Herald (computer game)

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Herald
Studio Wispfire
Publisher Wispfire
Senior Developer Roy van der Schilden
Bart Heijltjes
composer Bart Delissen
Erstveröffent-
lichung
22nd February 2017
platform Linux , Mac OS X , Windows
genre Adventure , visual novel
medium Download
language English

Herald is a computer game by the Dutch game developer Wispfire from 2017. The adventure has an unusual setting: The setting is a clipper (called Herald ) in 1857, but it is an alternative world story .

action

The Herald game world is based on the real world, but the countries of the western world are united to form a structure called Protectorate , which in its administrative form is reminiscent of the Commonwealth of England and is ruled by a lord protector in 1857 . Various European countries such as the Netherlands and France are called "provinces" in the game, which suggests that Great Britain is predominant. There is a brisk trade in goods between the Protectorate and the Indian-like Easter Colonies , the preferred commodity is indigo , and the preferred means of transport for large quantities of goods are still sailing ships. The player takes on the role of the young Devan Rensburg. He was born in the Easter Colonies but was adopted by white parents in the Protectorate, where he grew up.

At the beginning of the game, Rensburg is in an interrogation-like situation. Apparently he is a survivor of a shipwreck and is supposed to report on his journey to a mysterious woman who is holding him prisoner, who calls herself "The Rani" ( wife of a Raja ) and who claims to have found Rensburg's diary.

Rensburg explains that he wanted to research his family roots in the Easter Colonies. At the instigation of a recruiter named Aaron Ludlow, he hires on the Herald clipper , which is supposed to pick up indigo in the Easter Colonies. He has the low rank of a simple sailor on the ship and is actually responsible for the food distribution and janitorial activities around the crew's quarters. Rensburg takes on a wide variety of tasks on board the ship and thus comes into contact with the entire crew, for example he has to help the ship's doctor with treatment, assist the cook or clear up a supposedly supernatural event. The crew is made up of people from all over the Protectorate's sphere of influence and is therefore multicultural. The highest positions on board, however, are reserved for white residents of the actual Protectorate. After some turbulent events, Rensburg is promoted to steward . While his new position is envied by a few simple crew members, he continues to experience the arrogant disdain of the Herald's most senior passenger , Senator Morton. A constant in Rensburg's life on the Herald is his friendship with second mate Aaron Ludlow, who also comes from the Eastern Colonies.

At the end of the first part of the game, the player learns that the supposedly male officer Aaron Ludlow is the daughter of the "Rani" disguised as a man.

Directory of persons

role function speaker
Devan Rensburg The game character. Vivek Bhurtun
Cornelis Hendriksz Captain of the Herald . Dutch. Authoritarian but understanding. Bas sligting
Rupert Brunswick Highly respected first officer and navigator of the Herald . Briton. Bill Dick
Louis Morton The Herald's most socially senior passenger is a Senator of the Protectorate. White Europeans are bossy and condescending towards the occupation. Connor Mickinley
Tabatha Veazie Daughter of the regent of the Eastern Colonies and niece of Louis Morton. One of the few women to study in the Protectorate. Friendly and open to the crew. Marta da Silva
Aaron Ludlow Second mate on board the Herald . Advertised Rensburg for the ship. Like Rensburg, it comes from the Easter Colonies. Troy Rodger
Nikolaus Gehrig The ship's doctor. Christian Kippelt
Caleb Haywood Boatswain on the Herald . Native of North America. Gideon Da Silva
Ian Douglas Cabin boy on the Herald . The youngest member of the crew, an arrogant European snob who acts as the servant of First Officer Brunswick. Yuri Theuns
Undra Aubertin The Jamaican ship's cook. Friendly, confident and determined. Mandela Wee Wee
Daniel Barros Brazilian sous chef. Fled from his homeland, which was subject to political turmoil, he hides his daughter Elisa on board the Herald Creso Filho
Robert Stoxan Pro forma a (white) passenger of the Herald , but has to work on board due to lack of money. Afraid and superstitious. Jim Sterling
Elisa Barros Daughter of Daniel Barros, stowaway on the Herald . Marta da Silva

Game principle and technology

Herald is a hybrid of a point-and-click adventure and a visual novel . The game world consists of individual rooms and areas on the Herald . The game is a so-called 2.5D adventure: three-dimensional figures composed of polygons act in front of pre-rendered , two-dimensional backdrops. During dialogues, the person speaking is shown as a hand-drawn, partially animated, two-dimensional figure and placed over the play area.

