The Ironbound Heart

Zelda Clarke and The Haunting of the Ironbound Heart - or just The Ironbound Heart if you prefer - is an Adventure/Puzzle game set in 1920s England. Inspired by Victorian ghost tales and detective pulp novels, The Ironbound Heart tells the tale of a young Mystic called Zelda Clarke who is hired by a woman of considerable wealth to exorcise the violent, malevolent spirits that haunt her palatial Victorian manor house. It doesn't take long however, for Zelda to realise that there's more to this haunting than meets the eye.

Explore the manor and help Zelda uncover it's secrets - and perhaps even those of it's inhabitants - by solving puzzles, collecting clues and surviving the dark spirits, hell-bent on bringing a swift death to any who dare disturb them.

Zelda Clarke -

Some call Zelda Clarke a Mystic, some call her a Witch. Many call her a charlatan, a con-woman or just plain crazy - but those people have never had need of her services. For those with money and a problem that the natural cannot explain, Zelda is the perfect woman to call. Well educated, well traveled and skilled in everything from Tarot reading to Voodoo curses, Fencing to Fisticuffs, she makes a very reasonable living dealing with the denizens of the dark. Demonic possession, hauntings, curses and hexes - Zelda has tackled them all. However, what she finds on her visit to Bayview House, may be the most disturbing and dangerous evil of all.

Emily Caulfield -

The sole owner of Bayview House following the emigration of her estranged husband, Emily resides in the palatial sea-side property year round with her son Thomas. A refined yet snobby woman, she has a tendency to be blunt and direct. She suffers no fools and has an inner toughness that defies her demure appearance. After suffering the terrible happenings of Bayview for years without hope, she is made aware of Zelda's services through a friend and hires her immediately, hoping to finally find peace from the unending haunting and violent attacks.

Weakened and tired from years of relentless terror, Emily is a woman who sometimes appears to be on the brink of despair. But no matter how terrible things may get she refuses to be broken - if only for the sake of her child, for whom she would do anything to protect.

Estelle Brooke -

The last remaining servant at Bayview House, Estelle is a resilient and tempered woman. Aged well beyond her 32 years she takes no nonsense and sees the world with a logical, if cynical eye. When guests and staff at Bayview reported things moving of their own accord, seeing apparitions and being attacked by living corpses, Estelle was the first to call the whole thing a hoax. Then she saw them too - and what she saw, by her own admission made her blood run cold with fear.

It's not known why Estelle continues to brave the dangers of Bayview house long after all her fellow servants have left, but it's clear she knows more than she would ever dare tell about the house and it's dark history.

Screenshots, character descriptions and story details are all subject to change as the project continues, but as it stands The Ironbound Heart is a slightly tongue in cheek, pulpy horror tale that will hopefully be an enjoyable, story-driven hour of puzzles, adventure, fun and creepiness.

If anyone is at all interested I'm currently looking for some potential help from an experienced artist and/or mapper. This is a somewhat ambitious project for one person to tackle and while I'm confident in my skills, I would be more than interested in teaming up with someone to work on this and share the load a little. If this game sounds like it's up your street and you have some good examples of your work, please feel free to contact me via PM :)

Details on the remaining two characters will be coming soon as well as more gameplay details and [hopefully] some character art.

Thanks for reading!

Looks very nice ^_^

Glad my project isnt in the RPG category :p

That's looking really awesome so far, and the write up is quite interesting.

So very tempted. . . .

DANG!  That looks amazing!  And here I thought *I* was doing pretty good having a simple ship's cabin mapped out so far...

I need to step up my game if this is the level of competition I'll be facing...  

Can't wait for the finished product!  VERY nice looking!

Adventure/Horror it says, I really hope it isn't in RPG because damn that looks good. Why are you guys so good XD?  That window light, so good.

Looks amazing, reminds me of To the Moon as far as looks go. Really looking forward to competing with you!

Thanks for the lovely comments everyone! I'm honestly really enjoying this competition a lot more than I thought I would be. It's stressful but it's really nice to just... well, make a game for a change. :)

And for those wondering no this is not an RPG. No hit points, no turn-based battles random or otherwise, no experience, no levels. Just straight up story, puzzles and the occasional avoidance of being murderised by ghosts~

@Sharm - Tempted to start your own entry? You totally should if that's what you meant! :D If you meant tempted to offer to team up, let me know and I can give you some more details on the game - it may be easier to decide once you know a little more about it. :)

Have you ever read any of "The Last Apprentice" books (called The Spook's Apprentice in the UK, I think)? They're easy and fun books but really enjoyable. Zelda Clarke's background reminds me a lot of how the "Spooks" in the series are treated. The premise is exactly my cup of tea and I hope to see more! Good luck. ^_^

Great to see you've put this up here Vexed, looking forward to seeing more of it as time goes on! :)

I'll be looking forward for this. :)

Yes it's not an RPG, I can stop worrying haha.

