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

Edit: 100.00% now.
But somehow I feel like I missed something?

Thoughts (avert your cursor if you wish to stray from spoilers):
About the magic word. (mouse-over to see)
About the CRT monitor look. (mouse-over to see)
About the collectibles. (mouse-over to see)

I don't know about everyone else specifically, but my keyboard-layout related issue (mouse-over to see) is rather silly. Edit: Nevermind that on my end.

The game becomes frustratingly difficult (and apparently slightly glitchy) as the player approaches the Twin Riddle area in the game. Similarly, I 'solved' the Twin Riddle entirely by accident, though I imagine there's some sort of way to tell what its solution is meant to be through in-game materials.

I have yet to legitimately make it past that section, and the room after it, in a way that felt rewarding for stealthy, minimum-kills play-style type players.

Other slight glitches started to appear after that, such as an inability to pick-up the ibis symbol drawing or examine the pool near it, so I'm guessing something went wrong somehow, somewhere, in my playthrough, but I'm not sure. It's still pretty dang fun up until that point, though.


Edit: List of things I noticed, I s'ppose.

• Is the single, floating purple light-source in the new intro-sequence supposed to be of some importance? Being one of the few non-tree and non-glowing-circle-on-the-ground-gateway-things in the area made me curious about it, and I spent a bit of time trying to interact with it. It's somewhere north-east of the initial spawn, a bit south-east of the contract-circle the summoner attempts to call you (whose calls can be a little confusing to follow as beacons due to them spawning in stationary spots along the 'path' in the trees- though the path itself is easy to follow without the summoner's dialogue poppin' up).
• Entry into the broken fountain room is difficult, but possible without killing the two guards guarding its initial entryway. Not sure if this should be considered a bug, or allowed for those players who would prefer to kill the least amount possible.
• Examining the oryx shaped censer in the lower-right corner of the broken fountain room is slightly difficult; the "..." or "?" prompt will frequently not appear when attempting to examine it, though it does produce text when examined. It doesn't seem to be too important an object, but since I hadn't seen it in the previous build I played (and didn't find another object like it in any of the rooms), I wanted to mention it.
• A guard that used to spawn and patrol the hallway north of the lead key's room- he no longer appears. Is this intentional? It does make the first experience in key carrying easier, but it also prevents teaching players about dropping the key and moving away from it in stealth mode to avoid being killed, which might become a problem once players are forced to maneuver around 2 guards with the silver key. Of course, at this point in the game the checkpoints are still very permissive and frequent, so it's not a big issue.
• Backtracking in the first few rooms is suicide to curious, exploration-oriented players due to guard placement. Consider despawning guards close to doors or changing their walk cycles to allow the player to maneuver out of their path- often the player will simply appear and immediately die due to their spawn position being directly on-top of a guard's spawn position. Again, not a big issue when the checkpoints are generous, and leaving it as-is can push players forward towards progressing the story without them feeling like doors are being locked pointlessly behind them (i.e.- it's not the game's fault I can't backtrack; it's my fault, knowing that those guards are going to be right next to the doors I just went through).
• Possible Spoiler? Mouse-over. This is only a suggestion, and doesn't really apply if you'd rather the players not care about going through the game with the least kills possible.
• Possible Spoiler? Mouse-over. Same basis as the above, though I think it'd be interesting to implement. Might be too difficult to do so, however, as it implies modifying the behavior of characters already set to follow programmed paths to walk over to the appropriate door that corresponds to the key they picked up.
• Definite Spoiler? Mouse-over. This is in regards to difficulty in some areas.
• There's some miscellaneous glitches elsewhere, but since I got to them via a debug function and many of them seem to be in areas that are still being developed, I decided to not give them too much importance. Please let me know if you'd like me to list them, however. I feel like at least mentioning that I'm not sure how to trigger the invulnerability (O key) debug feature in the latest build. Is it currently disabled, a hold-to-use (like stealth), or a toggle? Are there conditions under the which it won't toggle?

Session End.

It turns very atmospheric all of a sudden. I'm not clear on whether or not I lost or won, even if it seems like part of it is definitely 'solvable', in the sense that you can activate something and make something change.

