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[___]

I threw a game of Risk last night and when we were getting close to finishing a few people had been eliminated, and needed something to do while the game finished up.  I started verge up and for a little bit the whole party was just watching the game being played.  Great game.

Haha, awesome! 

[Valter]

CLEARLY an Ecco the Dolphin ripoff

You are now my favorite person ever.

Also, how is progress going on potential game expansion? I must know!

[___]

CLEARLY an Ecco the Dolphin ripoff

You are now my favorite person ever.

Also, how is progress going on potential game expansion? I must know!

Slowly planning it out as I work on a bunch of other crap.  If anyone has any nifty ideas that they want, it'd be cool to hear 'em.

[Valter]

Perhaps at the "pools" where you can switch sides at will, those black glob thingies can hop out into the light side like fish.

I think there should be a more elaborate animation for when you switch sides (after dieing and going to a portal).  Especially if you have one of the globs stuck to you. Maybe the screen goes white, and it shoes you moving to the above-world portal.

The super-jump is currently a bit game breaking in general, just because there's currently no limit on how high you can go. You can jump outside of levels, skip lengthy puzzles, all sorts of stuff. I like the idea of including super jumps, but I think it should be tweaked in a way that restricts you from abusing it. Maybe you could make it so that you can't move while you're super jumping? Then you can see how high you can go, but it doesn't help you cheat past the level.

Or you could remove the super-jump entirely, which I honestly would prefer. Cool idea, but  your level design is currently restricted because you have to make workarounds so that people can't super jump their way to the end of each level.

If you do keep the super jump, you should find a way of extending the borders of the level. Heading off the top or bottom of the level is fine, but you shouldn't be able to leave the screen to the left or right, which is currently possible if you super jump enough.

I would like to see more monsters, since the Commonplace Entry focuses on the idea of life being even more horrible than death.

The underworld isn't really in-depth, and the black globs currently force you to keep any parts involving the death-world very short, or else the chance of the player getting annihilated by the globs increases drastically. There should be a way to shake off the globs, so that you can make cooler levels in the underworld.

Also, the upside-down thing is cool and gimmicky, but it gets kind of annoying after a while. I think there should be an option to rotate the screen so that you can see and control properly. Maybe you could implement it as an item that lets you rotate the screen at will? If you allow the player to control when he wants to rotate, you remove the problems that would come from the pools. Swift switching between worlds + constant screen rotation = not a very good idea.

The engine you have is spectacular, and the things that are currently implemented are great. What it needs now is expansion. More depth, exciting scenery, more enemy variety. I especially want to see the underworld expanded. The commonplace entry did describe it as a wasteland, but it should mentioned things like "dead cities". It should be desolate, but ambient, if you know what I mean.

[battlerager]

There should be a way to shake off the globs

I beat the game without knowing about this, but I am sure there IS a way to shake off the globs. 

[Valter]

I beat the game without knowing about this, but I am sure there IS a way to shake off the globs. 

Say WHAT 

[battlerager]

I beat the game without knowing about this, but I am sure there IS a way to shake off the globs. 

Say WHAT 

I think the newer versions of the game even have on-screen help on how to do it should one of them attach to you, but I played and beat 1.0, of course 

[___]

Yeah the new versions have boundary corrections on the levels to stop rocket jumping from flying out of bounds, and also an on screen "SHAKE OFF" icon to show that you can indeed shake off the soul suckers -- even though it does take a  little while to get the ones off that have been attached for awhile.

[Valter]

Oh, sorry. My fault for only playing the earliest versions. Those were just the most obvious changes I would make from what I had seen.

[JLJac]

I didn't really get how to shake them even though the icon was in my version. It just shows four direction arrows, so at first I tried some kind of cirle-shake, then a left/right-shake and then a random direction/epilepsy shake. When I saw no instant effect from any of them I gave up, and from that point just runned as hell to one of the portals as soon as they got me. Guess I'm some kind of idiot

[___]

Yeah, the shake off timer is a little long then... I'll be sure to fix that up by the final version.  There may be some changes to the underworld anyway, as most of this game was scrapped due to time and I just decided to polish what I had to try to get a good game in.