I'd love to team up but I'm not sure what I can offer.  I'm a writer/designer but that's what you're doing (well you're doing it all).  That and I've never written horror before.

I have contacts but I think only our composer would offer you any help.  (He likes horror and horror ambiance music)

Long story short I could probably help with design but I'm not sure mechanically what I could make for your game.  I'd have to know more I guess haha.  Keep me posted I'd love to learn more.

@Ms Littlefish - Thank you so much! :) No, I haven't read those books actually. I'll have to check them out sometime.

@Dream3r - Thank you :) I think I'm pretty much sorted in terms of mechanics to be honest. It's just a case of getting Ace to do as it's told now haha!

I'm probably pretty well sorted on music too thanks to the very talented guys and gals that release such awesome packs on the RMW store. I would like to have a main theme, but that's probably something I'll commission as it'd seem a little silly to team up just for one track...

Thanks everyone for the comments! I feel really pumped about this and hopefully will be going guns a'blazing from now til the finish line.

*looks at game*

*points to self*

*points to you*

*makes "i'll cut you" sign*

We be rivals now. I'll have my eyes on ye >I (you dang pretty beauitful game person you).

Gotta say specially like the tileset. Custom, I assume. Very good work with that.

No, you can't have her, she's my rival! Unless you just want to be rivals for just this contest, then I'll allow it. ;)


Indra and Vexed making games. Good things are going to be made. :D

Eets okay, rivalry is a wide open street. (Or something profound I'm in the pre-nap stupid phase don't ask me ;- ;)

I never said I was alone~ *makes suggestive noises and refuses to tell*

(being mysterious is hard, bite me)

But... wait... I have rivals? But I'm so nice to people... ._.

@Indrah - Yeah the graphics are all custom from the tilesets to the sprites and their bases and even the lighting. The tiles have been re-purposed, edited and re-sized from things I'd made a while back that have been collecting dust but there's also quite a bit of brand new stuff going on there that's been created in the last few days. It's still a lot of work, but I'd rather this than having to create everything from scratch.

It's okay Vexed, to me a rival is someone who drives you to become better. I'm not going to try to tear you down, because then I'd lose my very useful rival and finding a new one is nearly impossible.


Having Indra as a rival sounds scary though. You may want to lock your doors. ;)

Out of curiosity did you do the lighting (windows and non) with a script or parallax mapping with overlays?  Curious as I use a script at the moment though I don't have detail like yours.  I'm taking this as motivation to put more effort into detail with the small things like window lighting.

edit: Also I too am your rival for top prize, nice or not :D

I create my lighting effects the old-fashioned way with simple events. Eventing lighting is not without it's limitations on Ace, but I've yet to find a script that can handle event based lighting as well as XP so I just stick with what I can manage using Ace's eventing.

The darker border is a picture overlay created by events so I can easily alter it on a map by map basis and the window lighting is created using two events and a high priority move route that set the graphic, alters opacity and turns them to "add" blending mode before the map loads up.

Such a technique can be laggy on large maps but most of the maps for this game will be on the smaller side, so it's unlikely to cause too much of a problem.

The fireplace there is actually three events. One for the flames in the fire, one for the glow on the tiled surround that can be walked over and one for the glow that actually appears over the characters as they walk past.

That seems like way too much effort haha.  I have a script I found that works pretty well (though better with tilesets and not painted art like our game uses) I'm at the office though so I'm away from my gamedev computer with the files.  I could send it to you to check out (it has a bit of a learning curve because the guy assumes we're smart but I'm a dumby when it comes to scripts) but I can explain it in a simpler fashion for you.  Basically you create a lights folder where you out your images and then in the event you just comment "Fireplace light 1" or whatever you named the light.

Where it becomes really useful is that it makes the light intelligent.  Fore tilesets this means it will naturally bend around corners of walls and such.  The light can also be set to flicker if say you have a fireplace with flickering flames.  Combined with an event with animated flames this looks really good.

It works backwards though so if you want a white light you need ti make the image black (it reverses the colors, it explains why in the script but I forgot why)

I know that sounds a bit complicated but trust me it's not and it could work really well with your game.  (Though maybe I shouldn't be helping my competition haha)

I could help you a bit here and there I think, just nothing worth prize money.  I won't ask for any from you no worries :D

Sounds interesting. The sort of game I would probably enjoy playing.