Incidentally, playing this made me quickly check out your site, and then your Tumblr-based blog, which made me curious as to whether or not this game was where you were implementing the particle-color-change-to-show-images effect, which I must admit looks pretty nifty.

Played through all 15 levels, they were quite fun. All I noticed was that for some reason Level 12 started immediately for me, and I thought it was going to be the last level because of that- the rest of the levels seemed to properly send me back to the title screen prior to starting them. Maybe I pressed the space bar without noticing? I'm not sure.

Only thing I'd recommend adding is a way to keep track of the optional but pretty hard to get yellow babies, so players know where they missed 'em.

Edit: Played again. Game didn't start any levels abruptly this time, though Level 6 did freeze on me (I landed on one of the left-most springy blocks in the secret area, sending me to the top edge of the initial screen, and for some reason this prevented me from doing anything but mute and unmute the music- pressing R or ESC did nothing). Luckily(?), the game apparently recalled my progress this time around and allowed me to resume playing from said level. Still, since my gameplay was interrupted, I still don't know if getting all thirteen of the yellow/secret babies does anything special aside from presenting you with a yellow "Win!" at the end of each level.

I'm... pretty sure radek meant explaining it in-game.

@radek: the rock stayed 40 million years near the fruits, it have smelled them all of this time, and was really curious how they taste. So when you pick one of the fruits you're resolving a problem of about 40 million years.

I'm... pretty sure radek meant explaining it in-game. ... Wait, the living rocks have a sense of smell?

Probably just showing the rock looking up at the fruit and drooling as an idle animation while your player character is not looking at it might work? Since the rock and the fruit share their 'hotspot' with each other (i.e.- clicking anywhere on the rock will make the character prick themselves on the fruit's plant), I imagine this might take less time than making the rock and fruit have separate hotspots just so you can trigger the rock's eye-wiggling animation motioning for the fruit (and probably making the fruits' hotspot infuriatingly tiny, which might be a bad idea).

As an additional suggestion, it might help to have the creature that gives you the pipe smoke it from inside his abode (the smoke would help indicate that something is living in the window as well as hinting at the pipe's use for smoking), and also hiccup when he peeks out, so his belt drops in a way similar to the sweeping-slave-creature (thus giving a hint as to what to do with the pipe). Again, all of these in-game hints might help, but they would also increase the amount of animations and the like for every character, and might need a bit more of a logic leap at times for some things (in this same example: how would players know that the cone-plant is a smoke-able plant? The creature showing and shaking a little empty bag with a picture of the plant on it when it tosses the pipe at you? How would you know it'd be willing to trade your compass for its pipe? A picture of a compass-like thing on its belt or fez?).

Like the magical sock. Would the creature that owns it take out something from its sock before it starts playing music, like a musical instrument? How would you hint at the fact that you can use the red-button-device at certain places or on certain things?

It didn't lag for me as a web player. Not sure if my specs would help narrow down the slow-down issue.

There's more than one ending. There might even be more than two endings.

"Congratulations! You just finished the first part!"

Except I don't feel like I accomplished it through brain power, and instead from just the main complaint of point-and-click adventure games: Try everything until it works, even if there are no indications of you needing to do certain things.

I recommend making things just a teensy bit clearer in some regards: For example, show some characters using the objects you find for their apparent purpose, or have some symbols scrawled around the walls, rocks, or other objects that hint at "hey, you used this one item here, try it again near this symbol" sort of deals.

As an example of something you've already spoiled as a hint in this thread: How are players supposed to know that the character in the window wanted the compass, specifically? Much less be sure that the windows were inhabited in the first place? There's a few other unique items that don't really remain clear as to their usage to their player after he acquires them (for example, players that don't know about smoking would not have figured out to combine the pipe and the herbs on their own- those that do would probably not have thought to give it to a calm and subdued creature on the island, but instead probably attempted it on one of the two angrier creatures to try to mellow them out).

Long story short, there need to be some hints for players. I'm not saying the solutions have to be spelled out for them clearly, but they should be able to say "I figured it out" instead of "I finally tried every combination and something finally worked with another thing."

