TIGSource Forums

Download: FOAM (v0.1) (https://www.dropbox.com/s/7i53l30zn45ntj9/Foam.zip)

Controls:
Gamepad: Left stick to move, right stick to rotate camera.
Keyboard: WASD to move, J+K to rotate camera.

I am so lazy about making games, there was a thread made about it. (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=582.0) This is my first game. Dear god, what have I done?

(http://i.imgur.com/svj5V.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/CyV88.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/h350L.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/S3naG.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/lkdpR.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/WIi2K.png)



Sorry to you folks who like inverted camera rotation.


I take criticism well, so tear this thing apart. (Be constructive).

edit: Also sorry to Linux and Mac gamers. This is a GAME MAKER CLASSIC™.

edit2: New build available.

Fixes:
Arrow keys control the character as well
Grass texture less noisy
Misc bug fixes

Note: keys J and K now rotate the camera.

Wow! Looks really cool! I like such games.

What did I just play?! :o This is very strange, like an increpare game .. and I like it. :)

I only had 5 minutes to play, but from what I saw it looks good. I did get very lost and when I turned into a spiky mushroom I started to get freaked out a little.

My only criticisms are that
a) it's weird and i have no idea what's happening or where I am (maybe a map would help?),
b) the grass texture is too noisy so the lack of AA makes it very annoying

Thanks, my monitor is probably out of whack.

Map is a must. Also maybe some more hints? I became an astronaut and stood on the moon but it didn't do anything...

Very surreal and pretty though.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step to .... recovery?
Success as an indie game dev?
=P
Congrats on a complete game! (finally.) =P


D'oh! Guess beggars can't be choosers.


Agree about the grass textures, they can be a little jarring.

Can't agree about a map. I think being lost in the woods is an integral part of this adventure (whatever it is....) ???

PROGRESS SPOILER:
So I delivered three eggs and turned into a Moon and went to space... and "Two out of three"
So I guess there's more, but i don't know where.


CONTENT COMMENTS (SPOILED):
Moon walking/rotating animation of waxing/waning: <3
Sub walking animation: I like the waggle, but occasionally the degree of it was a little tricky making me think i had turned more than I had. maybe more subtle?
Trees being cut down all over the place: <3
NPCs that talk to me but don't seem to reveal much: huh? (are they distinct from those that do tell me important things in some way I'm missing?)

The cosmic squiggles are not enumerating your eggs. That's all I will say for now!

i turned gamepad on in the menu but it wasn't mapped correctly (it's a Logitech Precision btw) so the camera kept rotating counterclockwise while i walked around with the d-pad. i've played like that for 10 minutes thinking that was intended, then nauseaquit

This happened with my controller once as well. I found that re-plugging it seemed to fix the calibration. Thanks for playing.

I... think I won? I'm not sure. (mouse-over to see)

WOW. I was really skeptical when I first started controlling my character and I got REALLY confused for the first few minutes. But then I stopped trying to make sense out of everything and started getting the hints. :)

This is a masterpiece, but I couldn't finish it yet. Maybe I'll try some more tomorrow.

Some things:
- There was no music on the very first locations, was this intended?
- Some sound effects were way too loud (in my opinion). Like the creatures shooting lightning.
- I didn't know I could rotate my view. Only found that out by reading the other comments here. Maybe squeeze in the key bindings before the game?
- I don't agree with the addition of a map. Would spoil some of the fun...

Really fun game, dude! It be tripping though. lol

There wasn't supposed to be music for the first section, no. I am thinking about adding some light tune there. Thanks for your feedback. I will incorporate info for the control scheme in the next build.

And yes, there are a few different endings and death sequences.

I'm really enjoying this game so far.  The world is bizarre and colorful enough to keep me wanting to explore and find out what's down each path, and I like the lines of dialogue the characters have.  Haven't made that much progress solving the puzzles yet, but I'll probably come back to the game later (speaking of which, as save feature would be nice.).

Wow, this is one of the strangest games I've played in a long time... It begins in a very confusing and bizarre way but after a while you get totally immersed in that strange world. There were times when the game got frustrating, when I died and had to start all over again, but the mystery surrounding this world kept me playing. Congratulations on a wonderful game.

And now...could anybody tell me what the cosmic strings do? I've found all 3 of them but I can't seem to figure out what to do next. And one more thing, what's the fan supposed to do? I keep dying when I walk into the fan but I don't see what else there is to do in there..

This is wonderful, thanks for sharing! I wish there were more games like this. Very immersive for me, I love the visual style.

Request: I want to share this with some people, if you could possibly do an update where the arrow keys control the character (very counter-intuitive that the huge buttons with arrows on them do not move the dude on screen) then that'd be awesome! :)

Thanks again for sharing. A fuckton more interesting than my first game.

