just a myth, and Phaia is just a kind lady that poses no danger to Theseus…

Phaiascottage.png


https://antiquitystudio.com/2019/02/03/krommyonian-sow/

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/983640/Theseus_Journey_to_Athens/

Itch.io: https://antiquity-games.itch.io/


Bonus picture of a lady instructing some sort of pig to eat everyone's favourite hero:

krommyonian-sow.jpg
 
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Still on track to release this month. I wanted to get it out the door a week ago, but no such luck. I have set everything up on Steam, though, and have the latest build up and running (not available to the public yet):

buildonline.jpg


Steam will take 2 to 5 days to review it, so I would anticipate a release sometime next week.
 
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Theseus: Journey to Athens is now available on Itch.io and Steam as of 2/28/19!

The price is $7.65 and there is a free demo available from last Christmas that accurately depicts the final gameplay. The full game allows the player to slip into Theseus' sandals and journey in search of Theseus' father, King Aigeus. Unique art and music brings the classical source material to life.

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STEAM
ITCH
 
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You should add the demo on steam as well.

Good point, I will do it after work or tomorrow morning. I didn't upload the Christmas demo because I didn't know how to use the Steamworks SDK (a software package that you must use to upload builds to Steam) and I did not have a previously approved build on Steam.

What I really need to do is re-make the demo using the release build. I worked on the game a lot since December 2018, so the demo is somewhat out of date and lacking polish. It is an easy thing to do; I will just delete the post-Troezen content and have the game kick the player to the main menu at the end of the first town.

Ideally the demo will be uploaded tonight, but at any rate I'll aim to announce the demo update tomorrow at noon.
 
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I released a series of patches post-release that addressed some bugs and added some interface improvements (most notably, pressing esc in combat now brings up an options menu). Both the Itch and Steam versions are up to date, and I am aiming to publish a bonus content and interface update at the end of next weekend.

A curator/blog, @Indiegamepicks, contacted me and said they wanted to do a piece of the game. It went online today, looks they enjoyed it:

Theseus: Journey to Athens
Zaratoth / 8 hours ago
Developer: Antiquity Studio
Publisher: Antiquity Studio
Release: 2019
Genre: Adventure/RPG
Art Style: 3D / Drawing
Platforms: Steam/itch.io

Are you a fan of ancient Greek mythology, with heroes, monsters and bickering gods? How about choose-your-own-adventure games with different options and outcomes? If yes, then Theseus: Journey to Athens is a game you should check out.

It was created by Antiquity Studio, a US based dev consisting of a single person, Adam Delderfield, a criminal prosecutor who in his spare time creates video games based on ancient texts. The artwork and music were contracted to Klaudia Jankowska and Michael Landers respectively.

(Image on site)

In Theseus: Journey to Athens, you play as the aforementioned mythological hero, before his trip to Crete and the widely know story of the Maze and the Minotaur. You start in his home village of Troezen and you follow his adventures towards Athens. The story is heavily rooted in classical texts like Pausanias’ Guide to Greece, Plutarch’s Life of Theseus, Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca​, ​and shorter works and fragments such as those of Bacchylides.

The game has three different aspects, exploring, decision making and combat. First of all, the exploration. This is mainly done in classic top-down RPG mode, like the Infinity engine classics. During this you can visit different areas and start conversations with NPCs. The graphics are old-school, but do their job. The only problem was that the walking animation is a bit weird, but, with only one man at the helm, it doesn’t really matter to me.

(image on site)

The second part, the decision making, is where the game truly shines for me. When you enter this mode, the screen fills with text, along with an image. The events are well written and, while a bit simplistic in nature, they can affect your playthrough, even to the point of an early game over screen! Have to say that, I originally thought it would be just the city of Troezen, which I finished in 20 minutes or so, but later on I realised I did wrong choices and just died before reaching the next stage! Keep that in mind, because after each section, you get a screen about how your options changed things and that might make you think that the game ended.

The third part I would say is also the weakest, combat. It is classic turn-based combat with some skills available. There are no animations available, and it is pretty simplistic, while some of the battles should be solved via an event rather than direct combat. However, it has its purpose, providing a layer of strategy and confrontation in an otherwise text-only title.

(image on site)

All in all, this is an interesting title, complemented with good writing, beautiful artwork and cool music, along with a really low price (less than 10 EUR). Fans of choose-your-own-adventures and ancient Greek mythology should definitely check it out.

Also, as you can see, I did not get around to making and uploading the new demo. Actually, a new demo is a relatively easy thing to do, but I need to figure out how additional depots work on Steam; I have it set up incorrectly right now. But this is just an excuse, I will do it.
 
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NEW PATCH & NEW DEMO

Okay, I decided to get things done tonight:


- New demo is up on Itch, it is up to date with all the improvements made since December.

