Once someone's infected they're fucked. If they're not close to a medic with that healing thing they're fucked. If they don't have the reactive armor they're fucked. If something goes even slightly wrong they're fucked. Even in easy mode, it's a death sentence.

Parasites are and should be extremely dangerous. Keep your distance and burn them with fire.

("Avoid becoming infected to conserve valuable health resources!")

No way to revive dead teammates.

Yeah, that's not so great... but it does add a lot of tension to combat by giving death a weight that it doesn't have elsewhere ("Oh, I died!" "Don't worry, there's a closet just ahead"). Plus, levels take about ten minutes tops (in my experience), so you won't be sitting things out for too long.

Essential weapons and equipment are locked until higher levels.

Like what? The vast majority of the unlockable weapons are gimmicks, inferior to the basic equipment outside of specific, limited situations. Most of the time, my teams' loadouts are composed of at least 50% default weapons.

No way to play some maps without a tech, not a lot of variety in options there.

I'm not even sure what your complaint is here.

Crouching doesn't let you shoot over someone's head.

The crouch animation seems to be purely cosmetic - it's undocumented, a side effect of 'walking'. No reason why it should do anything.

Insane - Hard >>> Hard - Normal. It's like they skipped a difficulty level. Hard is not really all that hard, and insane is ridiculous.

Haven't played anything but Hard, so can't vouch for this one either way. You could be right.

Not enough campaigns.

True - but did you notice that there's a random-map generator built in? That should give some replay value, even before the modders sink their teeth into it.

Played through the full campaign with some friends. It seems really, really fun, and I've already had more than a few story-worthy moments. (Playing as the Tech, trying to figure out the computer-hacking minigame as my friends fight desperately behind me - hearing them scream and watching them die - finally solving the puzzle just as the last of them dies, leaving me to be torn apart by an angry horde; and later, laughing as our Medic (and only our medic) dies in the first two missions, then watching him play the sole survivor on the third; much later, watching our Medic get hit by a Parasite, and seeing a squad-mate, desperate to help, blast him with the flamethrower...; finally (on our sixth try) figuring out the correct loadout for the last mission; the only thing better than a P-Gun, it turns out, is two P-Guns...)

I just wish there were more places to use the welding torch and sentry gun - they seemed largely useless on the later levels.

P.S.: I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned this, but there's an achievement that gives you a new hat for TF2. So... neat?

Haha, this is looking pretty good. Love the character sprite.

It's not mine, of course! (You can tell because it looks good.) The little fellow's the first fruit of my collaboration with Machine Saint. But he is indeed pretty darn great.

(His moustache wiggles when he jumps!)

((also, I've been playing with fonts))

Agh, I can't make myself happy with the basic mechanics. I just can't!

here's something different

This is looking really interesting - especially what you've taken as inspiration from the cart. (Not the obvious!) Good luck!

You're probably gonna need to add instructions in the game as it's pretty hard to figure out how I should be playing.

True. I've been thinking about the details. I'm still working on creating something like a difficulty curve (which so far is just 'removing all negative adjectives from Paris'), but an actual explanation of the various drop-types and goals are needed... my current thought is to add short mixed plot/instruction scrolls before each level (the first time you play them), but that's clumsy - I'm not fond of it. Adding little "+Eloquence" floaters whenever you do something good will help, I think...

...anyway, fiddling is ongoing. The need is recognized.

As far as I can tell, you grab the adjectives (A) to start scoring, and the nouns (N) to add the score to your total. Green adjectives add to your score and red ones take away a lot.

Haha! Nearly true, but missing a little bit. You choose (after the first level) whether to go for a high or low rating; either gets you equally many fans! (A boring, middle-of-the-road rating, on the other hand...)

This naturally only reinforces the need for instructions.

It's been a while! Here's what I've been working on.

-

Oh, this is going to be wonderful. Currently I don't see much purpose in climbing to higher platforms, however; you get bombarded with adjectives too fast to string together a positive combo, and even more so when you're drunk.

Yeah, I've been thinking about how to solve that problem. Haven't put anything in yet, but... soon.

It's the Eiffel Tower let's see those points

Zero points! It's obviously the Leaning Tower of Pisa. (This is more obvious with the version that has a level-select.)

arguably this was not obvious at all

hence

the joke

Notch, the developer of Minecraft, has been facing the same issues. Wandering back through his devlog a few pages might be informative.

I'm a little worried that the different levels feel a little samey gameplay wise so far, is there anything you could do to encourage players to try substantially different play styles?

Moving platforms, death pits, etc.

A valid concern! Moving platforms could be good! Not so sure about the death pits. Here's a new version that has some odder levels - I think they need quite a bit of tweaking before I'd be happy with them, but they're a start, eh?

Oh man, the inebriation aspect is great!  It's like you've made a biographical game about my life!

I'm an international wine taster, by the way.

Who isn't?

I couldn't keep playing bowser's inside story because i got tired after 4 hours of tutorial. Also I like how canabalt tells you to press X or C to start so you know what key you are going to use

The funny thing about Canabalt is that space also works. Completely undocumented.

Just wanted to say i love where this is going. The wine description is hilarious to read as it pops up!

Thanks!

-

The nightly build is up. Now in: an (admittedly minimalistic) world map, saved progress, and a new AURA SYSTEM! It is very fancy.

Next up: a new score system, and ERUDITION!

...I think I won?

