There is such a wide variety of indie games out there; the best thing to do is think about what types of video games your friend likes already and try to find an indie game that is similar in genre.  Some of my friends are really into short and catchy puzzle games, so it was really easy to turn them onto Eyemaze games (Tontie and Dwarf Complete in particular). 

Hi Jason, my friend is the art director at Kabam and I know he's looking for artists right now (Flash animators in particular).  It is unfortunately a social games company, but I hear that working there is actually fairly enjoyable.  I've done some contract work for them and the people there seem really nice (they always try to get me to come in around noon so they can feed me, haha).  Anyways, they're located in Redwood Shores right next to EA, so it might not be too far a commute if you're around SF. 

-The Disney Afternoon (Gummi Bears, Ducktales, Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers, Tailspin, Darkwing Duck)
-Pokemon (the first season)
-RockmanEXE
-Square One
-Dinosaur Train (yes I realize this is a recent show, yes I still watch children's programming)

I always loved playing big LAN games of Starcraft and DoTA (a Warcraft 3 mod).  Battlefield 1942 is also really fun with big groups because you can drive each other around in tanks, and take turns flying the plane/using the plane's gun.  Once the night starts winding down and people want something quieter, you can always gather around an Eyemaze puzzle game like Dwarf Complete.

I finally got to work on some more music for Melolune, so I thought I'd share:

The Mines of the Orderian Engineer's Guild

This music plays during the dungeon right after the demo... it'll be broken into 3 different pieces (7 combinations) just like with the Upperlands song.  Most of it is dreary and forboding because it takes place in a mine, but from 0:57 til the end it suddenly picks up and becomes more whimsical to match the spirits and other mysterious creatures that live in the area.

@Ciro: Hahaha... nice

@MindEraser: Thank-you for taking the time to play the game and leave some feedback ^_^  On a totally unrelated note, everytime I see your name it reminds me of that one scene in the movie Monster Camp where the "Dream Moth" is like "I eat your mind 1, I eat your mind 2..." (It's a really amusing film, I highly recommend it) 

Anyways... you're totally right about the Mountain Melon Cave, I think I need to add something at the beginning that let's you know how many switches there are.  Perhaps I could have a "keep out" sign somewhere near the entrance that Dolby writes; it could say something about how if you really need to find him, you'll have to trigger all 3 switches in the cave.  Hopefully the battles will be slightly more interesting now too; I redid the enemy database so there will be more variety in the fights. 

As for the AI-thing, thankfully I've fixed that issue   Before, the battles would only trigger if your character touched them... now a battle will trigger if they touch you.  Oh, and I totally agree with you about the random battle thing.  Even though I enjoyed games like Pokemon and FF6, I absolutely hated their random battles, so I made sure not to have that in my game.  They're just so frustrating, especially when you're trying to get your bearings in a dungeon! 

Can I ask... do you remember around what level your characters were at by the end of the demo?  And thanks again for playing, I appreciate it

I wanted to post some sort of update today, so here is a piece of music that you'll hear in the dungeon that comes right after demo ends:

The Mines of the Orderian Engineer's Guild

I'm still working on dismantling it into 3 different pieces that you'll have to collect and reassemble.  My favorite part is from around 0:57-1:16, so I'm trying to make sure that the fully assembled BGM will play long enough for folks to get to it (free of interruptions from battles or leaving the location).

@Paul: Thank-you for the suggestion ^_^ I wish I had planned for this when I started... I think at this point it might be pretty tough for me to go back and add that feature.  Although I think that Amanda Fitch added it in her later Aveyond games, so perhaps there's a faster way to rebalance the database that I don't know about.  Perhaps I can ask her about it later... if anything, I'll definitely keep this in mind if I ever do another game like this in the future! 

This is pretty fun, I've been playing it for the last 20 minutes or so and I want to keep going ^_^  I have a couple comments that I've just been writing as I go along, so I'll post them here:

-The art style is great!  It's bright and colorful, and the characters are very cute.  I like how the plants smile at you when they're done.  Overall it's very charming.

