Wonderful. Solid story with excellent character development, and a mystery that you can actually solve if you're paying attention. I loved the ending *sly wink*
That sly wink implies that I know something about the ending.
Love your games!! I'm also an AGSthe rest are just bare bones developer (robotragedy1 and 2, recently 2080 wall city Lockdown and others.) I'm playing Shards and I love the interface. I'm not a coder and creating a game is always a nightmare for me and i'm never happy with the interfaces. Except the thimbellweed template the rest are just bare bones. I have an odd request for You sir. Can you make a template from your Game, removing of course many assets so I can use it as the base for any future game I might develop?
This was so much fun. I loved the characters (especially the depth of the Vigil Mother), and the endings were SO satisfying. You truly have a gift for storytelling.
Does it say something like "Shards_of_God_v1.2 is damaged and can't be opened. You should eject the disk image"? If so, then please follow the instructions in the readme file, you should be able to run the game.
I'd heard about this from a short article in the French video games magazine Canard PC. I just finished it, I have to say it's a delightful little game! The story is very tight and well written, the game feels quite polished. It's short, but in the best way: there is no padding, just the content needed for the story to work and to keep the player guessing until the end. Great job!
Yes, I took it as trolling and deleted it. The comment was bizarre, very arrogant and had earned a record number of downvotes. The fact that you also spammed the thread with 20 or 30 similarly nonsensical and/or antagonistic responses to other commenters didn't help either. More posts like this will lead to a ban.
Nice game! The animation and art were top notch. And the story was good with simple, realistic puzzles. My only complaints are lack of voice acting, which I understand since it's expensive and bad voice acting can ruin a game and some of the conversations were too long. Great game otherwise!
I got stuck right at the end by a bug. (Spoilers ahead)
When Tiabat summons the witness, the game just sits there, not going further. I've been waiting for five minutes and nothing happened... I want to see what happens next :(
Oops, sorry! I did a silent update this morning (just to correct a mistake in one line of dialogue) and it seems that this part got broken in the process. Please download again and load the latest autosave (should be labeled "[somebody] arrives"), hope it works now.
Thank you, it works perfectly, now! It was amazing, surprisingly well written and with astounding music and art. I really hope this will be just the first chapter!
Very nice.
A good two hour game, lots of fun characters, I managed to nail the killer on my second guess. The reveal at the end was lovely, and I got to put a hammer to good use. Wonderful.
fantastic story, art, and twist! took about two hours to complete while also getting lost a few times, but it's not difficult given that the game is good about giving hints. (not overbearingly so, i often tried to refrain from seeking them out to complete the puzzles myself, but it's nice that they're there regardless)
i also appreciated that the game gets interesting VERY quickly.. the whole experience goes by so fast because of how fast & smooth everything is :]
Got it for free; played it and went back here to pay for it. Great story, nice graphics and animations, balanced puzzles: everything was really well-done, congrats to the developer and artists!
Hi Honza! That was amazing. The levels were splendid and the dialog equal parts witty and deep. I enjoyed it a great deal.
Quick question: are you interested in a fan translation? I'd love to do one (I'm a professional translator), but extracting dialogue from an AGS is a hassle. Let's talk about it! (I've messaged you already on twitter.)
Thanks again for this great game, looking forward to the next one!
AMAZING GAME, Cinema Quality. This was an amazing experience. Deeply thought provoking. (also I heard that there is a secret 3rd ending could you plz tell me how to find it) The Only word to describe this is masterpiece.
Thank you very much! Here are some SPOILERS of how to get the secret ending (not 100% spelled out solution, but a strong hint).
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.
.
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There is something you can do at the very end, just *before* you enter the secret chamber to vote. There are not that many interactive things at that point, I'm sure you'll find it :).
Oh, great! I feel like the more emotional/character driven aspects of the ending get a bit lost in all the other stuff that goes on there, really happy it worked this way for you - a bit of chills was the intention! :)
I played through it. A masterpiece indeed. Someone buy the script and make this a movie, please! :D
It was simply the best game I have played for some time now ... Nothing less.
<3 P.S.: It´s not short, it plays for 2 hours of high quality enjoyment and that is more than what I get from most cinematic-moments. Also it is the best whodunnit in my humble opinion ever conceived.
Can I throw money at you guys?