An example with a spoiler: The magic sock didn't seem very magical when I took it. I thought it was just a musical instrument- in fact, I thought I had started some sort of mini-game when the character started using it near me that required me to click on the pink 'music-notes' or whatever those things were. It took me a few tries to figure out I had to take the sock (and I'm not sure where I clicked to do so), but when I finally decided to start using the sock with other objects, I was very confused as to WHY it shrunk things, when the musician creature didn't use it for anything like that at all!

I've been looking elsewhere on the 'net, and I just can't seem to find it, but I was wondering if anyone felt like writing up something on how to take tunes you've got in your head that you feel you can hum (and possibly record), and transcribing them into your music-making program of choice (Musagi, PxTone, etc.) relatively faithfully.

Alternatively, a tutorial on recognizing notes and pitches from recorded humming/beat-boxing/random noise making recordings of oneself (or others?) so as to make it a tad simpler to do the aforementioned transcribing.

Sorry in advance if it's an impossible and unreasonable tutorial to request, though.

Eh, I'm a bit of a crybaby when it comes to happy endings, emotional or not, so I'm probably not well qualified to judge. I'm surprised a lot of people have said Soul Blazer and Terranigma and completely skipped over Illusion of Gaia, though, but maybe I just identify more with its ending than the other two since it was my introduction to the Soul-Blazer/Blader-ish series.

I think the most moving game moment that hasn't been highlighted here that I can think of is, well... sorta corny and cliché-y, and not really that moving now that there's a whole series o' sequels out and the franchise is dwindlin' to a stop of sorts- but back when Mega Man X first came out, the one death scene in it was simultaneously satisfyin' and movin' (before they started beatin' the horse in the sequels). And then there's the character who had the foresight to leave holograms and upgrade capsules everywhere, apparently.

You hear familiar happy voices getting closer.
But you're so tired you can barely keep your eyes open.
>Close your eyes
>....

I can't even remotely find out what game you're quoting via Google-searching, so... which game is it? I assume it must be an IF game.

I recall hearing somewhere that a story is often only as good as its antagonist(s). That aside, I think everyone's already pretty much covered the basics in this thread.

Whether or not you'll hate a villain probably boils down to the setting of the game, and how immersive (which in gaming, as I understand it, stands for 'ease for a player to imagine oneself in their player character's shoes whilst using the least possible amount of their own imagination') the experience is.

Being acutely aware that you are not the ridiculously-haired guy wielding a weapon three times their body weight like an origami paper crane is probably a good way to be detached from the plight of said character's fellows and environment. "Oh, the planet's going to get crushed by a giant rock? Why don't I just fly up there and use my thousand-slash-move to cut it into harmless bits, like I did with the forty dudes that were harshing our mellow?"

That's probably another thing. Whether or not you feel hatred for a villain or whether or not you re-direct that hatred for the game's design might also depend on whether the gameplay clashes heavily with the plot; If you have a bunch of guys who seem to be able to basically summon Captain Planet several times over for the maximum amount of damage, it's a lot harder to think they're in any real danger unless the game suddenly decides to change the rules ("you can't use those ridiculous attacks unless the PLOT lets you!").

Gameplay and plot dissonance aside, people are unique. It's impossible to make people hate (or like) specific characters consistently. You can certainly try, though, and hope for the best. The standard 'would I feel this way about this type of person' sort of mentality probably helps, the same way it does for most other things that are subjective.

tl;dr: No guaranteed way to make people feel a particular way about fictional characters, it's all a gamble, lots of variables.

What was the original expected-to-be-done-by date for this year's Comicompo, anyhow? It'd explain Renton's apparent disappearance.

[ACCEPTABLE]

My mastery over GIMP is subpar at best, but the cover is now ACCEPTABLE. And much fanfare was had.

Welp, I had a bunch just now, but I'm choosing to PM them instead since maybe some of them might contain spoilers? In the meantime I'll be redownloading GIMP and whatnot so as to get ready to either recolor the cover or add in fancy-shmancy 3D text to it.

Also, on the no interest=no point figure, I'd be constantly doubting whether or not there was no interest because, well, I rushed out a shitty product (and really, if I rushed out something shitty, I'd probably blame myself for not taking more time on it than not).

