Iliad

"FOR COUNTLESS GENERATIONS, THE LAND OF ILIAD WAS RULED BY KINGS, FROM FATHER TO SON, UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE OF THE GODS." "WHEN THE CURRENT KING FELL ILL AND WAS ABOUT TO DIE, EVERYONE KNEW THAT HIS SON WOULD SUCCEED HIM ON THE THRONE OF ILIAD... BUT IT WASN'T TO BE..." "SOME OF THE GODS THOUGHT THAT HE WAS TOO YOUNG TO BE KING AND TO REPRESENT THEM IN THE WORLD OF MORTALS." "AND IN THE HEAT OF BATTLE, THE GODS MADE THE KING'S SON DISAPPEAR... SOME SAY THAT THE GODS WERE RIGHT..." "BUT OTHERS KNEW THAT HE WAS WHISKED AWAY TO OLYMPUS TO PROVE HIMSELF, FOR ONLY THEN WILL HE BECOME KING OF ILIAD."

Description

Iliad is an epic adventure where you must prove your worthiness as the King of Iliad by going through a trial that will have you travel between Olympus and the Underworld. 

Features

• ~6h of game play.
• Upgradable items and light backtracking, Metroidvania style.
• Classic mecanics integrated in the map design, like the map wrap-around of Kid Icarus.
• More than 20 types of enemies.
• 2 worlds to explore, each with it's own theme and secrets. (take a quick look at the Walkthrough to see the extent of the traveling)
• Cryptic messages from NPCs instead of a tutorial. That's a feature.

Backstory

I made a few commercial games for a defunct platform (that we will not name, it could be DANGERous) about 20 years ago. This particular game was supposed to be the largest one I created for that platform, and one of the largest on the platform. It might have been a smashing hit if not for the fact that I made it in 2007... the year of the reveal of the first gen iPhone at MacWorld.

Everything changed overnight, and by the (short) time I finished and shipped the game the platform was dead in favor of Steve's new toy, so very few people actually played Iliad in the end.

This is a port that I started a decade ago of the original Java code, first as a "drop in replacement" of the SDK it was built on, and then slowly it just became the game, going from XNA (I was aiming for the Xbox Indie program, which came and went faster than I ported the game...) and then various versions of Monogame. It's becoming pretty close to the original, so...

19 years in the making (but maybe 6 months of work, I had other stuff to do...)

I started this project after playing Kid Icarus some day, and wondering how it would play as a Metroidvania instead of linear levels. I didn't realize that the Gameboy version was doing exactly that... Still, the game is different enough to stand on it's own imho.