EDIT:
I remember back then 1993 having played through BENEATH A STEEL SKY and it had the absolute same length. I have no clue how you perceive this game as "short", It´s not! /.-)
Thank you so much for the kind words! And I'm happy that the game doesn't feel *that* short. Feel free to throw any money you see fit, we'll do our best to catch it! ;)
E v e r y t h i n g is gorgeously and perfectly crafted. What a gem of a game!
BUT: Please reconsider the annoying library-thing. If you can´t solve it with deductive skills, then WHAt is ist? A dice trapped in a slow-motion-esque universe?
I am the most patient person from here (where I stand) to Wyoming - and beyond. But, I could not get through the annoying library-"puzzle". Is this an extended red hering-joke?
Otherwise, I think your game is sooo beautiful, I would like to include you in my heritage. <3
Thank you, glad you like the game overall! I'm not sure what exactly you mean by the library thing, but if you're talking about the lamps/levers - from feedback I've got I'm not aware of people getting stuck there particularly often. Here's the idea:
- you quickly figure out the lamps are actually levers and they trigger some hidden mechanism.
- [HEAVY SPOILERS] since the passage is meant to be opened by four people, the lamps need to be pulled all at once. This may seem a bit random at first but is explained later - so yeah, in this regard it kinda is an extended joke :).
- The rest relies on trial and error, but keeping the levers down is proving to be a relatively intuitive thing people try, because it's just the kind of thing you do in point and clicks (which plays into the joke/reveal later).
Anyway, thanks for the feedback! I think in the next version I'll have Ava comment on her reason for pulling the lamps a bit more (currently she says she's "heard things of ancient libraries" and "it's worth a try", implying there could be a secret passage, but it's probably not too clear). I can also signpost the solution (something like "it won't stay down!" when you pull the lever). Hopefully this will make it feel a bit less random without revealing too much. The challenge here is to not give away the [SPOILERS] four people thing, that's supposed to be a surprise.
And: I seem to have completely lost my track here.... But I really have no idea how I *SPOLIER* should be able to leave the library (resets the levers) to get a small crowd of characters involved with my brandnew lever-pulling-hobby... Alas!*SPOILER*
Oh wait, sorry! You're still stuck there?! My apologies then, I assumed you got through it/looked up a walkthrough, finished the game and are only talking about it in retrospect.
Forget everything I said then, sorry for the spoilers :(. You can keep the levers down using items you collect - maybe you just don't have the stuff you need yet. If you want the whole solution, let me know what you have in your inventory.
When running the M1 version on a M1 Max Ventura 13.5.1, I got the following error: "'Shards of God.app' is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Bin." I downloaded the Intel version and found a readme file with instructions for bypassing quarantine, which then also worked for the M1 version. Thanks!
I really enjoyed this game - the storytelling, the world, that even has some really strange beings, the classic mystery and the beautiful artwork. And a secret ending, too :-))
I rarely comment here (this may very well be my first comment on the site), but this one really calls for it. The game is amazing.
The story is so well thought through it could be made into a detective novel. There are a few moments when things "click" and make me wonder, why didn't I think of it myself? The world is coherent, the characters have personalities and the lore leaves you with some good dilemmas to think about after you're done playing.
The playthrough is uncomplicated, but reading the dialogs and typical point-and-click trial-and-error does take its time (although the logic-to-guesswork ratio isn't bad). For such a short game the author put their heart and soul into it and the resulting quality is stunning.
Apart from the game shortness, the only thing I can complain about is the unsatisfying ending (the very ending).
Thank you very much, honored to have inspired your first post :)! I'm really happy that the detective elements work, it was important to me to get the genre right.
Now, SPOILERS
.
.
.
By the very ending you mean the epilogue text, and the fact that neither of the two outcomes is exactly positive? Because there is also a third, hidden ending, and you may find that one a bit more satisfying :).
Ooooh, I'll be sure to look for it in some free moment! Regarding the ending,
.
.
.
.
.
.
I actually liked that neither of the two was the objectively "correct" choice, that's why the dilemma was so thought provoking and took me several minutes to consider. The thing is, and I knew it even then, the game was about to end regardless and my choice was kind of pointless. Those few lines of epilogue didn't feel rewarding enough. Perhaps I'd be happier if the game ended right after my choice with no epilogue at all, leaving it to my imagination (though admittedly, were I in your position, I wouldn't take such a game-design risk -- for many it'd be even worse).
