Forever Gold
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Episode I -
"THE ONE-HANDED CONVOY" is out now!
Forever Gold is a text-heavy dark fantasy roleplaying game. Assume the life of Duke Quintrell Barghur, a pariah of high birth, and grapple with your unlikely rise to political relevancy as the thriving alliance between Vestur's three kingdoms comes under strain. Achieve, fail, and despair as you navigate the frustrations of the Tri-Kingdom court and negotiate precarious double-binds.
Halfway between visual novel and interactive fiction, Forever Gold is a unique multimedia experience incorporating artwork and writing with RPG mechanics such as skill systems, dice rolls, and lasting narrative decisions. It is intended for mature audiences.
You are second son of the Northern Kingdom. A chain of unlikely events leaves you and your childhood friend, Prince Lucas of the Middle Kingdom, heading the Fifth Prince's Convoy instead of your respective elder brothers.
Your elder brothers are well-liked and well-respected. The two of you, however, are not. Lucas is a bundle of nerves scraped raw by his family's fealty to stagnation. You were born with a curse which condemns its bearers to a long life plagued by misfortune. The series of mishaps that is your life has left you shunned: a criminal banned from conduction, working a job unfit for a man of your birth for the sake of keeping you busy and away from the public eye. Now you are to represent the Northern throne.
- A choice-based narrative - Your words and actions effect the world and the people around you, and consequences may range from "inconsequential" to "catastrophic geopolitical scandal."
- Shape Quincy's character with traits and ideals - Though he is always "Quintrell Barghur," many of his quirks and values are yours to decide. Some traits may drastically alter his characterization; others add small quirks and neuroses.
- Get to know a nuanced and varied cast - Form relationships – friendly or otherwise – with your fellow members of the Prince Convoy. Nurture contempt for your adversaries, or offer understanding.
- Countless illustrations and thorough worldbuilding - Forever Gold is bursting at the seams with detailed character portraits and illustrations. Each passage, menu, and codex article is crafted with thought and attention.
- Play in either "human" or "snout" mode - Select one of two different "skins" for the cast (human character designs or anthro character designs) depending on whether you want to spend the game looking at dog-men or men-men.
- Level up and improve your skills (or don't) - Invest your points across five skills, improving your chance at rolls and unlocking further dialogue options. Alternatively, withold your stat bonuses and crawl through the narrative as a pitiful worm.
Download
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Development log
- Version 1.01 - S1E1 bugfix4 days ago
Comments
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My one tip to new players: don’t be afraid to make your Quincy a bit of a jerk. What’s the worst that can happen, he’ll die?
This is a really good story-game. More importantly, it feels unique.
While playing, I came to think of this story as having two hearts. One heart is the characters. They’re quirky, distinctive, sharply-written and charmingly-designed. Looking at them is already fun thanks to the expressive, shape-conscious and richly-colored art style, but the plot wastes no time inviting a closer scrutiny. Quincy and Lucas’s “weird kid” friendship is not only precious, it’s an oasis in a society that feels stuffy and hostile to who Quincy is. The things Lucas reveals about his path to using his contrarianism for good… mwah. Beautiful.
I can’t wait for more chances to peel back their layers and catch them crying and screaming and covered in blood. I also wanna see them holding hands and smiling and getting everything they want. I just plain want more of them!
The other heart is the worldbuilding. The prose is, imo, kind of an unsung hero here— it’s a great balance of flower and function, serving up a relentless stream of deft word choices and entertaining animal-based metaphors. You’re definitely gonna open up a dictionary 1 or 5 times over the course of playing, but trust me: it’s all in service of evocation. This world has been Mapped. The hell. Out. Politically, magically, environmentally— Vestur has lore, and it’s relevant. (My husband also noted that it manages what few fantasy stories do: justifying the coexistence of magic and firearms.) And if you’re worried the court drama will be too dry, don’t fret— there are lots of cool weird animals involved! They’re even intertwined with the colonialist themes in a sick, self-justified way that highlights the compartmentalization necessary to holding power. The animals are political! That's all I've ever wanted since I was a girl...
