KTX Software’s Leona’s Tricky Adventures had a bit of tumultuous time in development, originally being planned for release in July 2013 on Dreamcast and PC, then launching a Kickstarter campaign for the game that was cancelled due to lack of support, only raising about 5 percent of its funding goal.
That’s a lot of bad news for the little puzzle game, right? Well, here’s some good news – the game is now available to purchase on Dreamcast for €29.99, plus shipping. You can also buy it on Steam here for $9.99.
From Tricky Leona’s website:
LEONA’s Tricky Adventures is inspired by a clever puzzle game mechanic which was briefly explored in the very early 90s but sadly faded from prominence shortly after. The basic task is to match two increasingly complex patterns using increasingly complex mechanics. While it can’t be directly compared to any contemporary game the mental skills required by the puzzles put them somewhere in between “Picross” and “Bejeweled” – and in our humble opinion they can easily stand up against those games.
LEONA’s Tricky Adventures is filled with hundreds of puzzles which provide many hours of fun gameplay – but unlike most puzzle games: No, it does not stop there!
We thought deeply about the frustrations that can arise in a puzzle game and took great care to make sure the game does not grind to a halt when a puzzle cannot be solved. All puzzles are embedded in a big and complex overworld full of exploration and humorous citizens constructed entirely using beautifully hand-drawn pixel graphics. Exploration and puzzle-solving is intertwined in clever and varied ways – finding out is part of the created new fun. The complexity of the overworld lies comfortably somewhere in between the overworld of “Super Mario World” and that of “A Link to the Past”.
We asked Comicmakers M.Musal/B.Samuel not only to compose a visualization for the cases and a poster – they also provided the story and dialogue for Leona’s world to make the storytelling and humorous aspects of the game just as compelling as the gameplay itself. The story is an integral part of the game and the overworld design directly builds on it to form a coherent product that is more than the sum of its parts.
Finally, to match the quality of the gameplay and the graphics we contracted withComposer Chris Huelsbeck to create the soundtrack for the game. We dare say he did a magnificent job when he delivered the score before starting his great anthology-project about Turrican. Like in “Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams” (Kickstarter Project) the soundtrack is a cooperation between Chris Huelsbeck and Fabian Del Priore – but well, this time with many more tracks from Chris Huelsbeck himself: 10 out of 13 isn’t bad!
[Via SEGA Scream, Source: Dreamcast Junkyard]