Still, that somewhat disappointing epilogue didn't break the experience for me.
Well, in my mind the epilogue isn’t that important, the real ending is the conclusion to the case and the fact that Ava gets to make a choice using the bloody shard. Leaving it completely open was actually the first option I thought of, but I was told people would find it disappointing and I have to agree - I'm sure there would be a lot of complaints had I left it that way ;). Still, to me, the actual story ends with the fadeout on the scales.
I just gotta say that this game is absolutely astounding! The art, the music, the writing, everything across the board was so delightful and well done! The puzzles were fun and had me thinking but it was never too hard. I didn't get stuck and have to look up a walk through at any point (which is rare for me in a puzzle game).
Especially impressive when you see that this game was made by such a small team in such a short amount of time. Completely worth your time and money. :)
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Wonderful. Solid story with excellent character development, and a mystery that you can actually solve if you're paying attention. I loved the ending *sly wink*
That sly wink implies that I know something about the ending.
Love your games!! I'm also an AGSthe rest are just bare bones developer (robotragedy1 and 2, recently 2080 wall city Lockdown and others.) I'm playing Shards and I love the interface. I'm not a coder and creating a game is always a nightmare for me and i'm never happy with the interfaces. Except the thimbellweed template the rest are just bare bones. I have an odd request for You sir. Can you make a template from your Game, removing of course many assets so I can use it as the base for any future game I might develop?
My email is pijin73@gmail.com
Thanks for your games and talent!!
Thank you, fellow AGSer! I sent you an email :).
This was so much fun. I loved the characters (especially the depth of the Vigil Mother), and the endings were SO satisfying. You truly have a gift for storytelling.
Played this a while ago, real nice look and great mood. Liked the sound of it a lot. Good job!
Было бы классно увидеть на русском языке :)
the game is very very well written and has a great sense of humor! congrats!
Thank you for this game, it was an absolute masterpiece! It reminded me a lot of the games Dune (from 1992) and Beneath a Steel Sky.
Just a little piece of art. Simple but beautifully crafted. If there is a release on steam, I will definitely buy this thing.
MacOS Ventura tells me the disc image is damaged. Any chance of a reupload?
Does it say something like "Shards_of_God_v1.2 is damaged and can't be opened. You should eject the disk image"? If so, then please follow the instructions in the readme file, you should be able to run the game.
That worked. Fantastic game.
Happy to hear that, and thank you!
What an incredible game! I absolutely loved every moment of this compact and gripping story. Thank you!
Very interesting.
Would you be interested in having the game available in brazilian portuguese?
is the game complete or is it a wip?
It's complete.
Brisk and gorgeously rendered pastiche with plenty of characterful dialogue and an unerring focus. Looking forward to exploring your other works!
I'd heard about this from a short article in the French video games magazine Canard PC. I just finished it, I have to say it's a delightful little game! The story is very tight and well written, the game feels quite polished. It's short, but in the best way: there is no padding, just the content needed for the story to work and to keep the player guessing until the end. Great job!
Mine comment is missing.
Yes, I took it as trolling and deleted it. The comment was bizarre, very arrogant and had earned a record number of downvotes. The fact that you also spammed the thread with 20 or 30 similarly nonsensical and/or antagonistic responses to other commenters didn't help either. More posts like this will lead to a ban.
Nice game! The animation and art were top notch. And the story was good with simple, realistic puzzles. My only complaints are lack of voice acting, which I understand since it's expensive and bad voice acting can ruin a game and some of the conversations were too long. Great game otherwise!
ahh my mac (m1) still cant open the game... says the item is damaged
Did you follow the instructions in the readme file?
I got stuck right at the end by a bug. (Spoilers ahead)
When Tiabat summons the witness, the game just sits there, not going further. I've been waiting for five minutes and nothing happened... I want to see what happens next :(
Oops, sorry! I did a silent update this morning (just to correct a mistake in one line of dialogue) and it seems that this part got broken in the process. Please download again and load the latest autosave (should be labeled "[somebody] arrives"), hope it works now.
Thank you, it works perfectly, now! It was amazing, surprisingly well written and with astounding music and art. I really hope this will be just the first chapter!
