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[pixelgriffin]

Thanks! But you may as well wait, if all goes as planned I'm going to release the full game tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to it! The trailer reminds me of those weird Adult Swim commercials haha.

[Peace Soft]

Thanks! But you may as well wait, if all goes as planned I'm going to release the full game tomorrow.

Haha OK. I'll hold off on the advice I was gonna give then. Excited to see what you've done with it

[Ian_A]

this game scares me, in a good way

[Quicksand-T]

It's finished!



http://freedom.quicksandgames.com

Thanks everyone for the encouragement, comments, and criticism. Please notify me of any bugs you might experience in this first release.

[ThemsAllTook]

Woohoo, congratulations!

[Quicksand-T]

Woohoo, congratulations!

Thanks man!

Someone on Twitter told me they were having trouble with the option to resize the game window crashing the game, or resizing improperly. I hope nobody else has the same problem but I've updated the itch.io download with a possible fix (v1b).

The game's soundtrack will probably go up on YouTube and possibly Bandcamp some time this or next week. Today I made the album art.

[Quicksand-T]

One should probably take a break after completing a project like this (aside from bug fixes and that sort of thing), but I can't stop toying with the idea of doing a short side-story game from the perspective of the main game's captive princess. It would be called FREEDOM: Remedios, and this is a preliminary mockup of the title screen:



I think she would probably have the same sort of abilities as Peach in SMB2.

[Quicksand-T]

I've updated the download with a new version. The main change is a proper full-screen (letterboxed) mode, replacing the old double-size screen mode.

Beat the game the other night! ...

Thanks so much! You're the first person that I know of, besides my RL friends, to beat the whole game. And thanks for your play-testing offer.

I have two ideas for follow-ups. One would be a longer game called Exegesis, which would be a more action-oriented Metroidvania style game set in the same world many years later. The other is the aforementioned Remedios idea, a shorter 'side-quel' following the princess character's POV. It was important to this first game that the character be slow and kinda useless, but the acrobatics idea that you mentioned could fit with either of those new games in different ways. Like I want the Exegesis dude to feel more powerful in combat (I might give him a boomerang), and I would want Princess Remedea to feel more maneuverable with moves like hovering, double jumps, wall jumps, and so on.

I never considered a world map, like SMB3 style. Could be interesting.

[diegzumillo]

Hah! I remember this from the playtesting forums a long time ago :D glad to see you finished it.

I'm just as stuck as I remember on that early version though lol. At the same spot even! That fire puzzle at the third level (yeah, I'm stuck early)

Congrats! May you make many more games in the future 

[Quicksand-T]

Hah! I remember this from the playtesting forums a long time ago :D glad to see you finished it.

I'm just as stuck as I remember on that early version though lol. At the same spot even! That fire puzzle at the third level (yeah, I'm stuck early)

Congrats! May you make many more games in the future  

Thank you. Would you like a hint?

I thought it was a little strange that (SPOILERS) the bee seems to be the only true boss in the game.

I kinda consider the robot mine mini-game a boss-fight of sorts. At least, it fills that role for that world. As for the rest, I was inspired by the old NES games Ikari Warriors and Monster Party which both have the player enter boss rooms only to find corpses inside.

(one more question.. what happened to the area earlier in the devlog with the blue brick building, the big watermelon and the mushroom guy? Or was that just a test area? Still really hoping there's a secret level in the game so if there is a secret stage hidden somewhere you don't want to reveal then just ignore this question)

I've been working on this game on and off for many years, originally with fellow forum member Quicksand-S. Those designs with the watermelon enemy etc. were mockups for the original dream area from way back when we first came up with the basic skeleton of the story, more than seven years ago. Then for a while we were working on the game with Game Maker, but that version was scrapped.

Here is what the game looked like back then (these are the original mockups, not from the Game Maker version):









Originally the boss of the dream area was going to be an electric sheep.

Oh and I've got tons of ideas too that I'm sure you don't need but I'd love to share ideas with you if you ever want too!

No harm in telling me, right? Would be interesting to get a different perspective on both this and future related projects. Especially with such an intentionally ambiguous game, I'd love to know how other people interpret it and how they'd picture a continuation.

[Quicksand-T]

The game's soundtrack is now available on Game Jolt. You can play it in their web player or download the files. Note that some of the songs are super short and work better as loops. I'm going to loop those and maybe add some transitions or something and release a higher quality version on Bandcamp and YouTube at some point soon.

http://gamejolt.com/games/freedom-diegesis/135029



EDIT- Wow, front page of Game Jolt :D

[ThemsAllTook]

I've finally found some time to LP the full version of this game. First episode just went up; other three will follow at 2-day intervals:



The final chapter definitely didn't disappoint. I never really expected a nice clean conclusion to resolve everything, so the way it all went made as much sense as anything. I'm still left with many questions... There were a few treasures I didn't manage to get that I know are possible, but a lot more of them remained seemingly just out of reach. It'd be nice if I could play individual levels to investigate further, but with the type of game this is, I can definitely see how that sort of affordance wouldn't make sense.

Thanks for an amazing experience! Looking forward to the sequel(s) when or if they happen.

[Quicksand-T]

Glad you enjoyed it, Alex, I can't wait to see your take on the conclusion. Without spoiling anything there are a couple of important elements of the ending that I worried might not work for other people, so its good to hear that you weren't disappointed.

Pretty funny how the whole second level unfolded for you. Now I'm thinking I should add something more there for if anybody else does that.

I was worried that nobody was really going to play the game but a week after release it seems to be getting some good attention- it was front-page on Game Jolt the other day (I wonder if they realized the Freudian implications of the screenshot they chose) and on http://indiegames.com/ this morning. Feels good!

[NoLocality]

Hey I didn't know this had a devlog!

I found your trailer on youtube and it convinced me to give it a try,  I played it into the night last night and got to I think around level 2-8ish (I can't quite remember the exact level atm) and finally had to get some sleep.

I'm gonna try and not be too spoilery here but...


: I love the vibe and 'twists' of tone as the game progresses, the teaser trailer did not lie sir.

: The way the first boss is introduced, how the battle plays out and how it ends...I haven't got far enough yet to encounter any other bosses but I doubt they will disappoint.

: Seriously...I'm never gonna be able to look at the Kool-Aid man the same...


Great job guys, I'll get back to you with my thoughts when I find the time to finish the game.

 

[QOG]

Well, I'm late to the party. Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the game the game. It's got an atmosphere all its own. The puzzles all seem really well thought out. I wasn't too sure about the perspective change initially, but I guess it worked out. Overall, just wanted to say it's an impressive game, and I do hope to get my hands on a sequel eventually.

On an unrelated note, by holding a directional key and tapping the opposite direction key, the sprite will flip and remain facing the opposite direction while you're moving. Might want to fix that in any sequel, because while moonwalking is fun it does make the game a little less tense.

[Quicksand-T]

Good to hear complimentary things from both of you since I'm looking forward to your two games.

I've updated the game to version 1g to fix some bugs, rearrange a fews things, and update a couple of secrets. You can now open a list of controls by pausing the game (with P). Special thanks to forum member SolS for his many bug reports.

Also the game was mentioned by PC Gamer's website this weekend so that's pretty cool.

[Quicksand-T]

I just realized that there was an issue with the save/load system in yesterday's update, so I've fixed it and re-uploaded the game. Existing saves should not be affected, they just will load properly now.