I agree with you. I'll also wait, although the game will surely not be shorter than 3-4 hours, and I guess even that would be enough for me to at least want to buy it
And yep, it's great to see this "indie-typical" game concept realized with comparatively high production values. It certainly didn't hurt the game, as it feels highly polished all around and looks and sounds very good


Two interesting quotes from one of the developers:

PC multiplayer will be at first only on same computer.

We will look into releasing the level tools later on.

Sounds promising

[edit]

Hmm, looks very nice... and polished. Though I wonder how is one able to control the three characters?

You control one at a time, but you can "transform" to any other at any time. Each of them has a personal health and energy bar, so if one of them dies you can still go on with the others, until you reach a checkpoint or a big healing potion, thus "reviving" the fallen one.
This makes for some nice interactions, for example you can raise a crate on a chain using the mage, let go of it so it swings to the other side, quickly switch to the thief, shoot the grappling hook at the crate and swing with the crate
Or if there's a skeleton archer shooting you, you could shoot back using the thief, and whenever an arrow comes flying at you switch to the knight and block it with the shield, then switch back to go on shooting.
It's totally fluid and works very well

[edit²]
I just watched the first trailer again and realized how many more possibilities you will have with the skills the characters can learn as the game progresses:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/debut-teaser-trine/43402

Consider me hyped.

Just played through the demo and really, it's wonderful There's no sign of co-op in the demo, but the singleplayer is great fun already. I guess, as I expected it, it's a bit on the easy side. Occasionally one of the characters died, but it was never actually hard and especially the skeletons weren't a challenge, even though they move and jump around pretty nicely. Still, the main catch there is experimenting with the possibilities. It was quite nice to shoot an arrow at a crate with a potion sitting on the top, so that the potion falls down, and suddenly a skeleton jumps in the way and gets smashed. Or putting the shield of the warrior up as a skeleton jumps down, so it lands on the shield, jumps off it and right into a pit of spikes :D

The controls are also great. I used the Xbox 360 Controller first, which doesn't even need to be set-up, even though any gamepad should work just fine. That already controlled nicely, but it's even better with keyboard and mouse, as you can "draw" more easily as the mage and can especially freely aim the grappling hook of the thief, whereas it automatically aims using the gamepad. Still, both control options are great, so apparently nothing should be in the way of playing this with a friend on one computer if you have a gamepad

The price of £25 pounds seems a little steep at first, but I guess if Trine isn't too much on the short side this should be an excellent purchase.
I just wonder why it won't be released via Xbox Live! Arcade, but anyway, as a PC gamer I am all the more happy that I'll be able to play this

[edit]
According to Wikipedia it will actually be released on the Xbox 360. Maybe at a later time or so.

Trine, developed for the PC and PSN by Frozenbyte, who previously worked on Shadowgrounds and Shadowgrounds Survivor, might not be the most indie game per se, but in design and spirit, it very much is.
If you haven't heard of or seen Trine before, just watch this trailer:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/debut-teaser-trine/43402
And more recently, there's a co-op trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgFxIopLANU

While it is a 2.5D platformer at its core, you can switch between the three characters, mage, warrior and thief, at any time, and they really mix things up. The mage is focused on manipulating objects or creating new ones altogether, Crayon Physics-style, the thief is an expert of movement, being able to walk and jump around swiftly, use a grappling hook on any wooden surface or just shoot enemies or objects with a bow, and the warrior naturally hacks through hordes of skeletons, but also makes good use of a shield.
Using the three feels very nice and the game features a great mix of platforming, simple hack'n'slash and physics-based puzzles. As a whole it is lovably reminiscent of The Lost Vikings
And then there's even (supposedly only local) co-op...