I'd rather take my time with a project and be happy with what I made, so I'm thinking maybe I should do that instead?

Just make something until I'm happy with it, even if I might already be thinking "oh man, but if I added THIS I'd be even HAPPIER with it."

Anyway, thanks for all the input guys.

I drew the cover art and sent it to Fireshaw so he could look at it, but I'm not sure what the credits should say at the mo', so it's technically not a cover yet.

Not to mention that I hhhate how I color most of the time.

Thanks for the two suggestions thus far.

I think that there is no replacement to programming and testing it out.

So would that be the "make as you think" approach? I've tried that, and it just tends to function as an even more delayed approach, except, you know, you have an unfinished product to go along with an unfinished idea. If I had to guess (and it is a complete blind, uninformed guess), Joakim Sandberg's unfinished projects tend to be results of this approach.

So, write out a doc, flesh it out as much as possible, and stick to it!

The problem here is I haven't really figured out how to set a "this is 'as much as possible'" limit to a design document. I can understand dedicating a specific time-set to creating the design document, however, and abiding by said limit (i.e.- only work on what I managed to write in a day, do not implement any new ideas after that time limit). I'm not sure I'd be able to force myself to do that successfully, though, seeing how it's a self-implemented stop-sign that I might be tempted to ignore ("but this idea sounds SO good maybe I can just edit that document a teensy bit").

I'm wondering if there's a sort of unspoken rule about how much content goes into a project's outline, a-la "certain number of gameplay features, certain number of art assets, certain number of stages/bosses/goals, and NO more, if you go over it you're grounded" sort of thing.

Then again, I am writing this with no sleep, so maybe I should try to sleep on it and then re-digest these suggestions.

Well, I saw that, but at the same time, I've no idea where to go to find out where the written scripts for the two pages are, or where the already finished ones are at (no point making a cover or a page that will look like the visual equivalent of a non-sequitor), is what I meant by having a bit of difficulty with it.

Also, I'm not sure if that one guy is still working on his page, or if he's practicing vaporware-in-comic-page-form.

[artist]

I'm surprised this sort of thing is here.

I could do a bit of art for this thing, though I'm having a little difficulty navigating all the posts and trying to figure out exactly what's already gone down.

I always have the best/worst timing for returning from hiatuses, it seems.

So if you still need artists, I'd be up for those, is what I'm saying. I may need a bit of a push in the right direction to finding out where the writing part I'd be responsible for (as well as previous pages) are.

I'm having a bit of trouble limiting myself as to what to include in a project. So I wanted to know if there were any suggestions as to managing one's own imagination and creative drive so as to deliberately forcing oneself to stop. One of the ideas that I thought could help steer someone with such a problem was to have the creative process run through a sort of buffer driven by a poll system, in the sense that as ideas come up, they are published online and put somewhere where people can vote them up or down so as to choose which ideas they'd like to see the most. I'm not sure such a thing exists, short of creating hundreds of polls and constantly updating them so as to remove the less popular ideas and add any new ones- but then that sounds like it would just turn into an endless cycle with the only added feature of "oh, hey, now OTHER people are aware of it", which would probably just drive people away ("god damn it, this guy's STILL putting new ideas up months after he started and I already want to SEE something finished, I'm going elsewhere").

So... Actually, as neat as an online, live whiteboard sounds, it sounds like it'd backfire for my purposes.

What are ways one can put their foot down and say "this is enough brainstorming, let's actually make something"? Is there a sort of forum, setting, or group system that can help with this? Is it easier to determine when to stop alone, or when more people are a part of a project? Is it acceptable to revisit finished projects and add features post-mortem, or is it better to create another title/sequel/spiritual successor? And, assuming one actually decides to sell any of these, when or how do you determine whether or not new content should be paid for or just given for free if and when it is made?

Wow, that question got a bit more complicated. Let me go in and scratch some stuff out.

There we go. So yeah, let me know what your thoughts out on this, or feel free to offer to slap me on the wrist when I start thinking of too many things? (are there individuals that dedicate themselves to being the "stop it, STOP THINKING" man in a project's development?)