Seven Dunes: Curse on the Golden Sand is a game about an operation for rescuing a princess kidnapped by monsters in a fantasy desert kingdom. The hero (user) must solve numerous puzzles and deal with countless monsters to complete the operation. It combines adventure puzzles and RPG elements. Please find the introduction of the story below the following features:
- We also had the story written as a novel, which might be available to you.
- While it is essentially an adventure game, we incorporated lots of RPG elements to enrich the content of the game, like the drops of elixirs, herbs, potions, and mixtures.
- As we know that a game must offer replayability in the future, we tried to randomize many things like enemies, objects, locations, characters, including the title songs, some dialogs, and other sounds.
- Surrounding objects will offer many surprises that are randomized carefully.
- We used highly diversified sound assets and voice-overs of all characters were done by carefully-selected artists with special skill in their profession.
- Enemies are many and they have special melee or magic skills depending on their character or maybe boss.
- We included numerous cut-scenes to tell the story nicely and enjoyably.
- We incorporated special animations to people and monsters with different activities in line with the particular things they do, like mining.
- We attached particular importance to the bosses. We wanted them to be a little different from classical bosses with supreme power and converted them into intelligent and interesting beings, ranging from the one who vomits similar but smaller monsters to the one who converts the objects in the interior of the castle into enemies and from the one who cooks enemies in a huge magic cauldron to the one who becomes the hero himself!
- The game is assertive especially with its puzzles.
Introduction of the story:
(Excerpt from our novel)
Chapter 1
Curse befallen
Anyone who would take look at the view of the Castle of Seven Dunes could see it looked uglier, darker, and gloomier than a few weeks earlier, with its artisanal architecture and build made of the golden sands of the desert, following the fulminant curse spider-webbed all around the locale. One of the centers of happiness and justice in Seven Dunes had turned into chilling somberness behind the western walls of the town. The people of Seven Dunes were unwilling to see it any longer. In fact, no one was feeling like a bit of fresh air, coming outside from their homes that they were probably considering the safest place for the time being. The gate at the eastern walls was opening to a temple that looked a bit larger than the one a visitor of the town would expect, as a significant portion of the townsfolk was imprisoned or lost. The gate at the southern walls was the passageway of the people to an oasis where they could fulfill their needs of bathing, trading, breeding their livestock, and enjoying conversations with the foreign passersby of other kingdoms of the desert. The land beyond the northern walls did not offer much for a visitor as it was mere sand and endless view of the desert, despite the presence of a nice pavilion for public meetings situated on the northern dune, one of the seven dunes encircled by the walls, which were the inspiration for elders to name the town. The southern dune also had a pavilion on it, where Ande-ryn, the female Chief of the town, or other individuals met to govern the locale. Four of other dunes were home to the housing of the townsfolk, while the last one was used as the entrance to the castle in the west. There situated inns, merchants' workplaces, market, etc. as well as palm trees on the fords naturally formed between the dunes.
In the middle of the night, one of the rooms somewhere in the castle was lit with numerous candlesticks. Seven Dunes, as always in lands dominated by deserts, more particularly the hot weather during daytime, was shinier and more cheerful at nights and recent days saw the townsfolk tired and less willing to enjoy things under the control of unknown beings. The room was the one where Princess Elryn, the Governor and Ruler of Seven Dunes, under the aegis of King Gorlough, her father who was in charge of all kingdoms and princedoms of the desert, was kept as a prisoner. Princess Elryn had fallen in love with Seven Dunes and wanted to lead her life there, in a visit her father paid together with her. Indeed, Seven Dunes was also home to the endless gold-colored sands of the desert but its proximity to the oasis and the small creek running from it, entering the town, and passing by the font side of the temple, were able to make the area fertile enough and the people continue living in peace. Now the princess was imprisoned in her own castle, in a part of it she even did not discern. That night, she wrote a letter to her father:
““My lord
Seven Dunes is in danger!
All of a sudden, some unknown creatures started to appear everywhere...
They first imprisoned me in the depths of the castle.
And made weird shapes on walls!
They built their statues arbitrarily everywhere....
Wanting us to witness the presence of their vile shadow.
In the desert, in the caves, in the gardens, even in my castle.
They say they keep destroying everything in my kingdom...
They occupied every nook and cranny.
And inflicted undefinable damage and suffering on my people and my land.
I do not know where they hide and attack hideously... And I also do not know where they emerge from.
Please, Excellency, please help my people survive. Your force is my only chance and shelter.
As always...
Faithfully yours
Princess Elryn
Princess Elryn then stood and took the letter as well as a living thing that was not unfamiliar to the royal people of the region: a Crystalbird. She had bluish, bright, crystal feathers and body parts and was shedding more light than the torch on the walls of the room and the candlestick on the table of the Princess. Crystalbirds were one of the means of communication among nobles.
“How unfortunate it is that this is the only Crystalbird I have,” she thought to herself, fearing that the Crystalbird, vulnerable against cursed spells, might be lost forever in the skies. She tied the letter to one of the legs of and petted the bird who was content with any kind of affection like other animals. Wishing good luck for her people, the Princess released the Crystalbird into the cursed skies of Seven Dunes. With a slight halo of light behind her, the bird disappeared in the heavens.
