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Kolzig

Newcomer - A new C64 RPG 20 years in the making

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I read this interesting RPS article about this not yet released Commodore 64 adventure/RPG Newcomer from Protovision.

“We work on a freely available role-playing adventure, called NEWCOMER, for 20 years by now – this project started well before our attempt to become a formal, commercial developer studio.

This game was developed for the Commodore64, a cult retro computer, and is still meant to be played on real 8bit hardware, with added support for modern C64 peripherals and Hw hacks, but also has dedicated support for running under emulation like a native app.”

Here's some features of this upcoming game:

  • 180+ characters you can interact with, each with his/her own portrait graphic
  • 10+ people who may join you, to make a team of up to 6 members
  • ...or try it on your own, in the extra challenging Solo game mode...
  • 50+ different areas to explore, created with 30+ different graphic sets
  • 100+ cutscenes/situational graphics in-game, that make you feel like you are there
  • 180,000+ words of ingame text, mostly interactive conversations
  • No random encounters
  • Thousands of puzzles and situations to encounter and solve
  • Complex, non-linear gameplay with multiple levels of endings
  • Months or weeks of immersive gaming until you "complete" the game...
  • ...but there will still be a thousand situations, resolutions and encounters you have not seen yet, and 2 more game modes to complete!
  • Animated intro and outro sequences
  • Game controls changed for more comfort for emulator users on PC/Mac keyboards
  • VICE fully supported, extensively tested, no virtual floppy disk swapping, works like a native PC / Mac / Linux game
  • Much faster disk I/O in the 1541 version, compared to classic or Enhanced Newcomer
  • Less floppy disk swapping needed – optimized data layout, area sorting and duplication for all multiple floppy disk versions
  • 1541 version: 11* floppy disk sides
  • 1581 version: 3* DD floppy disks
  • CMD FD2000 version: 2* HD floppy disks
  • CMD FD4000 version: a single ED floppy disk – zero disk swapping
  • IDE64 version: 2 MB installed, "instant I/O", playing from HDD / CD / DVD / CF / remote filesystem (ethernet, USB, or User Port PCLink, via ideserv – IDE DOS v0.91 or newer required for this feature) supported, different data and save devices supported
  • PAL and NTSC Commodore 64/64C/128/128D/128DCr systems auto-detected and supported
  • 6581 and 8580 SID chips auto-detected and supported
  • C128 2MHz CPU mode auto-detected and supported – much faster unpacking for all storage devices
  • SuperCPU 20MHz mode auto-detected and supported – instant unpacking for all storage devices

I'm excited, I still have a working C64 in the closet, which I have not actually used in ages, but in theory it should still work. Also emulators are up and running in my computer so...

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I think it would be charming to see this game released on the Wii. They have an official Commodore 64 emulator for their Virtual Console, complete with keyboard input when necessary.

Has anyone played any of the versions of Newcomer? The screenshots look like Wizardry, but I'm unclear on how it plays.

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Wow! The graphics are awesome!

I might try the demo if there is going to be one. The C64 was part of my youth and introduced me to computer games.

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It'll be free to download so don't worry about a demo. The box is just for collector types.

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Hmm, the writing on the website is pretty terrible, but this is interesting. I dig the graphics. If it ends up being good and not just huge I'll definitely play it, although 15 hrs would be more to my liking than 300 hrs.

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I really just can't play a game for 300 hours... I mean I could probably force myself to, but I notice I have gaming ADHD... I had to struggle to teach myself to beat games. This definitely does seem genuinely interesting, deep and fun, I just can't personally be committed to something like this.

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