Genius is said to be 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, and Megara Entertainment have certainly put in the hard work necessary to create a modern gaming classic. After man-years of back-breaking and heroic labor, the Fabled Lands HD role-playing game went on sale just hours ago. All credit goes to Megara boss Mikael Louys and his chief coder, Roland Derhi, for getting this out the door - and they're already hard at work on the sequel and the iPhone version.If you have access to an iPad, check it out as soon as you can, give it five stars, and make use of the Tell a Friend button at top right. The more people who download it today, the better the chance of getting it into the Top Ten on iTunes and staying there. And that is another thing that could help ensure the Fabled Lands gamebook series continues. So help spread the word - and have fun exploring the world of Harkuna in living color!
If this was $1 I would totally buy it. Unfortunately, for $10 I can't justify buying it as a symbolic gesture despite not having an iPad. :(
ReplyDeleteI hope it sells well! (and maybe gets an iPhone version... which I would pay a full $10 for!)
There will be an iPhone version. Megara are already locking the shackles back onto their dev team to get that ready as soon as possible.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, everybody who does have an iPad - or who has a friend with an iPad - please take a look at the current version. As with the reissued books 1-4, the only way more products can happen is if somebody buys the existing products. I also recommend buying an iPad btw; it's way cheaper than a vacation in Texas :-)
Even if you don't have access to an iPad, it helps if the link gets around. The more people get to hear about the Fabled Lands revival, the more certain it is to keep momentum. So any place you can post reviews, or even just tweet the news around - it all helps!
THAT IS THE BEST NEWS I HAVE HEARD ALL DAY, and I can't wait. Whip the dev team harder!
ReplyDelete(I can be patient and enjoy the hardcopies for now...)
Here is a link from a mail I got this morning:
ReplyDeletehttp://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/fabled-lands-hd/id415170080?mt=8
Apparently, one can download Itunes on his computer.
Yep, that's the link for the French iTunes. US customers should use:
ReplyDeletehttp://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fabled-lands-hd/id415170080?mt=8
and in Britain:
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/fabled-lands-hd/id415170080?mt=8
I think the link in the post might route you automatically to your local iTunes store - assuming you're browsing on an iPad, that is.
Wonderful news! Hopefully, it will help you to be able to go on with the project... it's a bit frustrating to come to Smogmaw and not beeing allowed to visit the forest... ;)
ReplyDeleteI will be buying this tonight!
ReplyDeleteIf this were on PC or anything BUT apple, i'd get it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I kind of like to second that. While I understand that you can't target all platforms, it sucks a bit to always read about this great looking app here and it being not available for PC or Android. While developing for multiple platforms is much harder, it's also a bit strange to limit ones customer base to a small group like iPad users. But well, that seems somehow to be in the spirit of current times...
ReplyDeleteBut make sure to make an announcement here if it ever comes out for a non-apple product and i, too, will be glad to buy it.
With limited resources we have to make a choice which platforms to target first. It's the same with my Mirabilis comic book: we did the iPad version first, but I have plans to roll it out to other devices soon. And in fact there is already an EPUB version of the first issue - not as good as the iPad app by any means, but free and accessible to all.
ReplyDeleteIn developing an app like Mirabilis or FL, one has to know what device the app is going to run on. It's not enough to develop just for iOS or Android or whatever. I don't personally like reading comics on iPhone (different on iPad - there the experience is better than print) but there are 100 million iPhone owners and only 15 million iPad owners, so iPhone versions of both Mirabilis and Fabled Lands are a must.
The other thing that makes it tricky to port these apps across is that every new tablet manufacturer seems determined to pick a screen size and format that's different from Apple. A friend of mine bought a Samsung tablet and had to take it back because the 7-inch screen was useless for reading magazines or watching movies; it was more like an oversized smartphone than a tablet. So if the manufacturers would just accept that a 3:2 10-inch screen is about perfect, they'd make developers' jobs a lot easier.
Not to make this a tablets review, but i own a Samsung Tablet and i like it, despite the 7inch screen :) That being said, ofc i would enjoy seeing fabled lands in Android one of these days :)) cheers.
ReplyDeleteHi Davide - well, I'd sure hate to read comics on a 7-inch screen, but I'm happy enough to play games on an iPod Touch (screen less than 4 inches) so I think you'll be able to enjoy Fabled Lands on it. We just have to convince the poor, overworked souls at Megara that they don't need a vacation, they just need to get on and do conversions to all the other major operating systems :)
ReplyDeleteHi Dave. I'm reading the Fabled Lands books for the first time and enjoying them immensely. Despite a fairly lengthy real-life 'to do' list, The War-Torn Kingdom and Cities of Gold and Glory just ate up a good 8 or 9 hours of my day yesterday.