-The gameplay is fun and addictive, and I like the way everything is laid out... it's intuitive and doesn't require much explanation which is always a good thing.  I was a big fan of the SNES Harvest Moon, so I'm not surprised that I'm enjoying this as much as I am.

-This is sort of minor, but I was a bit confused about the name of the game when I went to the load screen.  I saw "wasabi" in very tiny font, and right under it in a much larger size is the kanji for さかな... so at first I thought the game might be called fish or さかな.  It's not a big deal, but I just thought I'd point it out.  Perhaps the word "wasabi" can be more prominent, or 魚 can be worked into a little graphic of the store which would be under the word wasabi? 

-I purchased a carrot seed but didn't have room to plant it, so I ended up having to throw it away.  I think a little warning message might be nice for the first time that you try to buy something you don't have room for.

-Okay, now I've been playing this game for almost an hour... darn you!  Haha... j/k   That's a compliment, it means I'm very addicted. 

EDIT: Yay, I got 3 stars!

When I was a kid I used to get really excited when "Never Gonna Give You Up" or "Together Forever" would come on the radio.  What can I say, I've always been a sucker for that melodic pop stuff, even when I was little.  I like Rick Astley, I think he has some sort of Peter Pan sydrome where he never ages.

I have a lot of gay gamer friends who also like to club, but then again I'm from the bay area... the gay geek capital of the world.

I totally started laughing when I read "Chicken AI"...   I'm glad to see you're still hard at work on this game!  It looks like it's coming along nicely.

Thank you for the kind words guys! We appreciate it! In talking with Miss Laura Shigihara briefly about the sound of that preview, I realised how much I want to attempt something not quite acoustic, but possibly orchestrated, with influences from Joe Hisaishi, who as you know composes the music for all the Miyazaki films.

That would be really cool.  I know we talked over at youtube, but I thought I'd just echo my thoughts over here... the piano version is sounding great, and I can't wait to hear more of this new direction!  I really love how Hisaishi's music sounds whimsical and mysterious at the same time, and I think your new piano clip really captures those kinds of feelings.

Also, I was listening to this somewhat new song the other day and the part around 2:45 reminded me of the final boss battle in Iji (the little screechy noises in the background that descend by about a half a pitch each time).  I really like those, haha

[About the Text/Collision issues and the world map:]

@Psysal: Hehe, thank-you ^_^  I'm back to using Workrave again to remind me to take breaks, I think it's helping a lot!  And on days where I only allow myself a small amount of time on the computer, I end up being really productive in other areas (cooking up huge meals, cleaning, studying Japanese, playing on the piano, etc.)

@Mincus: Hi Mincus, thanks for playing the demo!  And no worries, I didn't take your comments too critically   I'm happy to receive feedback! 

About the Text/Collision issues and the world map: Thanks for pointing these out... So far, no one has caught those yet (I'm surprised I still had "jar" in there).  And yes, I'm hoping to change the world map art before the game is released so that it better matches the rest of the maps, and so it's easier for folks to navigate.

About the battle balance and experience points: I think I actually intended for the first part of the game to be fairly easy... originally the battles were a lot harder, but then folks who had never played SNES-style rpgs before (my Mom for example) kept dying and getting confused, so I retooled it a bit to make the first hour really easy and straight-forward.  The difficulty will definitely ramp up; once you reach Ciro, the battles all have new mechanics to increase the challenge/difficulty which should hopefully match the characters' skill levels at that point.  I noticed that your characters' levels were in the range I was hoping for, so that's a relief   I am however doing a bit of rebalancing of the game as a whole because I want to change the level-curve, so I will be looking at the first area to make sure people can't break their characters by grinding too much, so thank-you for pointing these things out ^_^

About the Tonics: I actually don't mind if the tonics are really cheap... I kind of modelled the item system after Chrono Trigger because I liked that it was always really easy to buy the basic health restoration items, but the equipment was more expensive.  In retrospect I think they did it this way so that people couldn't easily buy the equipment out of sequence... I personally like it because I feel that it's nicer to newer players, but won't really change the balance of the game later on when battles become more difficult (since spending a turn to use a tonic is inefficient, so having 99 of them won't really break anything... they'll function primarily as a backup when the player can't find a Blue Crystal or Inn to restore their HP).

