Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale is now available on Steam and itch.io

Read a great game lately? Played a great story? Now’s your chance! Lori’s prequel adventure to Rogue to Redemption, Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale, is now available on Steam and itch.io. We’re calling it a visual novel adventure, and we hope that you – our greatest fans and supporters – will love it.

The Summer Daze stories are designed to fit between Hero-U games. Tilly’s Tale takes place in the Summer before Rogue to Redemption, and helps explain Terk’s attitude towards Shawn. In Tilly, Terk has already met a rogue, and met his match.

The second Summer Daze game is Ifeyo’s Adventure. It stars a Wizard student, and is a lead-in to Hero-U: Wizards Way, should we ever manage to make that game. Third up is Sami’s Story, with a half-human, half-Corgi Warrior.

Sierra’s “Quest” games, and Quest for Glory in particular, are best known for their storytelling. Years after playing them, fans keep returning to the games to experience their favorite characters and scenes again. Lori kept that in mind when she created the characters and events in Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption.

But adventure games, and especially role-playing adventure games, sometimes make it challenging to experience those stories. Everyone gets stuck sometimes on a tough puzzle or difficult combat encounter. Sometimes we crave that challenge, but other times we just want to collaborate with the game on experiencing a great story.

That’s one of the reasons we created Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale as a visual novel adventure. Just as Quest for Glory crosses the RPG and adventure game genres, Summer Daze is a visual novel and an adventure game. You’re reading a story while making choices that affect dialogue and relationships. We think of it as the “good parts” of adventure gaming.

What kind of story is it? I like to use words like “funny,” “charming,” and “heart.” You’ll love Tilly Appleberry, and her connection with Quest for Glory. She’s the adopted daughter of Amelia Appleberry, the healer in Spielburg. She’s mischievous, but sweet. Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale is the opposite of high-stakes, violent games. It’s gentle, charming, and funny.

Each scene has a gorgeous vignette-style background, painted by JP Selwood. Tilly and other characters have “talker” images, as in Quest for Glory and Hero-U, but there are no small characters walking around. Instead, you navigate by clicking on maps on the University indoor and outdoor areas. All of the conversations have full professional voiceover acting, as well as on-screen text. Zehra Fazal of Young Justice stars as Tilly, and the entire voice cast is amazing!

Original box cover concept before we shortened the title

You Might Already Own Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale

When we started working on Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption, we optimistically guessed that we could complete the game in under 18 months, with sequels every 9-12 months after that. With that optimistic schedule in mind, we offered digital keys to Summer Daze: Wizard’s Way as an add-on to the R2R Kickstarter campaign. Almost 500 backers chose that add-on.

As we all know now, development and production of Hero-U: R2R took more than five years, and we could see that sequels were impractical under our tight indie developer budgets. We came up with the visual novel format as a way to get back on schedule. We also decided that backers who preordered Hero-U: Wizard’s Way would instead get the first Summer Daze game.

It’s been a long wait, but that game is here! Log on to BackerKit with your original credentials, and check the Digital Downloads page of the “Hero-U Adventure Game.” If you pre-ordered Wizard’s Way, you’ll find a Steam key that you can redeem for Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale.

If you have any questions or problems with this, you can contact us through BackerKit, or by sending email to support (at) hero-u (dot) net. Make sure to include your Kickstarter/BackerKit email address so that I can find your account.

Now Is the Time!

If you don’t own Tilly’s Tale yet, there’s no better time than now to buy it on Steam or itch.io. Steam will give us better placement, and more promotion, if enough people buy the game there. Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale is only $20, a bargain for a four-year Lori Cole project with professional voice acting. Everyone wins!

As always, the game is DRM-free. The Steam version includes achievements that will help you keep track of the many paths through the story. Learn more, wishlist, or purchase the game, at Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale on Steam (steampowered.com).

Itch.io is a less formal platform for indie developers. You can find us there at Transolar Games – itch.io, and Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale at Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale by Transolar Games (itch.io).

We hope you’ll love the new Summer Daze series as much as you loved our previous games – Quest for Glory, Mixed-Up Fairy Tales, Castle of Dr. Brain, Shannara, and Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. Buying Summer Daze: Tilly’s Tale, and telling your friends about the new series, is a great way to help us continue making indie adventure and role-playing games.