But enough of the words, go try it out yourself (or with a friend, or with two friends!), grab the demo here: http://www.gamershell.com/download_47720.shtml

It took a while to get it down in size and uploaded properly, but here is my video of the first playthrough: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8RQYR0YY

I can partly recommend www.humyo.com. It is more of a personal storage than a typical hoster, as you also have to create an account, but they offer 5gb of free space, 1gb maximum file size and unlimited bandwith. I've used it to upload 4,5gb before and thought that the upload speed was good. The main catch is the download speed, as that's never "great", and seemingly only sometimes good. I think I've managed to get between 300 and 400kb/s before, but when I tried it just now I only got a measly 50-80kb/s.

I've just played through it and enjoyed it I intended to only play some levels and continue later, but after all I also ended up playing 45 minutes without a stop. I thought the difficulty was good, but I was actually a bit disappointed that if I cleared half a room full of enemies and died, that I wasn't able to try again all over, but that some of them were gone for good. Still, making at least some of them rise again is pretty neat for making that less of a "problem". More importantly, though, the short time it takes to go through a level and the clear possibility to improve in time taken and number of deaths actually motivates me to play through it all again and do better. I really don't feel like that in most games, but then again I might just finally realize the motivation of doing so in general, I'm not sure
Anyway, even the final boss was very nice to fight. They usually tend to be very frustrating, but you got it right. I died a lot there, but I always saw clear way of improvement and in the end, I was really satisfied when I found a good way to beat the first stage of the final boss The following stage was also cool. The last one felt weird again, it felt a bit like cheating that I could just go on when I died, like I had god-mode on. On the other hand, hadn't that been the case it might have been frustrating for me, as it was a bit harder and not so straight-forward as the first stage.

So, all in all it was very nice and I'll surely play it again, as it feels good to quickly kill and dodge the enemies. And while I might not be able to do so in most cases, yet, it's always clear that it's possible even without crazy ninja skills, as to say so. Very good


I recorded the video, but it turned out a little big, so I'll resize it later. It looks ok, but the audio is off, and more so as time goes on. Seemingly capturing both seperately just like that doesn't work well with long videos. It isn't a problem if the video doesn't have sound, is it?

Ah, I didn't know there was a little standalone flash player for single swf-files here. Seems like that app isn't (made) too popular.

Would you like the video to be uploaded to YouTube (or rather, would you dislike it?), or is a proper download preferred?

I'm trying to set up the video capture right, could you tell me which resolution the game runs at using the html-file? Alternatively I'd just record it fullscreen, but Ctrl+F doesn't work and if I drag the swf directly into the browser and set that to fullscreen I'm still left with a little border at the top. I know that wouldn't be too bad, but I just want to get it right

[this]

Okay, well, the bug isn't really a problem. I only found it a tad annoying in that level because I had to change one step of my perfect solution to it :D

Keep the ball!

I just carefully went through it again, this time I got 426 I lost track of my score at least once (It's not easy to keep an eye on it when you constantly blast it away). I think I'll just go through it again, let's see..

[edit]
Okay, I found a bug which might be the cause for the differing score: Seemingly when you collect coins too quickly, one may not be counted. This is obvious when you hit two coin blocks simultaneously, you'll only get one point. But I also noticed that if I jumped into a whole row of coins, one point may be missed.

[edit²]
Just did it yet more carefully. I got 427 and I am pretty sure that only 2 coins were not counted. So, 429 seems to be the perfect score, but I wouldn't bet my life on my mental arithmetic skills, ahem.

Noticed two more things:
1. When you click outside the window and then on the title bar of the GENERIC window, you'll often hear the looping sound of the cannon firing, even though it doesn't. That seems to stop happening if you fire once for real. Totally minor thing, obviously.

2. http://s7b.directupload.net/images/090622/wypekhch.jpg
When I jumped out of screen at the designated spot, I heard the sound of a door unlocking. Could it be that you forgot your door keys there? :D ("Aaaah, this is where I left them!")

