I just wanted to say that I like the theme song playing in the video, it's delightfully weird.  The composer does a good job with the dissonance; in my experience not that many people can pull off good dissonance without the song becoming grating on the ears... so props

Like Oddball mentioned, the game reminds me a lot of Bonsai Barber on WiiWare (basically a bunch of anthropomorphized fruits and vegetables will ask you to trim their foliage into various shapes).  This is a nice little game, the controls are intuitive and you can jump right into the game without having to go through tutorials or anything.  I think with a few peripheral additions, the game could feel a lot better... simple things like pitch shifted scissor sound effects for when the leaves are cut, or having the player use an animated hedge clipper cursor.  The only other thing, is that the game doesn't really feel like "extreme gardening" to me... it feels like regular gardening.  But I think that could be fixed with a few superficial additions.

I just figured out what the orisinal stuff reminds me of: Morning Glory (the Korean Sanrio-type store that sells pencils, stationary, mugs, toys, etc.) ... which is a good thing, I like the sunny happy cute style. 

I just got 2,638,300 points.

Ahhh!  How??  I need to play more...

Oh, I forgot to post mine!  Here it is, front and back (phone # is blocked out):

Hi PsySal!  Just letting you know I've been playing the game and taking notes as I go along.  I'll post all my feedback when I finish.  It's pretty cool so far!

I'm actually writing now because I'm stuck   I've talked to everyone in the castle (Henleigh, Haddock, Stew, and one other guy), I examined the vandalized painting, and I'm carrying around a very threatening mop.  Do you have a hint for me?

Wow, it's really beautiful... at some point I stopped playing so that I could watch the parallax.  The way the grass in the front scrolls reminds me of driving along a country road in Japan for some reason.  It's really peaceful.  After I pulled myself away from staring at the scenery, I played for a bit and enjoyed that too... figuring out where you need to click in order to land on the high balloons (or to jump over other ones) was a good challenge. 

I think there are a couple of factors involved in the lack of voice acting in indie games... The first one is that indie game developers generally don't have a very large budget.  In order for voice acting to enhance the game rather than detract from it, the voice acting needs to be really solid which means you need a good amount of money to hire professional voice actors.  This often isn't feasible for an indie who is just starting out and has very little money to dole out for contract services. 

The second reason might have something to do with space (at least for me).  A lot of indie games are PC downloadables or mobile/handheld games, neither of which support the kind of space required for a significant amount of voice acting.  However, there are some projects out there that are using it.  I believe there are a number of Adventure Game Studio projects that have a good amount of voice acting.  I believe "Trauma" and "Aquaria" also use voice acting.

Has anyone seen the Mega64 GDC ads? I think they're just hilarious.

"Bring your LARPing gear... unless you're a LOSER!!"  Hahahaha...

Yes, they're so funny.  I love how he kicks the screen in all 3 of them

Ah, thank-you for the information... that gives me some peace of mind   I ended up going with "Ground with Priority Printing" but I'm not sure how long it will take the business cards to get to me.  It didn't really give an estimated time for any of the options except "next day" or "next 2 days"... so I'm just crossing my fingers that they'll get here before GDC! 

Hey guys, what's the smallest font that you've used on a business card where it comes out legible and nice looking?  Most of my smaller text is currently in 8pt, but I have something in 6pt and I'm concerned that it won't turn out right.

EDIT: Yay, I finally ordered them   Just a note for those who are using overnightprints.com ...I found a few coupons on this website for various discounts.  The one I used was for 10% off my total purchase.  To get that one just enter this code when you check out: TENOFFOP

Is Werewolf like Doubt or Mafia? (Where mafia try to kill off townspeople, and townspeople try to identify the mafia and hang them each turn... not the facebook mafia, but the party game)

Mother 3 or Legend of Starfy or Boy and his Blob or just more DoTA.