EDIT: Sorry there wasn't any actual feedback in this post :( I was linked here externally so I thought it was the Announcements forum. If I think of any I'll post it as well.

This is really nice! been very long time there is no surreal game around, I finished it but I am pretty sure it was mostly luck that lead me to the end of the game lol
and
I made an 'afterthought' after playing it : http://heysami.blogspot.sg/2012/06/press-enter-foam.html (http://heysami.blogspot.sg/2012/06/press-enter-foam.html)
please visit if you have time, thank you.

I eventually figured out that you basically just change into something else to bypass a previously locked "gate", but after a while I didn't really have any motivation to go on. At one point I was an egg, but I fell in the water and it was gone. I don't know if I needed to be that egg for something... I was kind of put off by not being able to tell how things were meant to look. Regardless, well done on your first game.

I thought about a save feature, but in the end I didn't feel the game lent itself to being put down and picked up later in the middle. I never enjoyed this aspect of long RPGs. I always come back after a break and forget what I was supposed to be doing.


I'll put it in the next build. Thanks.


Things are meant to look how they look. If they were meant to look differently, I would have made them so! Thank you.

Thanks to all for playing.

oh my goodness this is so great! will edit post after i finish playing

edit: ok i beat the game and got all 3 secrets (space, underwater area, checkerboard area). i don't think that getting the secrets actually matters though since i got the same ending, but i got two of the endings so far (alone with umbrella, girl without umbrella) is there anything i'm missing?

anyway, great game here, it's been too long a time since i played a game that i thought had a unique and brilliant surreal atmosphere (games like uin, lackadasium, yume nikki, space funeral, glum buster, etc). by any chance were you inspired by yume nikki or LSD when made this (psx style graphics, egg collecting, etc)? i personally like the pixelated aesthetic because for a lot of the characters and  graphics it leaves a lot of interpretation to the player as to what they actually are. for instance, i could swear the guy telling you to collect the eggs was pyramid head. the music was spot on and it added so much to the atmosphere of the game. anyway, i'll shut up now and stop raving like a fan girl but first i must say this was one of my favorite game maker game experiences, and i look forward to seeing whatever you do next.

nice work!

Upload it somewhere else, box.net won't let me download it.

Alright. I'm hosting it with Dropbox now. Let's see if their bandwidth limit is a little higher.

I will have a new build out by the weekend.

very nice! i like the music and funny characters you meet. imo, keep the first area silent and don't add a map. the only thing i didn't like about it is how much i had to repeat the same paths. i had to do the spikey mushroom step 5-10 times for example.

:wizard:

Yeah. I love Mike Nnemonic's Let's Play (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUzxbmduww8&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLC27A11B97FF7EE1F) of LSD. And Yume Nikki was a big inspiration as well. I'm glad you caught both!
Oh, and You can choose to take the umbrella or not. The girl being there depends on visiting the three locations.


Good to know. I really wanted to release this before I let it roll into the mass grave of unfinished games I have, thus very little playtesting got done by anyone but me.

Thanks for playing.

I do not know what just happened, but...

Loved the game. Reminds me of yume nikki, but with a far better and more interesting gameplay. Haven't finished yet, but so far, so good.

Thanks for the positive responses, everyone. A new build is available. Arrow keys can now be used to control the player, keys J and K rotate the camera. (Though, a dual-analog gamepad is still ideal!)

New screenshots in the OP as well.

Have a good week.

I just wanted to say this is one of the best games I've ever played: beautiful to explore, with amazing aesthetics, wonderfully designed, meaningful and charming: reminiscent of older games without the repeat of obvious clichés (pixel art / coins /etc). Very modern too and very well paced. I'm in awe! are you on twitter? I'm rarely on TIG and would love to follow your work.


I discovered I could move the camera only after finishing the game and coming here O_O it's interesting because the game changes camera angles at points (for example when going through the fan) and thanks to that I could see the beaver costume. Involuntary puzzles rock! What is the fan room for btw?

That was fun exploring, and I really liked the music. I wish it was longer, but at least the short play through was an enjoyable.

Holy shit. This is amazing. At first I thought it was a bit like Yume Nikki, but this far surpasses Yume Nikki.

This game provides the perfect balance between leaving you utterly confused and presenting clear challenges. Although it took a long time to really understand the game, even when I didn't understand it the game provided a challenge (be it solving a puzzle or just exploring as-of-unexplored parts) at all times. Despite the random-seeming scenery, the world has a very memorable structure and each 'screen' looks unique, so navigation isn't a problem once you've wandered around for a bit. The fact that for the ending the game finally returns to the 'normal' world is awesome after wandering around for so long.