Just tried it. Cool update, especially the spike "nerf" keeps the level with the secluded rooms from being frustrating if you go for all coins, as it's now easier to get the ones above the spikes

But, I discovered a bug:
http://s8b.directupload.net/images/090622/owyr2q4h.jpg
The ray broke these precious little coins, even though it was still some pixels away from hitting them. It also didn't actually "erase" them before it really hit them, only made them uncollectable. This only happened when I "approached" them horizontally with the ray.
Similarly, at least in the last version, the ray would sometimes not destroy some pixels of a room's ceiling (the one exactly opposite, on the left side of that screen), even though it clearly hit them. Also only heppened when I shot horizontally.

Then, some oddity in another level:
http://s4b.directupload.net/images/090622/g7dwk7hn.jpg
When I died in the level and restarted, I was suddenly visited by that fella (the shrooms are also obviously surprised). It came from below the screen, bounced on the wall and left again. When I restarted another time he didn't show up, and the next time he was there again. Might be intended, might have been there before, I just noticed it now and I thought it was neat It kinda seemed like it came from one of the earlier levels, where I let some spike balls leave the screens. It would be so cool if that was actually true :D

Lastly, I'm sorry to shatter your hopes of fixing that, but:
http://s11b.directupload.net/images/090622/6db8ujcz.jpg


Still having fun with it I think I'm going to do a little "perfect" walkthrough video


[edit]
Just tried a bit more, that bug with the horizontal ray also works in other levels, but not with all coins. Also, it seems to happen only when the ray is perfectly horizontal and not angled at all.

that would be the case if they released it for the DS but all he's doing is filling a gap the iPhone desperately needed filled and for that I applaud him.

Although I know of at least one other game for the iphone which seems quite similar (though hex-based) in quality, I understand what you mean. But I, personally, am less interested in a game like this when it is so obviously nearly the same as another one I've already played.
Still, like I said, I can understand that someone wants to have "Advance Wars on iPhone", and I guess at such a low price point and seemingly good polish there's hardly reason to argue against that

Frankly, I find it uninteresting when another game is nearly identically copied, and this just seems to be too similar to Advance Wars for my personal taste. Still, it looks well done and as far as I've seen there aren't many other AW-likes of good quality around for the iPhone/iPod Touch, so I guess especially for the low price one can't go wrong with it. And not to forget that even if the gameplay is not original, the art design gives it a nice own charme

I wanted to make another video of an indie game, anyway, and just making one of playing this for the first time sounds rather cool. Shouldn't take much effort to edit the video
I suppose I don't play platformers as much as many others around here do, but I especially tend to like quick action platformers, or however you want to call them, like for example Destructivator, and Star Guard looks very good as well. So, I'd like to contribute

It took me a while, but I got CamStudio to run nicely with the "MPEG-4 Video Codec 2". The video quality isn't perfect, but still good, and the file size stays small. I use Audacity to capture the audio seperately, as CamStudio doesn't work properly if it has to do that as well, and then just merge the two in VirtualDub.
Granted, it isn't glorious at all, but it works

I'd play. I kinda lost interested in TF2 again for the past few weeks, but I think it's time to go back

In a community I frequent we have a little private server running since a few days, and the commonly accepted theme for it is building a city on water, in the vein of Venice. This is what it looks like at the moment:





It's totally unstructured, but for what it is, I like how it turned out so far Note the big-ass church in the back of the third image, the guy really put some effort into it


Oh and, yeah, that's an AT-AT in the background of the last pic

Thanks again for playing and especially commenting about the process! You'd be probably a perfect betatester.

As long as the game is as fun to master as this one

By the way, are there even perfect solutions for each level that you specifically created, or is it more of an accident that it works so very well like this? :D

[edit]
I just played through it again, seemingly not doing anything differently at all.. 421/428

The Dpad sucks indeed. Apart from being bad in general, mine and I think most Xbox 360 Controllers have the problem that it is harder to press on one side. That's because the Dpad "disc" is not perfectly centered, so it is a little closer to the boundary on one side. Thus, you have to press that side just a little more than the other side in order to get a reaction. You can get used to it, but it's just very obvious that the Dpad is not ment to be used much. Rather, it usually serves for weapon switching and such in action games.