@CASinclair: Yes, they have a few Starcraft channels actually   When I was in Korea for the World Cup back in 2002 I remember turning on the tv and being like, "what the heck!!?  They're talking about Dropships and Hydralisks on television!!"  Haha... I was so happy it was really popular over there because most of my friends (who I used to play Starcraft LAN games with in the dorms) were only interested in playing Counterstrike and then Warcraft 3 after that (both which are good games, but I was sad that no one wanted to play SC anymore).  But in Korean PC Cafes, it's like all-Starcraft, all the time.  Great for shigi ^_^

@Crimsontide: Whoa, that's pretty cool that you can watch replays, I didn't even know that   About SC2 looking a lot like SC1: I thought this at first too... but after playing several matches I realized that there's a lot of differences in how the units work together.  It's sort of frustrating and cool at the same time; on one hand, some of my old strategies just don't work anymore... but on the other, it's an interesting challenge.  I've yet to figure out exactly how to properly use Reavers and Ravens.  Tank crawls still work though!

@Guert: Hm, I think overall it's similar enough that you can pick it up quickly if you've played the first Starcraft.  The major differences are in how the units work together, and how to play with the new units.  I also like some of the subtle changes they made to improve gameplay; for example, if you try building something and a unit is standing in the way, the units will move out of the way for you.  So there is far less stupid bottleneck behavior like in SC1.  You can also set the command center's waypoint on a mineral patch so that SCVs will come out and directly start mining; and a little icon will appear to let you know if there are idle SCVs.  Some of the new Terran units seem very deep in terms of strategy; there's a new aerial unit called the Raven which doesn't attack, but can drop turrets and enemy fire deflectors that have a time limit.  It also has a heat seaking missile which does 100 AOE damage. 

Ah, I like the turtle strategy sometimes too... I used to like to see how many "insane" AI I could take on by turtling into the bottom middle spot in the Big Game Hunters map.  About the beta key: We got a key from a friend who had gone to Blizzcon this year.  We also have a lot of friends who work at Blizzard, and they were given a few keys to share. 

Oh nice, I don't think I've played a game that was both very non-linear and also had a deep story... I'm curious though, given that you could explore the world in any order, how will leveling up work with battles and stuff like that?  Are all the enemies created so that no matter where you are, their levels simultaneously increase based on how much experience you have?  If so that's pretty awesome.

@Paul: Wow!  That's crazy that it took you longer to fix all the bugs than to create the game itself.  I've also heard that phrase about how the last 20% of the game takes 80% of the time... I'm hoping (fingers crossed) that in my case it won't be as severe since I try to divide the game into sections where everything is fully bug tested before I move on... then I don't touch that section again.  But this end-game stuff is indeed proving to be quite time consuming >_<  Is Saturated Dreamers a linear rpg, or is it more open-ended?

@rdein: Aw, thank-you!  I still have a lot more music to make, so hearing you say that is very motivating!

@Jonathan: Thank-you Jonathan!  I love making lists actually... last week I spent a couple days working at this Hong Kong cafe; I just brought a notebook and pen (since I'm rewriting all the enemy spells and states by hand first and then putting them into the system), and checked off boxes as I went along.  It's really satisfying!  Ah, you're right about the ladder sprite thing... I'll try to make one for Dominic as well.  After a certain point you will have more than 4 characters in the party, so I'm trying to come up with a good way to let the player switch them around.  I'm really glad that your friend liked the Leeble Forest map... that one took a lot of time ^_^  And tell your wife that I really want to make Leeble plushies... definitely one of my goals once I finish the game!

@rekcah: Haha, that's awesome that your friends will harass you about it until you finish it ^_^  Whenever I come back to the thread and see a bunch of replies I always get a boost from that!  Games are so different from music in that way... they're much more iterative and you can't really complete them in one binge sitting.  When you make music, do you usually complete a song in one sitting?  For me I love when I can get a whole song out like that (well, the bulk of it at least... the production might take longer), so I really have to change my mentality to work on video games, hehe.   

@neoshaman: Ah, that's too bad   I hope you'll be able to check it out sometime though!

@BinaryMind: Thank-you for playing, I'm really glad that you're enjoying it ^_^  To answer your question, the demo does end... if Dolby just joined your party then there should be one more section before it's done (Debonet).  Thank-you for letting me know about those bugs, too!  I'll try to see if I can fix those... (thus far I haven't been able to fix the timing thing on the Hawk wanted poster, but perhaps I can figure something out) 

Sometimes when I check out games in the feedback section or music in the audio section, I like to know how many posts the person has so that I can gauge whether or not they've just signed up to spam about their stuff... if they only have a few posts and never take the time to comment on anyone else's topics or participate in the community I generally won't leave them feedback (unless it really catches my eye).  That would be the only reason I'd like to know how many posts someone has... besides that though I don't really care.