I've been enjoying the drunken motion effect a lot on this game as well as the crazy concept too. I tried playing a bunch without reading what the letters meant and wasn't able to figure it out. I was thinking they represented chemicals in the wine for some reason but now that I read the description that they are adjectives and nouns that makes a lot more sense and I really like that.

Yeah, the game isn't really very player-friendly right now. Sorry about that. It was an intentionally low priority so far; but, equally, as the mechanics solidify, it's one of the things I plan to focus on later.

I also think the reversal mechanic would be awesome where you have to dodge at some point as well as the suggestion that as you approach your most drunk you use increasingly less professional words.

About dodging: Right now I'm doing something like that already. There are times when you'd want to dodge everything. If you're trying to get a positive review, you avoid negative adjectives, and vice-versa. If you're trying to build up a big combo, or if you accidentally picked up an adjective of the wrong color, you avoid nouns. If you have a combo in hand, you avoid water. (Because water both cures drunkenness and wipes out your combo.) The mechanics may not have been clear to you (and, if so, that's no-one's fault but mine), but I'm very happy when it comes to the seeking/dodging dynamic as it stands.

For the other thing...

Perhaps it could be that better words ("herbaceous") are smaller, faster moving, and harder to grab, but give lots of points; however, as you get drunker, you have to resort to grabbing simpler and simpler ones ("grape-y") since they're the only ones you can catch.  Maybe at the end you get a score multiplier for consistently sounding erudite?

...that is an excellent idea, and helps solve a design problem I've been slamming my head into.

Thank you!

I also had a lot of fun with the drunken mechanics of this, really looking forward to seeing this realised with less placeholder graphics and more descriptive wine tasting.

Heh. "More descriptive wine tasting" has and continues to be a focus of development, but for 'less placeholder graphics'...

...heh heh heh.

Some very nice things are coming your way.


-


New release! Now with TWO LEVELS. (Play through the first level to get to the second; a level-select screen will probably be the next thing to go in.) Extra bonus points for the first person to figure out what the new level is supposed to be!

This is a really neat concept... It plays pretty well so far, but I feel like it's a little too simple right now. There are a lot of things you could do to add interest/variety... Presumably you have plans, but it's worth noting anyhow.

Yeah, I basically agree. It's fine for a first level, I think - maybe even without the water-drops? - but it needs more mechanics, more elements, in later ones. The design was originally for a 3-day project, and it's proving a little bit tricky to flesh it out to a 30-day one... I'm going to definitely take some time today or tomorrow for some intense brainstorming, for that very reason.

Did you plan on doing all of the graphics and music yourself?
I would consider it a joy to provide both, if you would like that.

Well, I was planning on just leaving it in its current style...

Haha! Joking. No, I have SECRET PLANS for the graphics (I'll PM you about those), but I had no idea about what to do for the music. I'd be happy to collaborate with you on either or both!

edit: there's one thing we have to keep in mind, though

dwarf fortress currently is not the finished product

even though it acts a lot like one sometimes

Dwarf Fortress has been in open alpha for longer than most games are in development. Tens of thousands of people have played it.

At what point does the label 'alpha' become meaningless?

4452! I think.

Took me a few tries to get through, though it was easier once I started using the manueverability options.

Very nice game! The art style is delightful. Very interested to see where you go with it!

I didn't get a frame rate drop at all.

Interesting!

On further experimentation, it turns out that I was getting a frame-rate drop regardless, with enough wine on the screen. The crude slope implementation exacerbated it, but didn't create it...

...anyway. New version up! It has multiple new features. See if you can spot them all!

This is going to be a very fun game, I'm sure.

Nope! It is completely doomed, and will be terrible. I've read my fate in the stars!

But until then: must struggle on.

Currently working on adding sloped floors (for Level 2!), but having difficulty. Flixel doesn't have any built-in support for slopes, the only code I could find is many many versions obsolete, and adding new collision-models to Flixel is... owing to its structure, kinda tricky! (Most of the work is done in FlxU, so changing it would require going under the hood with the engine...)

...I'll figure something out sooner or later, but if anyone has any advice, please let me know!

(I tried the obvious hack - just cobbling together a bunch of squares to simulate a slope. It works, but the frame-rate hit from the massive increase in colliding-solids is pretty much intolerable.)

Oops, forgot to add the end. Lemme just rewrite that part then.

Perhaps you could make it so accumulating words makes you drunk, and when you reacha  certain amount of intoxication you have to start getting sober, by dodging words instead of gaining them. It would be a nice 'twist' of the goal. It would also encourage drinking in moderation instead of binge drinking (). (Collecting enough to get a good score, but not too much at once.)

There should be a pot for spitting out the wine as wine tasters do, to make you less drunk, but it periodically moves around or something.

Two ideas that taste great together! They're both in, along with a new, realistic STAR RATING. See if you can get a five-star or zero-star rating! It's actually kinda tricky.

Next up, I think: more levels!

I believe that making it so you have to alternately try to get words until you get too drunk, and then you have to start dodging.

That wasn't actually a sentence!

Also, the 'bad adjectives' should be misspelled, bad vocabulary, or really immature words, like "tastes like butt", "quite unplezent" or "really really bad, really bad"

Maybe! I'll experiment.

-

Controller latency is IN. It was surprisingly easy to implement! Also tremendously delightful in play. (And... nauseating. But isn't that part of the fun?)

(I may want to tone the blurdrunk effect down a notch or two.)