Did the music challenge just totally die again?  :D

Hideous climax... ewwwwwwww

Awesome! 

However big you need to make it;

Code:

for (var i:uint = 0; i < NUMBER_OF_INDICES; i++)
    y.push(new Array());

Try that out and see how it works. I don't SEE why it wouldn't, but I've been surprised before...

This looks really cool.
Retro nautical Lovecraft games for the win!

I could actually see that one being extraordinarily effective if written well.

What Synnah said for the piano part is basically what I was thinking as well. Perhaps spicing up was a poor choice of words, but adding interest to.

Okay this seems like a really good starting point. We could even just use that image and make lines showing traversible paths and use that, though we also might want to shrink it down/close areas off a little because that there would make for a LOT of rooms that would need to be made. In fact, just the way it looks right now it already reminds me a little of a Metroidvania map 
As to art stuff, I'm mostly practiced at full on concept painting stuff, so whatever I do on this will require a little bit of pixel style learning (but I'm totally up for that). Basically, whatever needs to be worked on.

I think it works, but I really think the piano part could use a little spicing up 

Any thoughts yourself with regard to the art direction?

Hm, are we thinking passenger ship? If so, then it seems like it might be worthwhile to dig up some info on what the Titanic looked like inside and base some of the art off of that. As I mentioned on IRC, I'd really prefer if the monstrous elements were more subdued and hidden. Nothing ruins horror like showing too much. I guess first we might want to figure out what the basic layout of the ship is, and then we can decide what each part should look like.

I'm not sure I'm feeling the second version of the mock-up. It feels higher-res without actually feeling more detailed. The abstraction of pixellation is fine, but I think we might need a little more texture to it if we're going to really make a mood here. If I was less lazy I'd make a mock-up now. Unfortunately, I'm not 

if it affects anyone's opinion on the game by causing them to think it's lower quality than it used to be (at $23).

I honestly don't think it will, first because that's not a HUGE change (~35% at a glance) and, more importantly, people are used to games being released and then having their prices later dropped to get additional sales from holdouts.
It will be interesting to see exactly what effect it will have, regardless, just in the interests of gathering data about how price changes affect indie sales.

Even if I'm primarily doing music, I'd still like to be involved in the design, code, and art to some extent as well.
BTW, my original idea for the track was that it would be something you heard as you passed by a room, and when you tried the door it was locked. Maybe later on there was a way to get into the room, but when you got in there it was empty (except for perhaps a corpse).
Seeing as one of the goals of the game is to find the captain, perhaps, the music could be emanating from the captain's cabin, and one of the first goals is to find a way in. The main hall, when you first go through, would be silent, but once you find your way into the captain's quarters the music outside the door would stop and the main hall would be filled with a more fully realized version of the same song (longer and with more instruments). If that sounds good to you then maybe I can get started working on the fuller version.

edit: Oh, I'm also wondering around when this takes place so that I don't make any really obviously anachronistic musics

Started rapidly crapping out at around 180. Let me try it once more with Flash 10 installed (still using 9)
edit: Oddly enough it crapped out SOONER using Flash 10, at around 170. This suggests to me that the problem many not necessarily be with having too many rats, but possibly a bug that gets more likely to happen and slow things down the more rats are on the screen. Maybe something to look into.

Looks like a fun toy but I really don't see what would make it particularly useful as a tool for either composing or sound generation. I'd rather see something that's either cheaper and simpler or more full-featured (MIDI in/out, more complex arrangement options, etc)

Following our conversation in IRC yesterday, I decided to bust out a quick nautical-themed piece to perhaps use somewhere in the game.
Wandering in Endless Wet

I think the acceleration for the character is fine but turning will feel better if there's another 'animation' (quotes because it could just be one frame) for turning around.

Kurt Vonnegut
Man Man
Chrono Trigger
Catch-22
The Daily Show/Colbert Report
Armored Core
Pixar
Haruki Murakami
Tom Waits
Arrested Development

Also this will sound kind of fanboyish but recently the lectures/presentations of Jonathan Blow have been a very inspiring influence.
I dunno what you're talking about with these being hard to come up with, I could easily have added 10 more...

I came

If the deadline's extended can we get a front page update? 

[quality experience]

rinkuhero:
Your first paragraph I already ceded, back at the beginning. Of course, that's really just a way of saying that even though, yeah, some decisions are made for money, money is REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT. I completely agree. Those decisions are still made for money though.

As to your second, there are parts of my stance which I revise, dismiss, and replace as I consider the situation further. Sometimes I will say something glib and ignorant, and revise that stance to something a bit more tenable but still true to my reasons for holding the stance in the first place. I think this is something everyone should be willing to do, though perhaps I should mention when I'm changing my stance so that people don't end up debating against 'old revisions', as it were, when they may in fact agree with where I stand now.

However, I absolutely do NOT feel that those two views are incompatible. The game emerges from the creator(s); so does the sense of monetary worth gleaned from living in a capitalistic society. So, yeah, the price of the game is affected both by the market and by its own nature. This isn't really unusual, because the artistic, musical, and gameplay styles of games are ALSO affected by both what is on the market and what emerges from the game itself. There is no contradiction.

JohnnyZuper

The price of something can be a part of an artwork's message. But it rarely is.

I would instead say that it always is but not necessarily to a noticeable extent. Sometimes, the price of a piece of work is a very explicit part of the message, such as in my earlier example. Other times, it becomes something more subtle. For instance, Braid's (at the time) unusually high price point was tacit declaration that the game was worth that much, that it was a quality experience. I don't even know if it was Jon Blow's intention, but I can't help but suspect that some people probably took the game more seriously than they would have otherwise.

I'm sorry if I, apparently, dragged this way off topic. Perhaps we'll just have to agree to disagree. If we want to just end it on that note then I guess that's okay, though I do find this quite an interesting conversation.