First Reality

An rpg with a difference. Play the role of the unfortunate evil henchman Norman.

A retro style story driven rpg. The story is a satire of the average rpg with some very biting humour. The game graphics are hand drawn with a range of different art styles present making for an excellent viewing experience(even includes a sex scene ;)). A large range of professional and amateur musicians worked on the musical score which is amazing (especially the credits theme).

For more information visit the games homepage http://brendanbulfin.org/first-reality . Here you will also find downloadable versions for windows linux and os x.

First Reality follows the woeful story of Norman, a middle aged war veteran who ends up on a buckfast fuelled adventure of self destruction. Initially he is facing up to an unwanted divorce and to put it simply things go a bit downhill from there. He finds himself somehow involved in trying to stop some young revolutionaries who are your typical RPG party. Lots of laughs and craic to be had.

The game also has a number of very good insults all of which are directed at Norman. Some examples:

You're a coward, just like your old man was.

Why are you such an absolute prick all the time.

Daddy said I'm allowed to throw stones at you.

Ever been hit in the face with a turnip? - Then hits Norman in the face with a turnip.

How it came to be

The game started out with just myself and a friend from college messing about with pygame (In hindsight I would probably use kivy instead) with the idea of making something very simple, just for fun. After a while I realised that it would be possible to make a game engine and that it was a good way to improve my programming skills.

It turns out that as well as playing games lots of people are also very excited about the idea of contributing to one. It wasn't long before my younger sisters and some of their friends were providing some great artwork for the game.

After a wile I started showing the game to a few more friends and the story line of a depressing satire rpg really clicked with people. At this stage it started to attract some really talented musician friends who were interested in contributing - Dr. Mindflip (http://www.drmindflip.com/), AIdan Guilfoyle (Rainwater Studios), James Garvey (https://soundcloud.com/rocksoc) to name a few. The music they provided was so good that I decided I really had to finish and release the game.

The whole project was completed on a budget of 0 and I am aiming to make 0 from it. It was really good fun to make though and it got a lot of talented people working together on an interesting project.

Packaging the game for android

It was possible to package it using pygame subset for android pgs4a. However, I think this project is not continuing and the mixer module has a number of errors which I had to fix- see my answer to this question on stack overflow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8458700/how-do-you-loop-music-in-pygame-subset-for-android/29279299#29279299