Shattered trust,  murdered innocence and dark pacts have plunged the Kingdom of Pentari in chaos.

Rogue wizards have captured the city of Delphin and hold kingdom nobles prisoner. They conspire to overthrow the Kingdom itself but they won't stop there.  You are sent into the turmoil to strive against unknown foes and dangers as you re-take the city and restore order.

First Light is a huge game; You have nearly 300 rooms to explore including a city to be searched, an underground complex to explore, as well as monsters and wizards to contend with.  The friendly folks you'll meet can be a handful too!

 

Pentari: First Light is multi-faceted; this isn't simply a gather-the-treasures and solve-the-puzzles text adventure.  There are nobles to rescue, murder to avenge and ultimate evil that can only be confronted in the place of their greatest power. You'll experience a wide range of emotion as you make your way in and around Delphin. Some things you'll see will charm you while a few characters may infuriate you.  Not only that, you'll probably be laughing a good deal of the time also!

 

Executed in the traditions of Infocom, Pentari: First Light utilizes the latest development tools to render an immersive experience that delivers Interactive Fiction that reads like a compelling novel but rivets you to the game as you decide what your next move should be.

 

Designer's Journal and Production Notes

Update: March 12,  2003

Release Candidate 3 was the last official Beta version.  Testing and fine-tuning went on until 1 AM.  At that point I had to give myself a sanity check; how much could I feasibly improve/alter/change in the game without blowing the March 15th deadline?

Graham Nelson, the father of the modern-day Z-Machine once commented that no game is ever finished; there's always something that can be improved, tidied up, etc. PFL is as ready as it could ever be.  Without a doubt, small bugs will crop up here and there which will be rapidly corrected in accordance with our zero-tolerance policy on bugs!

Visit our online store now - the finished product is available for immediate download!

 

Update: March 10,  2003

Malinche Play Testers are relentlessly exploring Release Candidate 2.  Roughly 20 more little bugs have been given their just deserts. A large bug, the bane of my existence for the past few weeks, has finally been fixed and tests perfectly now.  A few more items have been added, and the finishing touches are being applied.  The demo is already getting very good reviews! There's definitely some magic in the air! Cliché as it may sound I can't think of a better way to describe it.

Time for more pictures! Taking a small break from coding, I managed to track down a few more pictures from my research efforts in creating Pentari: First Light! Enjoy!

 

         

In front of the main entrance to Castle Windsor.               In front of the Palace of Versailles. It's MASSIVE! Sorry, cameras weren't allowed inside! Even so,            Cameras WERE allowed inside but I shot video...     I got a lot of inspiration walking those historic halls!         Perhaps I'll capture some and post an MPG.

 

        

Outside the Tower of London at night.  The power             This has nothing to do with First Light but it's still and majesty of the history, the arms and armor, the          a pretty cool picture.  Pardon my dorky expression.  superstitions and traditions find their way into PFL!          (Yes, Holmes is a real person, not cardboard.)

Update: March 9,  2003

Release Candidate 1 was given to all all play testers yesterday! Just two small bugs have been found in the past 24 hours.  This is in stark contrast to the 50+ bugs that were fixed since Beta 5.0!

Update: March 7,  2003

As you can see right above the screen shots, a demo game of PFL is now available! Amazing, the demo itself is 125K! <grin> The demo contains the opening sequences that lead to the beginning of your adventure.  Have fun! If you don't want to scroll up, click here to download the demo.  Remember, you'll need an interpreter to load and play the demo.  Interpreters for all major platforms can be found in our Free Downloads page.

An interesting thing happened yesterday; we ran out of bandwidth! Over 5,000 copies of BOFH and Pentari: The Prequel were downloaded Between March 1st and March 6th! It totally consumed our bandwidth.  WOW! Was I shocked! That's all taken care of now and everything's back to normal.

 

Update: March 5,  2003

Update: March 2,  2003

A milestone was reached today.  Compiling the latest version of the game (Beta version 4.0) revealed an error I never saw before; maximum object limit reached! As of today, Pentari: First Light has over 640 distinct objects! No worries, though.  I raised the Maximum Objects limit to 768 and the error went away.  All beta testers are actively playing the game, drawing maps and taking notes as they explore the vast area of Delphin.  Quite a few more bugs have been eliminated and many refinements have been added.  We are definitely on schedule for our March 15th launch!

It has been discovered that some Palm users may find First Light a little slow due to the sheer size of the game.  As a close friend and work associate explains it to me, the current Palm generation runs on a Dragonball 33 Mhz CPU which was a leap from the original 68K 16 Mhz CPU.  Even so, Pentari: First Light is an immense game and the current generation of Palms really struggle with it.  Preliminary tests show us that running the game on the latest generation of Palm OS devices with the Texas Instruments ARM CPU (such as the Palm Tungsten) show the game to be working very snappily.  Windows CE/Pocket PC users fear not; First Light was tested on my ancient Sharp Mobilon 4600 (Circa 1998) with 75 Mhz CPU and works beautifully.