- New interface improvement - Theseus can now initiate dialogue without having to be super close to the other character.

- Bug squished - there was a loophole whereby Theseus could spend the gold but still get the necklace without violence. No longer!


There will still be a major patch at the end of the weekend at latest, but this is pretty significant so I wanted to make a post.
 
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Major Patch 3/10/19:

INTERFACE UPDATES/IMPROVEMENTS:

- Scene transition is now automatic, except when on the road between Epidauros and Athens.

- During combat, hover your mouse over the enemy to see their name and health.

- Previously patched so that you no longer need to be so close to initiate dialogue.

- First screen now displays instructions.

- Shortcut key directly to inventory (press "i")

BUGS CRUSHED:

Medea's portrait now displays correctly.

Correct ending slide for Phaia shown when the player recruits the Krommyonian Sow.

Fixed King Aigeus’ name on the tactical combat level.

Fixed bug with Mortmal’s dialogue if you have the kidnapping quest.
 
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It's an interesting setting and I like the art style and perspective!

Could you say a little more about the RPG elements of the game? It uses a fixed protagonist, but are there stats (or even classes) and if so how do they work?

In any case, I'll probably pick it up and give it a go - the decision making sounds interesting from the review above! Good luck with it.
 
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXLvdTuVCqc

A video from Beyond Us Games, who does a lot of tutorial videos and tutoring work. I support him on Patreon and received a lot of help and advice while learning GMS 2 and developing this game. Definitely worth checking out his channel if you're new to game development!


It's an interesting setting and I like the art style and perspective!

Could you say a little more about the RPG elements of the game? It uses a fixed protagonist, but are there stats (or even classes) and if so how do they work?

In any case, I'll probably pick it up and give it a go - the decision making sounds interesting from the review above! Good luck with it.

The RPG elements are relatively simple, but they exist. Theseus has stats which improve depending on what sort of actions you take.

At the end of the above video, you can see the stat sheet; the player starts at 0 in all stats, but during the video he improved his wisdom by saving Connidas (Theseus' tutor) and intelligence by consulting with the Priest of Poseidon. The stats are important because they will improve your combat performance and they are checked during the quests.

If you never increase your Constitution, Theseus will always have very low hit points. Also, you can get items and party members. In the video, you can see how he saved Connidas, who is an archer and has a special bow-ability. Each possible party member has a special ability except Boutes, although I might give him a special in the next patch. It is also possible to get a few items that will give Theseus special abilities or otherwise make him more powerful in combat. For example, there is an acid-spitting staff that you can find in Epidauros.

Similarly, if you never increase your wisdom you might get killed if you attempt certain quests. Classical texts tell us what happened to people who kneel down next to Sciron and help wash his feet. A wise character will see the danger and bring the quest to a better conclusion. :biggrin:

So, the RPG mechanics consist of 6 stats that affect combat and quests, 4 party members, and some items that buff stats and give combat abilities.
 
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My initial thoughts while playing this game was that it was either:

a) A game made by a child.

or

b) A game made for a young child.


There's a massive disconnect in this game between what it purports to provide and what it actually delivers. On the one hand it makes a strong claim to authenticity and a great deal of effort has been made to get all the names and lore as neat and tidy as possible. But that's as far as the effort went. The dialogues are all one-liners. Each NPC has about 4 dialogue options, all of which provide one-line answers and barely any of which either go anywhere nor add anything of value to either the atmosphere or the gameplay. On top of this, the dialogue screens themselves are exceptionally clunky and require a lot more button presses than any human would consider acceptable. Occasionally dialogues change as a result of events but mostly they remain unchanging and constantly repeatable. Most striking example: You ask for a reward & are given a reward, end conversation, repeat and get the same options, but no you can't cheese more rewards that way at least.

Likewise, the combat is barebones and almost pointless. A couple of characters have 'special moves' but you can only use them twice in combat & combats tend to run on for tens of rounds, those that don't, don't even need the special moves. And even calling them special moves is using a very unfitting superlative. Basically, combat is just "attack"[75% chance to hit], click end turn, "attack"[75% chance to hit], click end turn, now repeat this process until the numbers reach zero, which was tiring enough in the first small fight, but by the third fight (which for me was the end boss battle) was already almost beyond bearable.

Further, moving onto itemisation, there's again a huge disconnect between the effort of the premise compared to the resulting item descriptions. One moment we are provided with a decent couple of paragraphs about ancient Greek lore, the next, as a reward for reading that text, we get a crab-helmet whose description is "clik-clak go the pincers" or some such juvenile humour-speak, and all the inventory items are like this. As are a lot of the useless one-liners in dialogues. Oh, and when I say itemisation, it's mostly adventure game itemisation in that most of the stuff you pick up will want to be gobbled up by an NPC at some point. Some items can even be gobbled up by multiple NPCs leaving you the wonderful choice of who to give your mostly pointless trinket to.