ReplyDeleteIs it too late, and too off-topic, to pester you with a couple of rules clarifications?
1) Stats max out at 12, but does this include item bonuses? If, say, I have a MAGIC score of 11, and a wand that gives me a +2 bonus to MAGIC, do I have an effective overall score of 13, or does it top out at 12?
2) Are DEFENCE bonuses from wholly different varieties of armour stackable? Yes, you can only wear one suit of armour at a time - but if, for example, I have a suit of Chainmail Armour (DEFENCE +3), a Magic Helmet (DEFENCE +2), and an Enchanted Shield (DEFENCE +4), would my overall DEFENCE bonus be a whopping +9, or would the shield override the others, giving me an overall bonus of just +4?
Thanks for any assistance.
Glad you're enjoying them, Paul! I'm curious - how much of the books did you get through in 9 hours? Would you say you've done most of the quests and encounters now, or is there still more to explore?
ReplyDeleteTo answer your questions:
(1) Innate abilities can't go above 12, but items can still add to them. So in your example, you'd use the wand with a MAGIC score of 13.
(2) You can only use one Defence bonus at a time. So you'd use the shield's +4 and the others wouldn't count.
Let me see... without getting too spoilery, and not knowing the books by heart... I think I've done most of the major mainland quests and encounters in The War-Torn Kingdom. I still can't get inside the tomb in the Forest of Larun, but I have a good idea now of where I'll find information to help me there. And, flicking through the pages, I spotted an illustration of a wizard - Oliphant? - that I haven't met yet. I'll have to try to track him down.
ReplyDeleteAnd for Cities of Gold and Glory, maybe 75% of mainland adventures? I still haven't managed to get inside Castle Ravayne (low-born scum that I am, the guards keep turning me away), but I've been pretty thorough otherwise.
I made a brief foray into Over the Blood-Dark Sea, as well - I'm playing a Mage, so I made a beeline for a place I spotted called 'Sorcerors' Isle'. I funnelled a LOT of money into my studies there, trying to boost my Magic score.
None of this takes into account shipboard adventuring. Having just, this morning, acquired my first ship, I'm seeing that this adds a whole new dimension to the game - and that adventures at sea have a good number of paragraphs devoted to them, even in books one and two, that I'm only starting to see now.
Thanks for the responses with the rules nitpicking.
Hi Dave, I mentioned recently that I supplied some friends with a shiny new copy of the War Torn Kingdom each to whet their appetites a little. One of them has picked up on an apparently untickable tickbox at 310 that I was surprised to see has had it's paragraph altered (erroneously, I presume) since the first edition. Was there an intention to change the structure of that particular chain of paragraphs? It seems like an unlikely thing to happen accidentally!
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing it out, James. As far as I can see, the paragraph hasn't been changed but it should have been. It ought to read, "if the box isn't ticked, tick it now and then turn to..." - surprising that nobody ever spotted that, as it was an error in the first edition too.
ReplyDeleteThat's the weird thing - my first edition copy looks correct: "If not, put a tick there now, and read on."
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't have mentioned it if I thought it was just a long-standing error that never got corrected, but to have managed to create an error of that nature just seems strange...
Still, if you've no idea how it might have happened then I suppose we'll have to chalk it up to some kind of mischevious publishing demon!
That is odd, James, because my copy of the original edition doesn't say to put a tick there. Do you have the US edition (Quest)? I'm just thinking that maybe it was corrected there but not in the UK edition. Very strange.
ReplyDeleteNope, mine's UK. I did buy it fairly late in the series' original lifespan though - the only ones I could still get hold of at the time were books 1, 2 and 4, the rest were sold out and out of print.
ReplyDeleteI guess it's possible that some amendments were made along the way during the original runs, and when you came to publish the new editions, an original manuscript was used? I won't pretend I have any idea as to the finer points of publishing!
I got the UK edition from Amazon just recently, and I erroneously ticked that box. I guess I got so used to reading, 'if the box isn't ticked, tick it now...' that I just did so out of habit, even when the text didn't mention it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's as simple as that?
Ah, I think I misunderstood. Thought the issue was that an untickable box had been ticked.
ReplyDeleteIt may have been a second edition. If so, we obviously spotted the error and fixed it - but forgot to amend our master text file at the same time. Doh. Well, we can just add it to the *new* errata sheet :-/
ReplyDelete