More than likely, two versions of the game will be supplied to every customer; the full version and a "Lite" version that will be more Palm-friendly.  The painful choices in front of me involve what parts of the game to trim for the lite edition of the game.  As Stephen King puts it, every word you write is a little darling. He goes on to say that every time you delete a little darling you're murdering it.  In preparing a "Palm friendly" version of the game, I will be certain to murder as few little darlings as possible.

 

Update: February 27, 2003

First Light is now up to Beta 3.0! The trickiest part of beta testing this game is its sheer size; with all of the different magical items, characters and places quite a few kinks have shown up to be hammered out.  Also, some of the oldest code (written in 1997!) needed a good deal of work which is now finished.  We're well on schedule for our March 15th launch! The folio edition is also right on schedule!

PC Game World has taken quite an interest in First Light.  Recently, I conducted an interview with them and they were also very kind by publishing the PFL press release. The interview will be of particular interest; PC Game World was the first to learn of Malinche's NEXT title; Greystone! Go check 'em out!

 

Update: February 19, 2003

We're in beta! Roughly five bugs per hour are being resolved ranging from typographical errors to a badly-parsed room description.  Even in the screen shots above, pay attention and you may catch a bug...

PFL will be available in two flavors; digital download directly from us or a packaged folio edition that we can ship anywhere in the world.  The folio edition is currently in production. Click Here to Pre-Order Now.

Update: February 5, 2003

 

Well it looks like the game is going to be a little late.  The first Beta version is nearly finished but we're not quite there yet.  The game is VERY playable, it can be finished successfully and I would say that barring a few additions and debugging, the game is 99% complete as of right now.  In fact, I plan on recruiting some beta testers over the coming weekend.  If you're interested in becoming a beta-tester please drop me a note!

Update: December 24, 2002

Things are getting interesting.  Several of the NPCs have gotten dangerous; they're tossing around fire and lightning and one of them even throws a good right hook.  One nice old chap is very fond of fishing.  Orbs of Power are all placed but there's still quite a few treasures to scatter about.  In layman's terms I'm adding a lot of details now and the game is really entering the final phase.

In fact, I feel comfortable in announcing a February release date.  

 

Here are some photos from my recent field trip to Chislehurst Caves in Kent, England, perhaps 30 minutes outside London.  My goal here was to inspect, first hand, a full-blown underground system.  Chislehurst came through; 22 miles of entirely man-made tunnels.  Chislehurst is quite a story in its own right.  I encourage everyone to visit the official Chislehurst Caves website and read all about it.  I also encourage all of my UK visitors to go check them out.  That goes for any tourists planning a trip to London.  I'm serious.  Make time for this.  We're talking 8,000 years of history here up to and including the fact that as recently as World War II when up to 15,000 people actually lived in the tunnels to escape the continual bombing of London by Germany's Luftwaffe.  Chislehurst became so elaborate in scope as to include hot and cold running water, electricity, a hospital, two chapels of worship and so much more.  Truly, Chislehurst was an underground city quite reminiscent of Infocom's Zork and the Great Underground Empire.  As far as I know, the original Implementers at Infocom had no notion that Chislehurst even existed.  Uncanny parallels here.  It seems that the original Zork games take on a whole new air of plausibility now, doesn't it?

 

                  

Howard getting into the true spirit   You are standing at a point of         What underground complex would

of adventuring as he explores         decision where passages can        be complete without a well? 

Chislehurst Caves with his trusty     take you in all directions....

lantern.  Maybe his sword is concealed

under his overcoat Highlander style...

 

                   

The Haunted Lake                            Try and remember that...          ...there's 22 miles of tunnels and rooms!

 

After my return from London, and Chislehurst in particular, I am on fire with inspiration.  Exploring the tunnels of Chislehurst with my lantern really got me into the adventuring spirit.  At times I would stray away from the tour group and explore a tunnel here and there, a room there and the odd dead end.  With the holidays

here I'm coding a good 5-6 hours per day.  I'd like to give special thanks to our tour guide, Chris, over at Chislehurst.  He rocks! :)

Update: November 28, 2002

Game development is going very well.  New rooms, objects, monsters and more are being added and refined as the story develops.  I am continuing my extensive research of caves and the underground in general to add more realism and an overall enhanced feel for the adventurers that will be exploring it.  Here are some pictures from a recent field trip:

 

            

Studying wall textures as my          Would you draw your sword        A peaceful scene to soothe

wife Nadia looks at the camera     before walking ahead?                and relax you after your trials

Learn more about the world of Pentari! 

Visit our Free Downloads Page and Play the Pentari Prequel today!