It is a point-and-click adventure : With the mouse, the player can move Devan through the premises by clicking on exits and, moreover, initiate actions with the mouse buttons that allow the game character to interact with his environment. Kyle can examine details of the respective environment and communicate with NPCs using multiple-choice dialogs . Occasionally the player can pick up an object, but only if it is needed immediately afterwards. Rensburg receives tasks from the NPCs, some of which are linear and some of which run parallel to one another. For example, Captain Rensburg instructs Rensburg to pick up a set of lee sails from boatswain Haywood, who first lets Rensburg look for a lost firearm on board. At the same time, Rensburg can get to know other passengers and accept them for these tasks.

While the player solves puzzles in a point-and-click adventure by combining objects with the game world or other objects and advances the plot, the plot in Herald progresses like a visual novel: At certain points in the otherwise automatic plot the player is faced with decisions; the game provides multiple courses of action or response, and the player must choose one. The choice initially has no effect on the rest of the game, but only influences how the character of the game is perceived by individual NPCs. In the long term, however, Rensburg's relationships with the crew and passengers of the Herald will affect its future journey.

The player can call up a “logbook” at the top of the screen. This serves as an overview of the game progress. In detail, the following menu items can be called up within the logbook:

  • "Map of the Herald": Interactive map of the ship, subdivided by deck , with information on individual rooms and locations.
  • "Encyclopedia": Automatically generated collection of information about things and people that the player comes across during the game. Divided into the chapters "People", "The Herald" (special features and conspicuous objects of the ship), "Documents", "Pictures" and "Antiques" (each with the ship) and "Everyday life" (description of everyday objects and uses of the game world) .
  • "Tasks": Shows the player's upcoming tasks and his inventory.

Herald does not let the player save game progress freely. Rather, the game defines points in the plot that serve as save points - if the player reaches these, he can continue the game at these points. The game progress achieved between two save points is lost when the game is closed.

Production notes

The game's authors, Roy van der Schilden and Bart Heijltjes, have a theater background and had previously produced the Shakespeare drama King Lear as an interactive play that involved the viewer in the action. They approached the development of computer games with the aim of transferring the "immediacy and tradition of political relevance" of theater to the medium of computer games. As sources of inspiration, the authors named Beyond Good & Evil , which is primarily intended for entertainment, but transports political issues in a sub-context, and Papers, Please , which forces players to make unpleasant compromises in their decisions and thus changes their perspective on the game. The setting of Herald goes back to Creative Director Heijltjes, who was privately interested in the 19th century and especially in the gap between the positive reception of the technical progress of this time and the fearful rejection of it. Author van der Schilden brought up the topic of colonialism based on the novel Max Havelaar by the Dutch writer Eduard Douwes Dekker . The central content of Herald should be the topics of exclusion and the struggle for recognition. According to Art Director Aïda de Ridder, a ship was chosen as the location because it depicts society as a microcosm through the collaboration of the crew members. In a very early version of the story, the player was supposed to drive from colony to colony on board a tea clipper and there, as an inspector, witness decaying colonial structures. The concept was discarded because the setting offered too little potential for personal immersion for the player. The final version of the game story was inspired by the novel Things Fall Apart by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe and some narrative elements from the British TV series Downton Abbey .

Production of the game began in 2014. In April 2015, Wispfire launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Kickstarter platform for funding . The aim of the four-week campaign was an amount of € 15,000, and in the end almost € 18,000 was raised. In the event of higher income, the developer studio had promised additional services such as a complete soundtrack for the dialogues, but the minimum target of € 21,000 for this was not achieved. As part of the campaign, the completion of the game was announced for February 2016. The division of the game into two parts had already been announced as part of the crowdfunding campaign. The income from the sale of the first part should help finance the production of the second part. As part of the crowdfunding campaign, supporters could either acquire the right to the first part of the game or, for a higher amount, to both parts.

The eponymous ship, the HLV (His Lordship's Vessel) Herald , is partly modeled on one of the last surviving clippers in the world, the City of Adelaide .

