Reality-on-the-Norm
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Reality-on-the-Norm is a series of amateur adventure games set in the fictional town of Reality, built on the equally fictitious river Norm. It is a project where absolutely anybody who wishes to can create a game set in the town, and have it be part of the series' canon. The games, which number over sixty as of 2004, are mostly made in the free adventure game engine Adventure Game Studio (AGS). As long as new games do not break any of the community rules, they are welcomed into the fold.
The RON series was designed to appeal to both gamers and developers by breaking several long-standing adventure game customs. For gamers, the games are short (often taking less than a half hour to complete) and fairly easy, compared to lengthy games like The Longest Journey and puzzle-heavy games like Myst, and familiarity with past games is often not a requirement for playing recent ones. For deveopers, the RON resource pack comes with enough art to make a game without drawing a single pixel, and the graphics style is simplistic enough (with limited perspective and shading used) that even those not artistically talented can duplicate it.
Cast
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The range of characters in Reality is extremely diverse, and currently numbers near a hundred. Several characters that are particularly noteworthy include:
- Davy Jones - A highschool teenager who dabbles in the art of magic. A number of the strange events the town has faced have often been the result of his often ill-performed spells, such as raising the dead.
- Elandra Desmond - Davy's girlfriend. A brilliant inventor, who shares a similar interest in magic to Davy, but not to the same obsessive extent.
- Michael Gower - A formerly deceased citizen of the town, resurrected by Davy and Elandra in an experiement to raise the dead from the local cemetary. Although initially a flesh eating zombie, Gower has since regained his soul and is now currently serving as Reality's mayor.
Many of the characters feature in more than one game in varying roles - in one game, a character may be the protagonist. In another, they may be a supporting character, and their past actions are referred to and acted upon. This gives the series a unique feeling of continuity - ideas put forward by one person are developed and expanded by others, resulting in a 'shared' creation.
The Games
The first game Lunchtime of the Damned was released on 17th February 2001, created by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. Since then, the series has developed new characters, stories and locations in the town as more and more people add to it.
Most of the games are self contained stories, refering occasionally to events from previous games, using the same characters. Some games are part of ongoing stories spread over several games, such as 'The Tapestry' and the 'Night of the Kittens' mini-series.
External links
- Reality-on-the-Norm home page (http://ron.the-underdogs.org/)
- Adventure Game Studio (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/), the engine used to make most of the RoN games.