Armand and the Foppish Hat

Armand and the Foppish Hat is a short adventure game in the style of the classic NES and SNES Zelda games. It's a silly story about a heroic, but slightly pompous, swashbuckler whose favorite hat was stolen from him on his way to a party. Since a gentleman obviously cannot be seen without his hat, Armand must track down the thief and bring him to justice.

I developed this game off and on during 2007 and 2008. While I had the engine completed fairly early on, I came to realize that I don't especially enjoy laying out all the screens that you need in an adventure game like this. So, it ended up taking a lot longer than it should have because I would get sick of moving little pixel drawings of bookcases around. Even now, some screens are a little bare, but the main plot and a few little side quests work, and that's the important part.

The character of Armand was created by Mike Toth, my oldest friend and co-creator of the Scent of War games also found on this site. He used to play this character in Dungeons & Dragons games that I used to run.

I received some help on this project from a few different sources. An artist named Eric Leon drew most of the interface screens, and the fun little intro video. Julie Daelhousen contributed her talents as a pixel artist, drawing the character animations for the game. Most of the background tiles and item images were pulled from Hyptosis's Lorestrom Pixel Archive, DeBray Bailey's site, lostgarden.com, and molotov.nu. The character portraits are from the Larry Elmore Character Clip Art and Color Customizing Studio book. Finally, the music was provided by Kevin MacLeod's great free music archive.