So, yeah, you gotta actually pay attention to the tutorial, which takes about 5 minutes. The demo lasts about an hour and is re-playable.

If you don't mind my asking, how long does the full game last by comparison?

I finally got around to trying this today.

A few things I've noticed:

- Due to my resolution (1920x1080), everything looks blurry and part of the viewing port is shifted off of the screen. Any chance you can add a windowed mode?

- I did not have to install the codecs to have music for some reason.

- I feel like I repeatedly have to hurt myself due to fall damage attempting to get atoms.

- The first few enemies (the snails) didn't appear to hurt me at all, or if they did, the act of them hurting me wasn't clear. There was no sound, no knockback, and I actually walked right through one.

Man, this is looking downright awesome.

Man, I've been waiting on this for ages.

I like the variety in zombies. It'll help keep things fresh and some, like the pirate or the nun, are pretty funny, too!

-snip-

Thank you for posting that. One of the things I've always wondered but never bothered to ask (I couldn't afford it one way or the other) was how much VOs cost.

The new-tech fingerprint kind of detracts from the 1950s 'Cold War' vibe I was getting off of this thing.  Maybe instead of having a fingerprint scanner, have the person use an inkpad and press thumb to a book, then you compare that to the one on file?

I concur with this.

But I'm interested in trying the new build. Looks like a lot has gotten done since 12/15!

How many people have you been testing with?  If you have at least 3 with a Knight and Mystic the bats should be pretty easy.

We had 3 (since the first few runs, it's been a hard sell getting the others to play again due to how punishing the first run is, due to the controls and odd manner in which skills work), and there were a Knight and a Mystic involved. I'm not sure I've ever used the skills for the Mystic correctly, to be honest, though.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think it would get annoying very quickly, especially as it gets in the way of reading. Characters change their poses way too often for that.

I concur. It looks fine in terms of the GIF presented, but if that happened too often, it'd get a bit annoying.

Here's hoping the next release has a few easier quests. Still haven't managed to finish one haha.

We released a short video presenting Solstice in motion:

http://youtu.be/RvB503lPv0Y

I'm really curious how the animated characters look to you. We think it makes a big difference, making it more like Ace Attorney rather than the usual static indie VNs, but we're worried if it doesn't seem too jaggy.

I can't tell if it's sped up or not (still waking up) but to me, the mouth movements look fine, but some of the arm motions look really "jaggy" as you put it.

When moving the arm from a position where the hand is near the chest/neck/head to where the arm is at the character's side or vice versa are fine because the slight blurring indicates that the character is moving to a new animation, or sort of makes up for the lack of a more steady animation in between. Point being that there's a clear visual cue that something is shifting.

However, the one part where the character is playing with her hair looked particularly bad to me. It was a really messy animation, made up of too few frames and the frames that were there made the motion look awkward. The Constance character. Around 0:15.

Small hand motions also bother me a bit, despite being nice touches. Animations like the characters tapping their fingers on their arms. I just don't envision anyone ever moving their entire hand at once to tap it impatiently on their arm. When I think of someone tapping their fingers impatiently on their arm, it's more of a wave from the pinky to the index finger. (EDIT: I just tried doing the motion they do in the video. It was pretty awkward.)

But that's nitpicking.

Otherwise, it looks really good so far.

I'll tweak them to make them easier to take down with normal attacks, while still being a nasty counter to buff-based strategies.

That sounds good. They have a really, really high defense rating, which makes them tough to take down in time to not die to the other enemies' hands.

Moving the convo at your request.

They are hard, but they exist solely to prevent strategies overly reliant on buffs. They are pretty easy if you don't use buffs at all. Slow and without any real damage. I might tweak their numbers a bit, though.

The reason I found them hard, to be exact, is that my strategy is pretty reliant on the assassin's self-ability. In a group with the assassin, the monk, and the warrior, with the monk being protected by the warrior, I found that the assassin would pretty easily die if it didn't use that ability. With the crystal enemy, the ability gets stolen, the assassin slowly dies, and then on top of that, once the crystal guy has full attack power, he nails my warrior, too, leaving me effectively screwed. And there's not much I could have logically done to prevent that without sacrificing someone.

This is just with that lineup, but I imagine the basic lineup, having the mage, would have a similar issue.

I will try some other configurations, but having limited experience with the wider range of classes, I'm having a hard time imagining a viable lineup that doesn't involve the warrior and healer, at least.

Just played through Trash. Really liked it. Looking forward to the next one.

Looking great already.

Maybe when I actually release the demo this Friday, you will then have something to actually test out.

Oooo. Can't wait. Been silently watching this for a while.

Looks fantastic.

What kind of obstacles to colonizing Mars are there? Any enemies? Fire hazards? Sandstorms tearing things up?

Also, I saw you're at 80%. Demo/beta soon?

Sweet. Going to see if I can't get a group together to test it later tonight.

Given the above, I feel horrible about it but life has conspired against me and I just will not have time today.

That's not good 

Was this a build before mission objectives and a big bouncing arrow on the elevator tile?

0.6.5.5a or something to that effect. I don't remember big bouncing arrows or any of that, though.

I played...some version not too long ago. I enjoyed the basic gameplay, but I found myself wandering around the level I played a lot with no idea where to go and after over 45 minutes on the same level, having destroyed a good portion of the walls trying to find my way around, I just gave up.