My only criticisms are that there's no indication of there being anything beyond getting the three eggs and reaching the standard ending (it didn't occur to me that there was more to do until I read this thread) and that the alternative endings are rather underwhelming considering the effort it takes to reach them (I went and replayed the entire game for a third time and all I get is a single changed line?).

Three things I'm wondering:
-Is there any difference between the submarine and the cloud form, aside from aesthetic differences? They both only seemed to serve the function of allowing you to pass over water.
-What's with the balloon near the flame form? Is there anything you can do with it?
-Likewise, is there anything special you can do with the GPU fan?

Like santaragione asked, do you have a twitter or some other place to hear about any other games you'll make from now on? If this is only your first game, I can't wait to see what future games from you will be like.

I was thinking a lot about Yume Nikki while making this. I'm glad you replayed it, and I'm sorry to have disappointed you with such a lousy reward for your hard work! I was really cramming to finish this game just to get my motivation up - consequently, 90% of the game was done during the final 10 days or so.

It sounds like to found mostly everything, I will say that there is a slightly alternative route you can take with the cloud form, but it's not very exciting. The "dead ends" (either literal dead-ends or characters that do nothing) are simply stuff I had ideas for but couldn't get around to because of my deadline!

I just made my first tweet: https://twitter.com/stwelin

I don't like to keep a dev log or anything, but I'll tweet my next game when it's done. It's in the works!

Thanks for playing!

COMPLETELY SPECTACULAR!! :crazy:

Man, seeing stuff like this really makes me want to finish/create my own game. Did you program and draw it all yourself? so amazing. Cant even get over it!!

Okay, but I'm gonna give some opinions on some things  :shrug2:

First off, there wasnt any music in the game besides the title screen (im not sure if it was supposed to be like that or not.. but I did enjoy what music there was!)

Also, I would tone down the grass texture a little more, its fine stationary, but when you move, its a little too much.

You're probably working on it, but, maybe add roofs? In that scene with the guy in the corner that says "shh", I walked towards the house and could see the inside, and walked through the doors and actually got inside (and the two looked different). if you just add a roof, the problem will be no more!  :)

the players walking animation is a little weird, its like he turns left then right to take one step in any direction (if that makes sense) .

had trouble exiting, I cant press alt+f4, or the exit button to exit i had to press escape and then 9. Kind of annoying but whatever.

Really liked the clouds, and the orange tree in the scene with the purpley house (and the people that dont really talk) you should definitely add more of them.

hmm what else... oh, maybe work on the art for the other people, couldnt really tell what I was exactly looking at most of the time.

Oh and maybe make the little paths the player walks on a little wider to allow for a little more wandering  :)


keep up the work, I love this game so far! (:

Quite impressive and does remind me of Yume Nikki.

I spent an hour and a half playing it, but could only find two eggs and two of the weird squiggly things.  :(

it's interesting. i got one egg and became a submarine, eventually got into deep waters but then i died/reverted to boy somehow. it sucks that you have to do everything again...

You don't, you only lost your submarine form. The egg remains collected, and any permanent changes you've done to the world remain. (If you want the submarine form back, you can recollect the egg.)

im pretty sure i needed the submarine to progress (and become cloud, etc)

yeah i know some changes are still there, but doing everything to become egg again to get submarine form is lame

Cloud has no advantages over submarine, and you can become cloud without submarine (I didn't get submarine until my final egg during my first run). Also, submarine/cloud is only necessary for a squiggly, AFAIK, which are only for getting alternate endings.

someone mentioned this on twitter, worth having others see. played for a bit, lovely atmosphere. a lot of useful material here for those looking to do some interesting world building for their games, similarly to yume nikki an those sorts of things..

It looks like great idea. But you should fix that resolution problems.
For me, everything was really blured :waaagh:

The last post was about a year ago, I don't hink he's going to fix it

This looks pretty good, it reminds me of Mother on the Famicom. I'll give it a shot.

Did anyone notice how much this thread has views compared to the amount of replies...?

The game looks awesome so it's all earned tho!

link is dead  :'(
does anyone still have a build? this is one of my favorite obscure games ever  :(

A bit late, but also for anyone else looking for the game:
FreeIndieGam.es also provided a MediaFire mirror (http://www.mediafire.com/file/11hhp12jczuepf9/Foam.zip) with their entry on Foam.
But as I don't trust MediaFire to keep the download up and because Foam is awesome, I've decided to mirror it as well:
Mirror #1 (http://www.stack.nl/~vdz/misc/Foam.rar)
Mirror #2 (http://www.vdzserver.org/misc/Foam.rar)

Thanks for the link!  Was really curious about this one :)