Neat.

So good. Is there anywhere I can see more of Perin's pixel stuff?

Here are some unmentioned indie adventure games with voice acting:

Apprentice Deluxe
Calsoon 2
Jessica Plunkenstein and the Düsseldorf Conspiracy
Limey Lizard: Waste Wizard!
The Adventures of Fatman
Damsel
The Farm
Al Emmo and The Lost Dutchman's Mine
The Quest To Zooloo
Earl Bobby series
Night of the Hermit

Totally agree that Stephen would make a "better Rohrer" :D

Stephen's games, particularly his recent ones, are nowhere near as mainstream-press friendly as Rohrer's though. Reading about Brain Damage in that article probably wouldn't have the same effect on readers as Passage, for example... that said, picking Brain Damage for my example was probably a bit unfair...

To the art craftsman, this is the death of art . One thing though; by sharpening your craftsman skills and having pleasing visual results that appeal to the masses, does that now make your work shallow? If you draw/paint for the enjoyment of it, to entertain yourself and others, are you less of an artist than the person who does not really put effort into something that will nonetheless generate profound discussion amongst the art critics? If you manage to make a good living off your craft, like all those renaissance/medieval painters, are you less of an artist.

Are you less of an artist? In the eyes of art critics, probably. I feel that most people still prefer the art you talk about over contemporary art, which is typically baffling and inaccessible.

I have to agree, Kobel! Whether you like Fountain or not, it's probably the most important artwork of the 20th Century... partly due to the way it shifted the focus in art away from craftsmanship and towards intellectual discussion and interpretation.

This makes Lurk's statement "Making a game like 'passage' requires very basic skills and very little talent" less relevant to me (though I agree with a lot of what Lurk has said). The surface of Passage might not show much technical skill, but that's not the point. Plus, keep in mind that the context the game was made in, as a Gamma 256 entry, necessitated its lo-fi nature.

Maybe we should judge Passage almost entirely on artistic intent? I find the themes in Passage kind of... I dunno, generic. That said, what Passage did I don't think any games before it had done, and its something that in my opinion needed to be done, so it has that to its credit.

When I first played Passage I really liked it. I thought it was cool. Since then, I've seen a lot of Passage-hating from people I admire and my opinion or Rohrer generally has declined (woo, bias/peer pressure!). Perhaps I should give Passage another go... I only did play it that one time, after all.

I've had issues with external resources in Game Maker... that is, loading in too many and having a game that exceeds memory constraints on some computers, meaning it won't run at all.

It's my understanding that if you're going to use external resources, only load them when they're needed and delete them as soon as they aren't. Alternatively, load them into a small number of slots, replacing when necessary.

QFT.

I died more times on that level than I did in the entire rest of the game.

Weird... I found this level pretty easy. Have you tried jumping from the top step to land past the first spike? For some reason, in these types of rooms I always found the first spike hardest if I tried clearing it in the conventional way.

Shit! But playing the game again now, I'm finding this room really tricky. It seems like the collision detection is far more punishing. It's still beatable, just. Sadly I wasn't able to jump over the dagger this time...

If these are bugs, I hope they are never fixed.

the first jump is impossible

<3

Yeah, the first jump was impossible for me... I tried it and died many times with no hint of success. Hoping to slow the game down to a crawl in order to make it playable, I tried compatibility modes, starting with Windows 95 (I'm running Vista). The game seemed completely unchanged, but for some reason I could make the jump now, and I went on to complete the game (though it was still tricky, of course). I turned off compatibility mode when I beat it and I still failed the jump every time. I'm wondering what the hell this was... a bug?

Anyway, great game. Suggestions: checkpoint every screen, actually make it have a savefile.

If you have a parachute and a ball-and-chain, weird things happen. What I saw happening: the parachute activates, the ball-and-chain is under me (I'm not holding it). Then, the ball-and-chain wants me to fall fast, the parachute wants slow. The resulting is that the parachute is disconnected from you and falls at its normal speed while you fall faster. Might have to do it again, but I can tell you it was weird.

I haven't seen this so I'm probably wrong, but that sounds... realistic to me. The ball-and-chain makes you too heavy for the parachute to support you, so it breaks off. But maybe it looks weird visually? I'd love to see a screenshot.

Emulated LSDJ might be a good place to start.

Alex Adventure.. although some might disagree with that.

This would be perfect I think. I strongly agree!

It was an enjoyable experience. But to me, it was more of a toy than a game. The objectives seemed ambiguous, and it was maybe a little rough around the edges.

I suppose the most traditionally game-like aspect was that score was based on how many of those red dots you'd killed/converted. That said, I wasn't that pleased that such a violent-feeling action would be rewarded in such an abstract work, but that is surely a matter of personal preference.

P.S. A game called 'The Line' already exists. You could change the name of your game to avoid confusion, but it's probably not a big deal and is ultimately your choice.

Does it amuse anyone else that 'EDGE®' can be rearranged to 'G®EED'?

Yes.

DAT BITCH STOLE MAH SKULL

I'd read the skull was cut from Blood on the Sand (I've never played it) so seeing that makes me so happy.

Ah, spam. I didn't get one of these... makes me feel kind of left out...

If someone could add some yelping noises to go with these potentially forthcoming hurt animations... that would be pretty great.

If gender choice is going to be completely arbitrary, why stop at making it a choice at the beginning? How about putting in the option to switch at any point during the game?

Seconding Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden.

I'm a tad concerned by how new most of these games are... the word 'classic' has certain evocations for me. If you're going with 'classic' I'd suggest including some older gems, like Eternal Daughter, Akuji the Demon, Apprentice 2 and Ikachan. Of course, if you go with 'best of' this isn't really a problem.

Neither of these people are me, I just saw it and was impressed.

People from 1up.com run a blog that seems to translate the strips and gives you some basic info about the comics.

Nooo! The link disappeared. I was saving it for today (not having enough time yesterday) and now it's gone... curse you, 1UP!