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[Greyblack]

'Finwick' is a new Flash platform game from the creator of 'Platform - The Game'.

Guide Finwick and his friend Pentella through an exciting adventure in which they uncover a dark secret in Fargrown Forest. Players must use fast reflexes and creative problem solving skills to overcome the deadly obstacles that await within.

http://www.smallgreenhill.com/games/finwick/





I hope you all enjoy it and I'd be glad to hear any feedback you might have.

[mark]

It was okay, I didn't like the ultra long tutorial in the beginning, I mean, I figured all of the controls out as soon as you let me move, what really turned me off was the fact that there was so much dialogue..

The artstyle was great.

I didn't deliver any mail at all...then why a postman?

[Craig Stern]

This is superb! The graphics are great, the dialog is well-written, the game runs very smoothly, and I love the swinging rope physics. The stomp effects are pretty awesome too.

I love the dackpaws, too. Their animations have a lot of character, and their sound effects are perfect. The giant fish is pretty awesome too, though I'd like it better if it had sound effects. Wait, I just noticed the chomping sound--it's very subtle. Maybe add in some kind of monstrous groaning noise?

I also like how you unexpectedly add in a partner mechanic midway through the game. It helps keep it fresh.

Here's my critical feedback:

With some of the multi-level buildings in the tutorial area, if you're on top of a lower roof on the side of a building, you can easily walk directly through the building and fall off when you're intending to simply jump to a higher-level roof. (If that makes any sense.) It looks like you fixed this in the area with the elevator, though, so it appears to be a level design problem rather than an engine problem.

I got through the plasma facility without too much difficulty, but it's a weird decision to have an area filled with so many insta-death traps at the very beginning of the game.

The quarry, by comparison, is much more forgiving. The second part of it, though...um...why on earth would they stick exposed plasma coils in the middle of an elevator shaft so that the person riding the elevator is incredibly likely to die? It hurts the believability of the area. I mean, I thought it was going a little overboard in the plasma factory, but this just screams "the game designer thought it would be cool."

Same thing for the area of the forest with freaking plasma beams coming out of the trees. I would try to think of more environment-appropriate traps, like the rocks in the quarry.

With the turning switches, it would be good if there were some more pronounced audio feedback to let me know when I'm reaching the end so that I don't overshoot and have to wait for it to retract and then go through the whole process again.

On the whole, though, the game is really very well-done!

[Aquin]

Yeah, I gotta admit I hardly passed the tutorial.  It was pretty easy to figure out what to do and I suspect I just got tired of reading words.  It's up to you whether this is really a problem; it probably isn't. 

But the fact that I kept falling off the buildings because I kept expecting walls where there was not... it really got on my nerves for some inexplicable reason.  I dunno, there were a lot of little things that kinda grated on me.

I think maybe I'm just too impatient in the morning.  I'll try it again tonight.

[the advocater]

I had to stop because my internet bugged up, but I thought it was great. Awesome graphical style! The dialogue (although somewhat long) was very well worded. No typos and somewhat funny occasionally.

Good Job! 

[Captain_404]

The page doesn't seem to be loading for me right now, but I was able to play it earlier for a short bit.

The game's atmosphere was great, the graphics are lush, and sound was quite relaxing.

The dialog though... eh. It's not particularly bad, but it's not particularly good either. Most of the time I felt it was just getting in the way of the game. There were a lot of conversations that seemed like the could been much much shorter. It is easy to skip though, so that's good, but it's still a bit annoying.


I did enjoy what little I got to play though, and I wish the page would load right now because I was looking forward to playing it again.

[Xion]

page ain't loadan for me neither, and the comments have piqued my interest

[Fifth]

Likewise.
It actually cut out earlier today when I was about halfway through downloading the swf file.  Rather frustrating.

[Greyblack]

Hi everyone, thanks for the feedback.

My webhost did indeed go down overnight. You can't imagine how frustrating that was for me, the day after I launch the game onto the public, the site going down. Apologies to anyone who was affected by that. It's just starting to come back now, although it's still slightly spotty, which I'm assured will clear up in a couple of hours.

It's interesting to hear feedback about the length of the tutorial at the start of the game. I was looking at it only partly as a tutorial, but also as an excuse to set the scene, start the story and get the player jumping around a bit. I guess it's a little wordy, but I figured any player who didn't want to read all the text could just bang space a few times and move on. I suppose it's easy to underestimate how frustrating elements like that can be to a player, especially in a Flash game where you're often looking for instant gratification.