Anyways, thanks so much for playing!  I've been really getting back into the game lately; I finished redesigning all the enemies in the game and I'm building up the troops you will encounter to hopefully make the next enemies more interesting... that's gonna take a ton of time to balance though once it's all implemented >_< Hopefully soon I'll post a new song as well that is supposed to be played during the next dungeon.

will look into star control 2 soon -- but i always worry about playing games too similar to my own project at the time, for fear of unconsciously stealing ideas. that's also why i've been avoiding playing 'lack of love' (obscure japanese-only dreamcast title) which is reportedly similar to SD as well (apparently you friend creatures rather than kill them and explore non-linearly, like SD).

Ah, that makes sense.  I think I'm that way about music... sometimes if I'm really into a new song I'm afraid to start composing or writing a song directly afterwards because the song I like naturally seeps into my head.  I've caught myself working on a song only to think, "oh shoot, I knew this melody sounds familiar, it's from such-and-such"... and then I have to start over

I was sad when I saw the announcement for the "Play! Concert" in Oregon a couple weeks after it had already passed (via gametunes)!  I probably would have driven up for it.  George and I went to see the one in Chicago a few years back and it was absolutely wonderful.  I think it might have been the first in the series, because there were a lot of composers there (Mitsuda, Uematsu, Koji Kondo, Jason Hayes, etc.).

I've been coming to this thread every new post that is in here, and I love it all.

Cause I love you and your project, I made fanart...

It was quick, so I'm sorry for the unbalanced body and scribbly lines.

Cute!  Hey guys, just stopping by to say hi... I check in on your project now and then so I'm glad it's still going!  Keep up the great work ^_^

I like the new starfield effect you have; is it supposed to follow where the cursor will be?  The new art also looks quite nice. 

I think I might have mentioned this somewhere, but I also recommend checking out Star Control 2.  The story would probably a lot less serious than yours (it has a lot of silly parts to it), but it might have some similar exploration elements (the further out you go into space, the harder the "battles" or negotiations are for example). 

You have such a unique sound; I'm glad to see more games coming out with your music in it.

Hi Havoc... is this Tyler?  It's me, Laura ^_^  Great job with the website!  It's grown so much since I first visited!

If you guys haven't checked out gametunes yet, it's totally worth it... I'm always impressed by the sheer amount of video game music related content up there (and it's frequently updated, too).  Everything from VGM concert coverage to soundtrack releases to interviews with various people in the industry.  It's great that there is such a wide audience for video game music nowadays!

A bunch of people were asking me to do a piano version of Dr. Zomboss' theme, which I honestly didn't think I could do at first.  The original version has a lot of synth instruments and it's really beat-centric, not to mention "busy"... but I gave it my best shot and came up with something this week.  I realized through the process that my fingers are not in classical-music-playing-shape anymore... they're always exhausted afterwards.  I suppose that means I need to pick up Hannon exercises again, haha... Anyways, here's a link to that video:

Brainiac Maniac piano version 

@Bood_War: Thank-you   Ah, you should take up the piano!  When I was in college, I'd go long stretches without playing the piano (because I had no access to one), and I found that once I started playing again it really lowered my stress level... well, provided I wasn't playing a frustrating piece, hehe

@allen and Brother Android: Oh, haha... I love that video!  That's actually the PvZ artist's son.  He told us that his son now likes watching the video of himself watching the music video... apparently he'll scream "Nooooo" in response to himself screaming "Nooooo" in response to the original "Nooooo" of the music video (so it's like a cascade of Nooooooo's).  I really wish he'd post a video of that, haha