Herald is divided into four chapters called "Books". Furthermore, the game is divided into two parts, each containing two books. The first part of the game, Book I & II , was released on February 22, 2017 via digital distribution platforms such as Steam , GOG or Humble Bundle . For the production of the second part with books III and IV, Wispfire needed additional funds that exceeded the income from the crowdfunding campaign. As early as March 2017, Wispfire informed the supporters of the crowdfunding campaign that sales of the game were well below expectations and that this would endanger the production of the second half of the game. In the meantime, work on Herald has ceased, and it wasn't until June 2019 that Wispfire announced that it had resumed work on Book III and IV of the game. In May 2020, the team announced that it would also publish Herald for the Nintendo Switch , PlayStation 4 and Xbox One systems in cooperation with an external service provider .

reception

reviews
publication Rating
IGN 9/10
Meta-ratings
Metacritic 77

Herald received mostly positive reviews. The review database Metacritic aggregates 7 reviews to an average of 77. The specialist magazine Adventure Gamers described the game as a “delightful, engaging experience”. Editor Joe Keeley pointed out that the decisions that the game puts the player in front of are significantly more subtle than in the technically similar games from Telltale Games , but that the supposedly small decisions have dramatic consequences in retrospect. Classic adventure puzzles were missing; the only challenge in the game would be to find your way around the ship. The magazine praised the fact that all the characters on the ship are deep and multi-dimensional, as well as the work of the speakers and the colorful, inviting graphics. Stiff animations and the less demanding gameplay were criticized. The US online magazine GameCritics is pleasantly surprised by the numerous opportunities for interaction in the game. Editor Rebekah Ocker said she was positive about the animations of the game graphics, but found the slow movement speed of the character and the slow progression of the plot annoying.

The British Guardian saw the narrative style borrowed from the feature film Rashomon by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa . The newspaper showed that the serious issues of racism and colonialism would not come across as clumsy and instructive as one would otherwise have expected if the entire game was to take place in a parallel universe. The opulent game world and the setting were also praised. The Guardian criticized the fact that the dialogues were sometimes drawn out and that the game elements of puzzles and exploration were neglected. The US magazine Polygon saw elements of games from Telltale Games as well as theatrical productions - the former because of the game principle, the latter because of the need to make uncomfortable decisions that call the player's value system into question. The magazine pointed out that the central issue was the injustice in the system of the Protectorate and the effects of this injustice on the individual. The racism of the system does not come to the fore, but is expressed in structures and a lack of perspectives. While in computer games actions are usually rewarded or punished directly, the decisions made by the player as Devan Rensburg have long-term consequences. This is a daring step by the designer, but it is appropriate for a game that has as its content the powerlessness of the individual in relation to the system. The plot of the game develops slowly, "like in a good novel", and the characters are well drawn and speak to the player emotionally.

Herald won the 2015 award in the “Best Narrative” category at the Casual Connect computer game fair in Amsterdam .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b IGN.com: Herald Review. Retrieved June 2, 2020 (Dutch).
  2. a b c Polygon.com: Herald is a Voyage into Racial Divisions. Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  3. a b Polygon.com: Herald journeys into the heart of injustice and oppression. Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  4. a b Gamasutra.com: Writing diversity for Herald: Who am I to tell their story? Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  5. TheMarySue.com: The Mary Sue Interview: Roy van der Schilden and Aïda de Ridder on Herald, Colonialism, and Cultural Identity. Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  6. Kickstarter.com: Herald - An Interactive Period Drama. Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  7. Kickstarter.com: 7 May is a special day! New add-on for Herald! Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  8. Kickstarter.com: An honest look at the current status of Herald. Retrieved June 7, 2020 .
  9. Kickstarter.com: Hey everyone, we're working on Book III and IV again! Retrieved June 7, 2020 .
  10. ^ A b Metacritic.com: Herald: An Interactive Period Drama. Retrieved June 2, 2019 .
  11. AdventureGamers.com: Herald: Book 1 & II. Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  12. GameCritics.com: This Is Not A Review: Herald: An Interactive Period Drama. Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  13. ^ TheGuardian.com: Herald. Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  14. Game7Days.de: Winner of the Indie Prize announced at Casual Connect Europe. Retrieved June 2, 2020 .