Apologies again for the server outage.

[HybridMind]

Really amazing visual style to this game.  I simply just love the look and feel of it.  The graphics are done so well that it really does encourage you to stay in the world and enjoy it.  I like the little birds and other debris as well scattered about the levels.  The sound design is pretty decent too.

Re: early levels / tutorial comments you've been getting: While you are correct that the dialog is easily skippable with the spacebar it is the overly simple and pacing aspects that I feel could be the most frustrating to experienced gamers.  I believe you have done a great job of introducing elements to total novices (which there can be a great deal of in the Flash space obviously) but by not allowing the player to skip these begin time trials you could alienate a lot of your more experienced audience.  I feel if you did fewer and briefer instructions on the bare minimums (like how to use stomp) it is so nicely done that the player should "get it" in like one or two moves for sure.  I did feel you nicely introduced the quarry mechanics later on regarding the gears and wheels.  I also felt you had a good warning about the plasma beams though that is pretty obvious thing to avoid.

The back story while I found it fine and enjoyable will likely frustrate people if they can't skip past those early levels and just 'get on with the jumping'.

I found most of the levels pretty fun but some of the concepts drag on a little for me but perhaps I'm just getting a little tired of platformer genre in general these days.  I decided to try this one because of how gorgeous it looked.  I was having a good time playing it but have to get on with my morning but I did make it into the quarry and perhaps will play more later if I have time and remember.  Congrats on getting this to run rather nicely on my 'non game' laptop.  It was quite decently playable on an old centrino mobile 1.2ghz single core.  I can play very few platformer type flash games these days on here so it was nice that your engine worked so well.

Good luck with your game and with your hosting problems!

[Craig Stern]

It's interesting to hear feedback about the length of the tutorial at the start of the game. I was looking at it only partly as a tutorial, but also as an excuse to set the scene, start the story and get the player jumping around a bit. I guess it's a little wordy, but I figured any player who didn't want to read all the text could just bang space a few times and move on.

The problem isn't that it's wordy--the problem is that it holds your hand too much. People who actually need to be told that the left arrow key moves you left and the right arrow key moves you right aren't going to enjoy this game. If I were you, I'd simply tell people the run and jump controls in dialog, then start off the tutorial objectives with stomping.

[jazmeister]

I disagree - I think that people who haven't used the arrow keys to control a character have every chance of enjoying this game. I just don't think you need to halt play to tell people what to do.

When you're given a piece of dialogue, you have to read it, even if you don't want to. You don't want to miss out on something vital, so just giving the option of skipping the cutscenes isn't enough to overcome the wordiness-obstacle.

I quickly got tired of the jump puzzles - it takes a second to realise what your route is going to be in a given stage, and I spent a lot of time trying to actually do it. Frustrating. Gave up at the plasma factory.

I was more interested in the world itself. Plasma factory? People who live in the forest? Why not let the platforming take a back seat to that stuff?

[Craig Stern]

I quickly got tired of the jump puzzles - it takes a second to realise what your route is going to be in a given stage, and I spent a lot of time trying to actually do it. Frustrating. Gave up at the plasma factory.

Aaaaaaaaaand that's why people who don't know that the arrow keys move your character won't play through this game.

[jazmeister]

I quickly got tired of the jump puzzles - it takes a second to realise what your route is going to be in a given stage, and I spent a lot of time trying to actually do it. Frustrating. Gave up at the plasma factory.

Lol noob

Fixed.

[Melly]

Visuals are amazing, could use more music, gameplay is fluid and controls are responsive, some smart and enjoyable level design, overly drawn out tutorial, could be cut to around 1/3 of it's current size, after I got the second character I honestly didn't feel like continuing. Maybe I'm just not a big fan of the duo-platformer style.

Still, overall it's pretty good.

[Curseman]

The game plays smoothly and looks nice.  The tutorial goes on longer than is necessary (really it's not necessary at all, the controls are completely intuitive, all you need is a "hit down in midair to stomp" note, but anyway..." it seems to be on the easy side, but maybe the difficulty picks up after the demo portion.  I liked the "I found $5.99!" bit at the end.