F.F.: The Harpy & Dragon
| Flye 'n' Frie in... F.F.: The Harpy & Dragon | |
|---|---|
 The game's "box art" | |
| Developer(s) | Studio RGB-Newt |
| Publisher(s) | The Fishal Project |
| Director(s) | Darien Brice Dickinson |
| Producer(s) | Jordyn-Rae Morrison |
| Designer(s) | Darien Brice Dickinson |
| Programmer(s) | Darien Brice Dickinson |
| Artist(s) | Darien Brice Dickinson |
| Writer(s) | Darien Brice Dickinson |
| Composer(s) | Darien Brice Dickinson |
| Series | Flye 'n' Frie: Retro Remains Series |
| Engine |
|
| Platform(s) | Atari Jaguar |
| Release |
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| Genre(s) | Puzzle |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Flye 'n' Frie in... F.F.: The Harpy & Dragon (or simply F.F.: The Harpy & Dragon) is an upcoming puzzle video game, developed by Studio RGB-Newt and published by The Fishal Project, for the Atari Jaguar, a "64-bit" home video game console released in 1993, which was discontinued in 1996. Whilst marketed as a 64-bit console, in reality, the Jaguar only had two 32-bit processors, named "Tom" and "Jerry", and approx. only 50 games were released during the console's lifespan.
The game is the first out of 8 titles in the "Retro Remains Series" of Flye 'n' Frie games for retro consoles and systems, all eight of which will be bundled together in the Flye 'n' Frie: Classic Collection for PC, and are otherwise released as separate Atari Jaguar ROM files that are playable in emulators or on real Atari Jaguar (or compatible) hardware through physical optical media.
The game was originally in development for the Atari 2600, then later for the Atari 7800, until moving to Atari's final console for technical reasons, and to still have a release on a classic Atari system. Likewise, the title of the game is a reference to the infamous Atari 2600 game "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", a tie-in to the movie of the same name, which contributed to the video game crash of 1983.
The working title of the game, as seen in the titles of tracks on the soundtrack, is Project F.F. NONOGRAM.
Gameplay
F.F.: The Harpy & Dragon is a nonogram-puzzle solving game. Players must use numbers depicted on a grid to determine which sections to fill and not fill in. When the black-and-white puzzle is completed, players are rewarded with their completed puzzle, now in colour, which is then added into a larger artwork to fill in the blanks.
All the blank spaces of these larger, full artworks must be filled before moving onto the next chapter, as once the full artwork is complete, text describes the image. When the completed chapters and their associated artworks and texts are viewed in sequential order, they provide a story that ties into the lore of the Flye 'n' Frie franchise.
Plot
Story
The story told through the nonogram puzzles, in 12 chapters, is that of The Hero's Journey trope. Each chapter focuses on one of the 12 stages as defined by Christopher Vogler in 2007.
Act 1: Ordinary World
Act 2: Call to Adventure
Act 3: Refusal of the Call
Act 4: Meeting with the Mentor
Act 5: Crossing the First Threshold
Act 6: Tests, Allies, and Enemies
Act 7: Approach to the Inmost Cave
Act 8: The Ordeal
Act 9: Reward
Act 10: The Road Back
Act 11: The Resurrection
Act 12: Return with the Elixir
Setting
The story of F.F.: The Harpy & Dragon takes place on Alternate Earth F, like most games in the Flye 'n' Frie franchise. The game starts on the canonical fictional timeline date of November 28, 2009, where Flye is 17 and blinded for the entirety of the game due to an accident (unable to see Frie), and Frie is 15 and still a member of the Topaktan Scouts.
Characters
Frie
Flye
Development
Concept
The game was set to be developed for the Atari 2600, then later the Atari 7800, but due to technical hardware limitations, such as those preventing display of complex colour graphics, and the fact that only one button is available on the 2600's standard CX40 joystick, development was moved from the Atari 2600 to the Atari 7800 in March 2024, then from the Atari 7800 to the Atari Jaguar in July 2025.
Design
Marketing
Release
Reception
Legacy
Soundtrack
A soundtrack of the game by Neon and the Argie Bees is set to be released before the game itself.
It contains 20 electronic Commodore Amiga demoscene-like music tracks and jingles, due to this being time period accurate to other games which were released for the Atari Jaguar, with the music that loops in-game fading out, or otherwise containing special endings just for the soundtrack.
It includes a song which is still inside the ROM of the game, but goes unused in-game. The music was created using a clone of the Amiga's ProTracker 2 software for Windows, called PT2-clone.
Some of the tracks reference other Neon and the Argie Bees songs like "Accordio Nyah", "Really Neat!", and the Flye 'n' Frie franchise theme song "Flying Free".