Debut Title From Studio Lets Players Control The NPCs, Not The Hero
Edinburgh-based College Fun Games has released its first game, The Protagonish, a self-funded, self-published, bite-sized, hand-crafted point-and-click adventure game, with a grappling hook and dad jokes.
The Protagonish doesn’t feature Sir Sandford, a fearless, feckless knight on an epic quest to defeat evil. Instead, players take the control of four Non-Player Characters (NPCs) as an outsider threatens to upset their peaceful village. The game challenges you to solve puzzles as a village shopkeeper, a monk who’s taken a vow of silence, a concussed miner (who doesn’t always say what he means) and the mysterious beastie whom the knight has sworn to conquer.
Through dialogue, deception and puzzles, players can choose to help or hinder the adventurer in their quest, and see the consequences through multiple endings and character arcs. The game features humour for the whole family, brought to life with a live, improvised voice performance, hand-drawn characters and locations. The game itself features around 20 minutes of gameplay – but it’s the quality that counts.
The Protagonish features:
- Full professional voice cast with stars from Edinburgh stand-up and stage
- A score performed on real Celtic instruments
- 20 minutes of single-player gameplay, with multiple endings
- Wit, British humour and a grappling hook
- Hand-drawn art and animations
- Dad jokes
Behind The Scenes
Critical Acclaim
The Protagonish has already started to pick up some great responses and reviews. It was selected for Brilliant Indie Treasures (Brighton), Timeless Gaming (Bury), Play EXPO (Bury) and Steam Next Fest. Pen and Paper called it ‘an amazing and fun game’.
The Protagonish is now available for just $3.99/£2.99/€3.49 on on Steam and Itch.io for Windows, Mac and Linux.
- The Protagonish (Steam)
- The Protagonish (Itch.io)
About College Fun Games
College Fun Games was founded in January 2024 by Daniel Turner, who brings 10 years of experience running a software development company, and an astonishing nine months of experience in game development.
For the Protagonish, he’s also been the lead writer and developer. Daniel started programming games on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum when he was four and grew up with a love of classic PC adventure games (and a frightening amount of time on Tie Fighter). After a meandering career through academia and running his own software firm for the last decade, The Protagonish will be his first game since he was 14.
The Protagonish is CFG’s first title, made as a fun experiment by a team that has never made a videogame before. CFG is already hard-at-work writing, designing and recruiting for the studio’s first full-length title, to be announced in 2025.
Daniel told the Scottish Games Network:
We aim to make games as a team without ‘crunch’, where everyone from any background is free to do their best creative work. We are humans making games for humans, and don’t use AI-generated assets. We pay fairly, work flexibly, either in our beautiful Leith-based office, at home, or our secret coffee hangout up-to four days a week so we all have time for our other creative projects.