A common complaint about Divinity games is they often match silly humour with mature themes. However, I never really get that with Divinity games as their base premise is never uber-serious in the first place. What we have with this game is a stark contrast between the sincerity of the premise and the ultra-juvenile and lazy fluff content.

Even just walking around in the game is presented as lazily as possible as the sprite character can't even walk at the same speed as their animation creating that hilarious 'glide' effect as they traverse the screen. Exploration is minimal at best and generally consists of four or five screens per 'town' each of which has approximately two to three NPCs in it, if you're lucky, but, worse than this, simply going to another screen can advance the story and leave you unable to go back to a previous screen (as can many dialogues), but the signposts that indicate screen transition points are all completely blank and provide no indication as to whether they are normal transitions or chapter transitions.

Not so much choose your own adventure as stumble through your own adventure.

So the game, while giving a detailed taste of the ancient geek, generally does its absolute upmost to bugger that up at every opportunity other than text screens and some occasional background artwork. Which is a shame as a lot of the artwork is very nice. As is the rather occasional music which tends to pipe up and cut-out of its own random accord. To which the music setting is already too low with no options menu sound controls. I know volume numbers don't mean anything, but the loudest I normally watch TV, while eating crisps is at my PC's number 30, when I closed this game I discovered I'd moved the volume button to 43 just to get it to be mild background sound.

The choose your own adventure part comes into play every now and then when the game will give you the option to do either A or B in a certain situation, sometimes you might even get a C option. And most of the time it's the usual lazy crap of "do you want to A: Do the honest/good thing or B: Murder the NPC. Variations on the theme, etc. At the end of each 'chapter', which only lasts about 20-30 minutes each, you will get a run down list of what happened to all the NPCs you encountered (and even ones you didn't) to tell you how your interactions effected them, you know, like in the Tell-Tale games, only in this game you only had one interaction with the NPC & you will already know what the outcome of that situation was by the one solitary dialogue of one-liners you shared with them.

And the more you play, the more the quests get edgier and edgier, human sacrifice, kidnap, murder, etc, which instantly rules out the game being for small children, though doesn't rule out the possibility that the developer is a teenager.

I will say this however, the developer has been very attentive to constructive criticism and most of the points made by people following the game's development have been answered quickly and exactly. The irritating thing is that s/he needs to be told about quite so many quite obvious glaring issues with the game. It really is as if the developer doesn't really care for anything in the game other than "here's some solid ancient greek lore and some brief taster plot-lines, my work here is done". Does s/he really need people to tell him/her stuff that would be painfully obvious to any other human being on the planet?

However, if the developer is a teenager and this work comprises a lot of 'homework hours', to which advice is almost akin to 'teaching everything', then this is actually a very fine piece of work and one that would get good scores from any IT class. If the developer is an adult looking to prove something to the industry and to earn real money from paying customers and that they consider this kind of product to be a 'finished and saleable product' then I'd be more inclined to encourage everyone to guard their wallets and baton down the hatches for the safety and security of the wider industry, because, while this person might make for a great children's picture book writer, they have absolutely no inherent ability at understanding computer game design nor any inherent desire to provide anything other than an exposition of their knowledge of ancient greek lore.

But don't worry, I shan't be asking for a refund, charity is exactly how I viewed spending this money when I purchased the game. If you are reading this and you are a teenager, please enjoy a trip to the cinema on me. If you are an adult, please put it towards buying a game that is more professionally made so you can ask yourself 'what elements of this game do I like and how best can I imitate them', because for all intents and purposes the person who made this game appears to have zero appreciation for even the most basic player comforts & most of the comforts that have made it into the game are there because someone else asked them to be there…

Will probably play it again at some point now I have it, though the game does genuinely cause headaches if you play it for too long, so maybe I wont thinking about it, I dunno. If I'm so bored that it's either this or a free flash game then it can compete with its own kind for my attention at that point.

Which is a huge shame really, if the developer had gone all-in on making a short children's mostly factual non-edgy game in a similar way then s/he could have had an actual product on their hands, children can be extremely forgiving of the most shit-awful design features. Check out Scooby Doo: The Jinx at the Sphinx (2001), that's the market you should have gone for.
 
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Oh, and I didn't even begin… didn't even make it to typos, the almost entirely ineffectual/pointless ability stats, irritating UI, the virtually zero gameplay while still having some aspects require a keyboard instead of a mouse click. Oh god, I only played for 2 hours and I'm writing one of the longest walls of text ever on the game's issues… must… stop… spent over two hours talking about issues in a game that lasted two hours… that someone was charging money for…

Ok, I've stopped.


For now.

edit: Oh yeah, and the bugs…

Ok, stopped.
 
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