Very nice. A good two hour game, lots of fun characters, I managed to nail the killer on my second guess. The reveal at the end was lovely, and I got to put a hammer to good use. Wonderful.
You got to make a sequel where a murder happens in the Order!
fantastic story, art, and twist! took about two hours to complete while also getting lost a few times, but it's not difficult given that the game is good about giving hints. (not overbearingly so, i often tried to refrain from seeking them out to complete the puzzles myself, but it's nice that they're there regardless)
i also appreciated that the game gets interesting VERY quickly.. the whole experience goes by so fast because of how fast & smooth everything is :]
Whaow ! 😃👍👍👍
Got it for free; played it and went back here to pay for it. Great story, nice graphics and animations, balanced puzzles: everything was really well-done, congrats to the developer and artists!
It was truly amazing!!!
I loved playing this!
Hi Honza! That was amazing. The levels were splendid and the dialog equal parts witty and deep. I enjoyed it a great deal.
Quick question: are you interested in a fan translation? I'd love to do one (I'm a professional translator), but extracting dialogue from an AGS is a hassle. Let's talk about it! (I've messaged you already on twitter.)
Thanks again for this great game, looking forward to the next one!
Amazing Game ! too much chit-chat but beautiful animated . The graphics/music are just fabulous ... thank :)
This isn't a game. This is AN EXPERIENCE.
I had a crazy theory in the first minutes of the story, about a potential end twist. I was wrong, and the actual twist surprised me.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
At first I thought Mother Tiabata was the culprit, and only asked us to recreate the murder to frame us.
The reveal that the victim wasn't who I thought he was took me off guard.
AMAZING GAME, Cinema Quality. This was an amazing experience. Deeply thought provoking. (also I heard that there is a secret 3rd ending could you plz tell me how to find it) The Only word to describe this is masterpiece.
Thank you very much! Here are some SPOILERS of how to get the secret ending (not 100% spelled out solution, but a strong hint).
.
.
.
.
.
There is something you can do at the very end, just *before* you enter the secret chamber to vote. There are not that many interactive things at that point, I'm sure you'll find it :).
WHY ARE ALLLL THE ENDINGS DEPRESSSING!!!!!!!
Beautiful, polished, well-written, and just a joy to play. Thank you for making this wonderful adventure game!
Thank *you*!
The ending sent chills down my spine
Oh, great! I feel like the more emotional/character driven aspects of the ending get a bit lost in all the other stuff that goes on there, really happy it worked this way for you - a bit of chills was the intention! :)
I played through it. A masterpiece indeed. Someone buy the script and make this a movie, please! :D
It was simply the best game I have played for some time now ... Nothing less.
<3
P.S.: It´s not short, it plays for 2 hours of high quality enjoyment and that is more than what I get from most cinematic-moments.
Also it is the best whodunnit in my humble opinion ever conceived.
Can I throw money at you guys?
EDIT:
I remember back then 1993 having played through BENEATH A STEEL SKY and it had the absolute same length. I have no clue how you perceive this game as "short", It´s not! /.-)
Thank you so much for the kind words! And I'm happy that the game doesn't feel *that* short. Feel free to throw any money you see fit, we'll do our best to catch it! ;)
very good
Thanks!
E v e r y t h i n g is gorgeously and perfectly crafted. What a gem of a game!
BUT: Please reconsider the annoying library-thing. If you can´t solve it with deductive skills, then WHAt is ist? A dice trapped in a slow-motion-esque universe?
I am the most patient person from here (where I stand) to Wyoming - and beyond. But, I could not get through the annoying library-"puzzle". Is this an extended red hering-joke?
Otherwise, I think your game is sooo beautiful, I would like to include you in my heritage. <3
Thank you, glad you like the game overall! I'm not sure what exactly you mean by the library thing, but if you're talking about the lamps/levers - from feedback I've got I'm not aware of people getting stuck there particularly often. Here's the idea:
- you quickly figure out the lamps are actually levers and they trigger some hidden mechanism.
- [HEAVY SPOILERS] since the passage is meant to be opened by four people, the lamps need to be pulled all at once. This may seem a bit random at first but is explained later - so yeah, in this regard it kinda is an extended joke :).
- The rest relies on trial and error, but keeping the levers down is proving to be a relatively intuitive thing people try, because it's just the kind of thing you do in point and clicks (which plays into the joke/reveal later).