The game acknowledges that you’re new here, but it doesn’t exactly hold your hand. Some lore is alluded to well before it’s explained, but the nutritious lore “dumps” are saved for narratively-interesting situations, which built anticipation imo. Though I tried not to rely on it, the Codex is a very handy feature. Lots of mechanics are introduced in this one that I assume are "tutorials" here. I hate one-off puzzles so the boxes made me wanna [REDACTED], but if it happens again I'll be ready. The debate scene was awesome and I would play this game for that alone! The UI in general is gorgeous and thoughtful and I always love when things glow on hover. The only two parts I’m not sold on are 1) the “decision” options being viewable only one at a time, and 2) the visual hierarchy of the “quest overview/choose city” page, which is my mortal enemy. The latter may look better if the lists become more populated in further installments, though.
The best part is that after playing, you don’t have to wait long for more of this story. There’s heaps more art and comics on the devblog!
Overall, amazing work. I'm floored, impressed, and also feel like I should have expected this from the level of passion put into this project. Worth a shot for anyone who's not afraid of reading, or surprise death.
Do not worry, after all the boxes did let you [REDACTED]
Haha, somehow I managed to avoid [REDACTED] all the way until the ceremony. My Quincy needs to live a little! Er...
Thank you! FG is absolutely a passion project. We know we're making something eclectic, and that makes it all the more delightful when it does tickle someone's fancy. Seeing what we've made chewed over in such detail is a huge treat for us!
You are correct that many of the features of Episode 1 are "tutorial" moments. Aside from the debate sequences (which are a core mechanic), our aim is to keep puzzles and "minigames" light enough that they don't bog down the experience, but existent enough to give some texture. Of course, when designing these sequences we try to offer alternate solutions as well - we know it's the story that people are here for, and we never want to gatekeep progress entirely just because someone isn't very good at Tower of Hanoi.
As for the decision menu, you can actually switch to a more utilitarian alternate in settings, trading out the scrolling one-option-at-a-time list for a static one where all choices are visible at once! I prefer the more basic and pragmatic UI myself, but others hunger for that visual flare, so I included both in the game.
To be honest, the map selection is probably one of the most complicated and troublesome screens I've built (having undergone more revisions than most other features over development) and definitely the most haunted by the trials of responsive design. It's not impossible that I'll rework it in the future, but my current plan is to leave it as it is and see if I receive more complaints/the parts I don't like about it still bug me down the line. So no promises that it's going away, but if you wanted to message me more specifics about what makes it your mortal enemy, that could be useful data for me.
A great game!
At the risk of looking like a dumbass, I was wondering if it would be possible to slightly tweak the save/load UI?
I only mention it because I accidentally loaded over some progress yesterday working from muscle memory of similar UIs where you can save over existing slots. User error! 😂😅 (and of course it was the one time i forgot to save to disk first oopsie) Not a huge deal, of course, but could be worth a QoL tweak, if you have the time.
Even just "Are you sure you want to load this save? Y/N" as a confirmation before loading would do a lot of heavy lifting, for me personally at least. And would presumably be easier to implement than actually changing the slot function (though IDK, I'm not a programmer lol)
Anyway! So far I've been having a lot of fun and enjoying the characters and art a lot! The writing is well-done, and overall, Forever Gold is a a super interesting game, with a lot of neat stuff going on :3 Very cool project, though I admit I don't entirely understand the use of the mismatched real world animal names. (love the trunked cat tho lol, imagine the kind of chaos cats would get up to in real life if they had a prehensile nose...!)
Quincy is a fun protagonist, in all his formal social awkwardness (tfw you get misconstrued as a rake! 😂), and I really like the clothing designs for the Southerners. Such a great variety of hairstyles too! I can tell a lot of effort and care has been put into this game, from the writing, to the art, to the UI. Great work all around!
If it makes you feel any better, you're far from the only player to have this issue with the save menu! Definitely a design oversight on my part, I'll look into tweaking it in the next major update so people stop losing their progress through accidental loads.
Glad you're having fun though and thank you for taking the time to leave us feedback!
The skill checks remind me of d&d which is nice and fun, also I love the furry skins.
browser ver. down for me :<
Should be fixed! If you're still having problems, use ctrl+shift+r to do a "hard refresh" on the error page. Just experienced a small domain hiccup - sorry about that.
alright thanks!
