Clover ACT Improvements: Dialogue

The TL;DR version:

• Fully voice acted
• No longer a hideous affront to humans with eyes
• Animated talking heads
• Camera panning
• Skip button

Another change with a massive impact in Clover: A Curious Tale is the new dialogue system. Thanks to the wonderful people at Blitz 1UP, the entire script is now voice-acted by real human beings. Well, some of them are developers, so I think they count as human.


Not only do we have lovely voices for those of you who can't be arsed to read, but the actual dialogue scene itself is a whole lot prettier. In fact, I die a little inside each time I look at the old screen, so savage are its aesthetics.

There's an animated talking head of who is saying the line, which is handy as in the new version of the game there are some more complicated conversations. You'll sometimes be conversing with several characters at once, with the camera panning between them all, and any events of note.

Finally for the lazy, or those going through the game for a speed-run, we have a skip button. I've tried to keep the unskippable dialogue to a minimum, but you really can't trust users not to skip something and then complain they don't know what they're supposed to do next.

Clover: ACT Improvements: Inventory

The TL;DR summary:

• New one-button 'use' interface
• No confusing menus
• Larger inventory to start off with
  
• Context-sensitive

One the absolute mountain of improvements to Clover: A Curious Tale is a complete revamp of the inventory system. Aside from all the other loveliness, this is going to make a huge difference to the sorts of people that played the original and got confused.

In short it's like Fantastic Dizzy, and now context-sensitive. There's only one button for "use", which handles picking up items, dropping items, using things, and talking to people. A little bit of code does all the hard work for you, figuring out what it is you're trying to do.

Rather than a hideous menu, the inventory now works like a queue. You can't drop a specific item, rather you just just drop the item at the front of the queue. This occasionally means a little bit of extra faff, but it's much more understandable.

As the more observant amongst you may have noticed, you also start the game with two inventory slots rather than just one.


"But without a menu, how do I know what item it is that I've just picked up," I hear you cry. Now we've got lovely little prompts that appear when you first pick up an item, and an extra 'remind me what I'm carrying' screen too.


For the game design/user experience nerds out there, this was a pretty important lesson. Core interaction mechanics in your game need to be easily understandable before being powerful and flexible. If you already understood the original Clover menu, it was a better tool than a queue. However, if confused the hell out of most people that had never played Dizzy, and that put people off the game.

Free Copy of Clover: A Curious Tale

If you want to get your mitts on an early version of Clover: A Curious Tale, and also the final version when it's ready, you can sign up for some testing over at Blitz Arcade's site. You need to be over 18 and you'll need to do some testing, but hey - no such thing as a free lunch, right?

Just been doing some playthroughs of the near-final A Curious Tale, and so far it's taking me three times longer to complete, and that's not including all the sub-quests. Or the epilogue. Or any of the four endings. Some of the new puzzles are a bit more lateral as well, so no doubt it'll take mere mortal even longer. Hurrah for value-for-money!