Welcome to Issue 1, October

As the QBasic Community eagarly awaits the creation of the greatest RPG ever made in the language, some people are accually doing something about it! The extremly modest FrozenEmu and Tsugumo are filling a long felt gap - hundreds of RPG's are being made in QB, but only a handfull are worth your time. Untitled, early in production, is already looking set to shine above the rest of the games currently in production in QB. Let's examine it, shall we?

Graphics

From a game powered by the DirectQB graphics library, the graphics are accually a bit of a surprise. Only a portion of the screen is used, a picturesque frame is put in the middle of the screen and the game is played in it. This unique viewpoint is the first thing that hits you about the game. Aside from the cool frame, the graphics are moody, well drawn, and the special effects are nothing short of deadly. What special effects? In case you didn't notice from the screenshot, it's constantly raining in Untitled, and during battle, the whole screen lights up when Ramus casts his lightning attack.

Music

The music is really quite well done - The battle music in particular caught my attentian - It's a chirpy tune played to the classic Final Fantasy drum beat. The prevailing tune is nice also - It's a mellow midi played on a xylophone, with a flute melody played on top.

GamePlay

Unfortunatly, there are no real battle scenes just yet - At least I hope that these guys don't plan to use the current engine in the complete game! One of the nicest elements to the game is accually the excellent control system - It's a pixel by pixel engine, and unlike other QB pixel by pixel games (Which shall here remain nameless) you never bumb into objects and the like. It's ease of use, coupled with and excellent story could be the games real selling point - if it wern't free, that is. The demo's battle engine is in too early a stage to preview. The best thing about an RPG should really be the battle engine. You can read a good story and listen to good music, but you play an RPG for the game, so it's important that Tsugumo and FrozenEmu improve this aspect for the next release.

Story

Quote from the Untitled Help File : "In basically every RPG, you play as a hero who generally doesn't know he's going to be a hero, and you fight a generic villian who wants to take over the world and unleash a wave of evil for reasons no one ever really knows. It's just what villians do, right? And heroes have to stop them from doing these things, the fate of the world is in their hands and such. Well what happens if you ARE the villian...What's it like to have "heroes" trying to kill you? People who won't listen to your reasons, people who are out for fame and fortune and don't care about why you're doing the things you are...Is a "hero" anything more than a person blinded by their own purposes? We plan to develop the villian, and take you along with us."

I couldn't sumerise it better myself. As you can see from above, they've got some pretty cool ideas for this game. FrozenEmu claims that this section of the story is from the middle of the game, and there is a lot of stuff happening beforehand. However, I kinda like the mystery that surrounds Romus in the demo - you know nothing whatsoever about him and what he's done, yet its not hard to see that something is up.

Overall

I can't wait to see this game further on - it's got real potential.

Download this game at : The QBExpo

Previewer - Terry Cavanagh (terrycavanagh@eircom.net)