Anyway, thanks for the feedback! I think in the next version I'll have Ava comment on her reason for pulling the lamps a bit more (currently she says she's "heard things of ancient libraries" and "it's worth a try", implying there could be a secret passage, but it's probably not too clear). I can also signpost the solution (something like "it won't stay down!" when you pull the lever). Hopefully this will make it feel a bit less random without revealing too much. The challenge here is to not give away the [SPOILERS] four people thing, that's supposed to be a surprise.
Thanx for the quick answer! :D
And: I seem to have completely lost my track here.... But I really have no idea how I *SPOLIER* should be able to leave the library (resets the levers) to get a small crowd of characters involved with my brandnew lever-pulling-hobby... Alas!*SPOILER*
Oh wait, sorry! You're still stuck there?! My apologies then, I assumed you got through it/looked up a walkthrough, finished the game and are only talking about it in retrospect.
Forget everything I said then, sorry for the spoilers :(. You can keep the levers down using items you collect - maybe you just don't have the stuff you need yet. If you want the whole solution, let me know what you have in your inventory.
When running the M1 version on a M1 Max Ventura 13.5.1, I got the following error: "'Shards of God.app' is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Bin." I downloaded the Intel version and found a readme file with instructions for bypassing quarantine, which then also worked for the M1 version. Thanks!
Phew, glad it worked out in the end! Added the readme file to the M1 archive as well, thanks for reporting!
I really enjoyed this game - the storytelling, the world, that even has some really strange beings, the classic mystery and the beautiful artwork. And a secret ending, too :-))
Thank you very much! :)
I rarely comment here (this may very well be my first comment on the site), but this one really calls for it. The game is amazing.
The story is so well thought through it could be made into a detective novel. There are a few moments when things "click" and make me wonder, why didn't I think of it myself? The world is coherent, the characters have personalities and the lore leaves you with some good dilemmas to think about after you're done playing.
The playthrough is uncomplicated, but reading the dialogs and typical point-and-click trial-and-error does take its time (although the logic-to-guesswork ratio isn't bad). For such a short game the author put their heart and soul into it and the resulting quality is stunning.
Apart from the game shortness, the only thing I can complain about is the unsatisfying ending (the very ending).
Thank you very much, honored to have inspired your first post :)! I'm really happy that the detective elements work, it was important to me to get the genre right.
Now, SPOILERS
.
.
.
By the very ending you mean the epilogue text, and the fact that neither of the two outcomes is exactly positive? Because there is also a third, hidden ending, and you may find that one a bit more satisfying :).
Ooooh, I'll be sure to look for it in some free moment! Regarding the ending,
.
.
.
.
.
.
I actually liked that neither of the two was the objectively "correct" choice, that's why the dilemma was so thought provoking and took me several minutes to consider. The thing is, and I knew it even then, the game was about to end regardless and my choice was kind of pointless. Those few lines of epilogue didn't feel rewarding enough. Perhaps I'd be happier if the game ended right after my choice with no epilogue at all, leaving it to my imagination (though admittedly, were I in your position, I wouldn't take such a game-design risk -- for many it'd be even worse).
Still, that somewhat disappointing epilogue didn't break the experience for me.
Following up on the SPOILERS...
.
.
.
.
.
.
Well, in my mind the epilogue isn’t that important, the real ending is the conclusion to the case and the fact that Ava gets to make a choice using the bloody shard. Leaving it completely open was actually the first option I thought of, but I was told people would find it disappointing and I have to agree - I'm sure there would be a lot of complaints had I left it that way ;). Still, to me, the actual story ends with the fadeout on the scales.
I just gotta say that this game is absolutely astounding! The art, the music, the writing, everything across the board was so delightful and well done! The puzzles were fun and had me thinking but it was never too hard. I didn't get stuck and have to look up a walk through at any point (which is rare for me in a puzzle game).
Especially impressive when you see that this game was made by such a small team in such a short amount of time. Completely worth your time and money. :)
Thank you very much!
Krásná hra, ale bez češtiny to bohužel nedávám. Nešlo by ji tam přidat?
Díky! Časem možná překlad bude, ale zatím bohužel není nic jisté.
What a gem of a game! Funny, witty, beautiful, and the music and sound design are fantastic, too. Well done!
Thank you :)!