Discordia - an online journey through the world of the Dark Tower

This post will be interesting to all who are not indifferent to the work of Stephen King and fans of the Dark Tower series. At the end of 2009, the Discordia flash quest was announced - a kind of online journey through the world of the Dark Tower. At the moment, the first part is available, work is ongoing on a continuation. King himself took part in the creation of the project (among other things, he announced the introduction to the game), the well-known fantasy artist Michael Welan (illustrator of books on the Dark Tower) is also working on the project. Under the cut some details.


Link to the game: www.stephenking.com/discordia

A few words about the game

At the moment, the entire gameplay is an overview of the environment, a search for objects, the choice of a viewing point and movement between rooms. Also available is a magazine, a list of found items and found balls (orbs). When you first visit each room, a small textual description of the situation appears in the magazine - some adaptation of the book’s passages to the game. Therefore, it really creates the impression of an interactive journey through the book. All found objects and balls (each found ball refers to a specific hero of the book) is also accompanied by a short story. According to the developers, in the future there will be the possibility of independent, more free movement in locations. But for me the main pleasure was not the game process itself, but the created atmosphere. Good sound design, attention to detail, colors - as a result, the feeling was actually close to what I had when reading a book. Although I don’t think that the game will be interesting to people who are not familiar with the Dark Tower and King’s work, at least at this stage. But it is worth noting that this is the first (in my memory) attempt to transfer King's works to a computer game, which is interesting in itself. Screen from the game:

A few words about the book

Dark Tower - a cycle of seven (soon King plans to write an eighth) novels telling about the journey of the shooter Roland Diskain. Throughout the work, the main goal of the shooter remains the search for the Dark Tower - the center of all worlds. King himself called this cycle his magnum opus. Mention and references to it can be found in many other works of King. The Dark Tower is a truly breathtaking work, comparable in scale to the Lord of the Rings, but with its own mood and atmosphere. It's hard to call pure fantasy - rather a mixture of science fiction, western, post-apocalypse, fantasy, plus a bit of King's horror. A large-scale work is read in one go, so if you cannot choose what to read now, I advise you. :)



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