First of all: Absolutely amazing game. I'm stunned by the great worldbuilding and the intriguing mechanics. I love the characters and im definitely going to play through this multiple times.
I do have two questions/notes:
When rolling skill checks, I'm guessing that the program is rolling a D20 and adding the modifiers. It does seem a little unclear to me and I'd enjoy seeing the result of the roll plus the math of the modifiers (similar to how its portrayed in most crpgs).
Secondly: When viewing the party, at the bottom there are two icons with their describtors. The left one might say bonded/associate/something similar, which I do understand. The right symbol says neutral/low/something similar. I don't understand the meaning of that, I tried to look at the manual and it didn't really clear up my questions. I would be thankful if you could explain the meaning behind the symbol to me or otherwise direct me to where it is explained.
Once again I want to reiterate that overall I'm really enamored with the game and I will definitely write a more torough review of my thoughts once I finshed the story.
Thanks for leaving your thoughts for us! I'll see about implementing an option for displaying more detailed roll information for those who want it.
The mysterious neutral/low/high indicators on the party menu give slightly more context on hover, but now that I think about it, I don't think there's any way to get that information to display for mobile players... I'll think on it to see if there's a way I can present the information more clearly in the limited space available in the layout.
To answer your question though, the neutral/low/high icon shows the "tension" of the relationship. It's a vague indicator of how much you butt heads with a given party member and operates independently of whether you are friends/enemies. For certain characters, it's possible to bicker (high tension) but still have high friendship, or dislike each other but behave civilly (low tension).
I would like to help with the translation of the game, any way to apply?
Thank you for wanting to translate the game! We're super flattered. Unfortunately, it's not currently built in a way that'd allow translators an easy time. We may in the future try to set up a way to allow such a thing, but it isn't presently on our to-do list.
understandable, if at any point the idea of breaking language barriers comes up, my offer still stands. Good Luck
one thing i am in love with about this game is how EVERYONE is a POC. im playing in dog-mode but its still drippingly obvious and as a poc fantasy lover i am living for it, its so good. this game has so much care and love dripping from every part and i plan to be here every step of the way
Hi, I had fun with the demo of Forever Gold last year, and I loved the first episode that just released, so I thought I’d list some of my favourite parts of it (in no particular order). Spoilers below, obviously!
Thank you for making the game!
legendary pull of a game
Yeah, so by the end of the episode 1 my Quin got a reputation of a pagan MILF hunter. 10 out of 10. Would ruin Quin reputation again. Also need more scenes with Angie, Vick and their one shared brain cell in one room.
I absolutely love the system of picking choices and traits for the character! I want to see where it goes 100%/ one thing I’d suggest though, is fixing the browser version as it crashes a bit and the images and text shows all choppy way as well as perhaps an IOS version?
Hey there! Glad you're looking forward to seeing how the story progresses.
I'm sorry the game is crashing on you, though - what exactly is wrong is something that's often dependent on browser and/or OS. What works fine for one person might not for the next.
If you haven't yet, you could fill out the bug report form (with some screenshots would be great!), and we will look into it!
Thank you for the quick reply and responsiveness! I shall send the bug report soon, then.
Just realized I didn’t elaborate too that part of the suggestion is making downloadable version for iOS lol. It’s not exactly a bug (I think so at least!), but for some reason the only option to load a save in browser ver. is loading from a file (which as an option doesn’t pop up) rather than some box to copy paste the text save data to. Is there any particular way or type of file the text part should be saved in to work?
I really appreciated your art in this, especially the fun little comic tidbits sprinkled throughout (I'm a great fan of graphic novels, especially when the art form is experimented with).
I also really enjoyed the fun tension that you kept up throughout, and even managed to crack a smile from me once or twice (I'm told this is a momentous feat), and really enjoyed the interactions between the characters.
I'm looking forward to exploring this world further, and seeing what becomes of our poor Quintrell.
Thank you very much for the game!
I ended up playing this entire episode in one sitting because I fell in love with the world and characters! Excited to see where y'all go from here!
The furry skin is greatly appreciated. Downloading!