Overall I've had a fairly positive experience with the feedback forum here.  I really appreciate lengthy and detailed feedback, but I also enjoy the short "words of encouragement" posts as well.  I try my best to leave people feedback whenever I can... sometimes it's lengthy and detailed, but sometimes I just don't have all that much to say. 

As others have mentioned, I don't think it's a bad thing to participate in more than one forum, especially in terms of posting your project for feedback... the bigger your audience, the more comprehensive the feedback will be.  I'm also fairly active at a smaller creative forum where people post all sorts of projects (games, art, music, photography, writing, even cooking recipes)... I like both places for different reasons.

That is what I was getting at; the distinction between stock graphics and ripped graphics. I hadn't considered too carefully what the difference is, but there is a huge difference.

What I'm really feeling is there's a shortage of stock graphics, in the sense that there really ought to be a larger industry and/or specialized tools for creating stock game graphics. Like how designers can draw on stock photos, or 3D artists can draw on stock textures.

Ah, I see what you're saying   You're totally right, it would be really nice to have something like that.  I mean, there are tons of sound libraries out there with stock SFX and ambience that developers use all the time (or their sound design contractors do)... I have a very sensitive ear so I'm always catching that sort of thing  

As Randommasta said, the only generators I know of at present make RTP-style assets... but I'd imagine it wouldn't be that difficult to randomly generate character templates of varying sizes and shapes, or perhaps palettes for clothing.  I can easily spend a good amount of time putting together a template, and once I have that it's easier to pump out a bunch of NPCs with it... so having a bunch of randomly generated templates and palettes at my disposal would save a ton of time.

I think my order of preference would be:

game with poor but original graphics > game with sprites ripped from chrono trigger

game with lovely graphics that are a mix of original and creatively edited stock > game with poor but original graphics

It's not a fair judgment anyways because in a lot of cases the indie games where the graphics are original are clinging to the 8-bit in order to avoid the artistic technicalities (increased emphasis on shading, lighting, color compositions, etc.) that arise as you go higher up in resolution. It would actually take me longer to modify an existing RPG Maker character set than it would to make an 8-bit character set from scratch. I can make a decent 8-bit character sheet in a matter of minutes.

This is so true... it actually takes me longer to modify the RTP than it does to create original graphics in a lower resolution.  And that's cool that you guys are resurrecting your rpg maker projects, it can be really rewarding to work on a game after you've had a chance to take a break from it.  Spongen is a pretty nice place if you ever want to stop by... it's a small community, probably only about 30-40 active members, but everyone is really friendly.  It's actually a catch-all creative place, so people post art, music, novels, even recipes in addition to their games

Also: supershigi you know how much I respect and am looking forward to your game, and I think that maybe I need to shift my thinking a little with respect to graphics; in particular, I should think of it as "stock".

Aw, thank-you, I really appreciate that   I'm not sure if this is what you meant or not, but I have a very different view on stock graphics than I do on ripped material.  I really don't like ripped material because all of those assets were created specifically for another game.  But stock material (like the RTP) is something that you buy the license to use when you buy rpg maker.  It's totally legal, and it was made specifically for users of the program.  That's why I think a great compromise for someone like me is finding creative ways to alter and personalize the RTP and mix it with my own original graphics.  Since we all own the license, it's almost become a strange little esoteric artform at Spongen to come up with creative ways to use the RTP... (like using ship wheels as gears in a factory, or recoloring and shading leaves and then stacking them in order to make a beanstalk)       

That's a pretty interesting concept... as far as I know I haven't heard of anyone doing anything quite like that.  It's funny because just the other day my friends and I were discussing various ideas for new edutainment games (like Magic the Gathering with famous historical figures instead of mythical creatures, haha).  Anyways, good luck with this, I'm sure it would be a great way to get people to read the news.  As for ideas, perhaps you could award players points based on various things like:

• Putting together a trivia quizzes based off of certain news articles
• Achieving a particular score on said quizzes that you didn't write yourself
• Very simple weekly or monthly mini-games involving various news figures