Nintendo does have a silly patent on the cross-shaped Dpads, but I don't get why most gamepads still have such an unresponsive "disc" instead of simply 4 seperate buttons, the way it is on the Dual Shock gamepad.
But, is there even any really good native PC gamepad with such a setup? I think even the Logitech Rumblepad 2, as far as I know the second most popular gamepad right behind the Xbox 360 Controller, has such a sucky Dpad-disc.


Apart from that, though, I think the sticks, buttons and triggers on the Xbox 360 Controller are great. I had a PS3 for a week or two around christmas and didn't like the Dual Shock much, especially the triggers are a lot worse than those of the Xbox 360 Controller. Well, and the sticks and buttons, too, in my opinion.
So, if you don't need to use the Dpad frequently, mostly play newer games and are willing to use alternative drivers for some older ones which may not work properly otherwise, the Xbox 360 Controller is an excellent choice.

[Congratulations!]

@MisterX: I fear that there may be several cases why your score wasn't the best possible. Here're some:
1) I've counted the best score wrong
2) I've rushed the scoring mechanism and therefore made it glitch somehow. For example, when you restart a level, your score should return back to what it was when you began the level. It may be so though that I've made some meh thing in this and it takes too big amount of score away.
 I think that it may be the first one, since the score-take-away code seemed to work fine when I tested.

But anyway, I'm quite sure that you got the best possible score, even though the game didn't congratulate you for that!
Congratulations! It's great to see that this game was interesting enough to be completed fully!

Well, like I said, I wasn't aware that you get points for hitting the ?-blocks which don't even have coins in them (which seems pretty odd). So, I surely didn't have the best possible score.
Still, it was a lot of fun trying to get all the ones I did, as it's so tricky but possible. Thanks for that

By the way, in one of the later levels there is a key - but no door. Is that intentional? I kinda liked it, as it makes the game seem more odd, but I wondered



And, wait a minute.. I get congratulated for getting the best possible score?


..Here I go again.

[edit]
http://s7b.directupload.net/images/090618/48bexv5m.jpg   

That was fun, I've got a perfect solution for every level now
I think this is and Nikujin are the only indie game that aren't quite Nintendo Hard that I've ever longed to "master"

Concerning the 10 missing(?) points: I haven't counted how many "Goombas" there are, but are there possibly 10? At least one doesn't get any points for stomping them, but maybe it was planned?

Developer walkthrough video for the batshit insane Just Cause 2. Looks like fun, to say the least.

Comment on RPS:

You know, I always thought the title of the original game was supposed to indicate that all the mayhem this dude was creating was because he was pursuing a Just Cause (obviously I never actually played it), but now I’m starting to think it’s more like, “Hey why are you blowing up an entire island?” “/shrug Just ’cause”

:D

This looks like insane fun, but I'm rather sure the result is still going to be repetitive. All the moves look great, but they don't look like they will remain very fun after you've tried out all possibilities and used them several times. But, I hope there will be a demo with which you can have some fun. I liked the Just Cause 1 demo a lot, and when I was finished I had enough. But what I had was good, and I guess it will be similar with Just Cause 2

So far I've figured out that stomping baddies and even hitting blocks with baddies in them is awarded with points. I wonder if that amounts to the about 20 points I missed.

With the spikes, most things that can be disabled seem to animate, and once they stop animating they are disabled. What if the spikes were drills pointed up, and once you clipped them they would be disabled and stop animating?

That's a good idea, but I think it's not as easy as with the other objects. I've found that if you destroy the lower part of the spikes, they don't seem to kill you anymore, even though the pointy top remains. But another time I was killed by a single friggin pixel of a spike which remained.
Maybe only a specific part of the spike kills you, and no matter how much of that part remains, it kills you? Anyway, I think that should just be made clear in some way.