[JLJac]

Maybe you could put one of those health bars above the black blob that shows how far it is from being shaked off? Since you have health bars above everything else it wouldn't be out of place, and the reason I gave up was not that it didn't fall off right away but that I saw no effect at all, I didn't know if the shake off timer was counting. If you put in some vibration or some sprites or at least a sound que to tell the player that the shaking is working I think there should be no problem with having the timer as long as you want.

Also I think it's brilliant that you have to play upside down in the underworld, it adds an element of disorientation and confusion that is very fitting. 

[___]

Maybe you could put one of those health bars above the black blob that shows how far it is from being shaked off? Since you have health bars above everything else it wouldn't be out of place, and the reason I gave up was not that it didn't fall off right away but that I saw no effect at all, I didn't know if the shake off timer was counting. If you put in some vibration or some sprites or at least a sound que to tell the player that the shaking is working I think there should be no problem with having the timer as long as you want.

Also I think it's brilliant that you have to play upside down in the underworld, it adds an element of disorientation and confusion that is very fitting. 

Yeah.  If anyone is interested in becoming a tester for when I start work on the final version, then shoot me a PM or something.  I don't know when the next playable version will be, but having a lot of feedback throughout the development sure would be helpful (and also motivating.)

And yes, upside down playing is staying.  I think it loses a lot of it's point if the screen just flips and the player just goes on playing like nothing happened.  It is a little wacky and its hard for me to judge since I started the engine I was playing in upside down world, but I think once you get used to it its fine -- I mean its not like left or right are reversed or anything.

Update:  Uhh so I don't know how much I'll be working on Verge in the next couple months.  Suddenly I'm nomintated for an IGF award and uhhh... yeah, what?

[Valter]

Update:  Uhh so I don't know how much I'll be working on Verge in the next couple months.  Suddenly I'm nomintated for an IGF award and uhhh... yeah, what?

Totally understandable. Good luck with your IGF entry!

[Kinten]

All in all a fantastic game and probably the most polished I've seen so far in a TIG compo - I mean a couple of more levels and I'd pay to play it.
Some frustrating moments, but they were outshone by the whole experience.

Well done!

[___]

All in all a fantastic game and probably the most polished I've seen so far in a TIG compo - I mean a couple of more levels and I'd pay to play it.
Some frustrating moments, but they were outshone by the whole experience.

Well done!

Thanks!

Any particular spots that were frustrating?  I MUST MASTER LEVEL DESIGNERY :I

[Valter]

I'd say the spike bits. They add irritation, but they don't really have anything to do with the wonderful Verge mechanic. I figure if you have spike bits, they should be somehow mixed in with the verge-ing.

[Gainsworthy]

Yes. The spikes were a little too finicky - I dislike pixel-perfect jumps. Though, seeing as I could just come back, it wasn't too bad.

[Dim_Yimma_H]

The music sounds adorable.

When starting I tried to figure out how to get past the colored blocks and honestly hoped it wouldn't be one of those games with a highly difficult introduction, and tried dieing just to see what happened and realized that was the solution! That felt very cool! I think it's a smart system to move to the shadow side, and this is the first game I've played with such a puzzle mechanic of it.

Does someone know why some Game Maker games run unnecessarily slowly?
In my computer, this game runs about half as fast as in the trailer, which feels slow, even if that makes it easier for me to play

[___]

Does it run slow all the time or does it run slow when the fire particles are on the screen?  I tested it on my old laptop and it seemed rather smooth -- I tried to optimize it as much as possible (except for my stupid fire particles) but I guess I can only do so much.  I'm not really a programmer so I do things in stupid ways most of the time. ;p