Bitstream - (MAGS August 2015) - Joint winner!

[selmiak]

Just been hacking my way through this while playing in a dark room in fullscreen. What a great experience!  I feel 1337 now!

[Mandle]

Just finished the game:

OH MY GOD!!! Things got intense!!!

I feel like I just saved the world!!! Or did I doom it?

Freakin' INCREDIBLE GAME!!!

Somebody hack into William Gibson's cyberspace and send this game to him ASAP!!!

He's an old guy so HURRY!!!

EDIT:

OHHHHH!!! After watching Bulbapuck beat the game I realised what happened at the end I think:

SPOILERS ALERT:

Spoiler

I'm thinking the government/corporation sells Oxygen(TM) to the population in breathing devices and that otherwise the entire society is a sealed vacuum. So: either work for the system and get your oxygen or "drown", which is another way the game fits the theme!!! Not just drowning in the bitstream but actually drowning!!!

The main character has a main tank of oxygen and also a reserve (screen: bottom right) and is trying to hack into the controllers' computers to VOID the supply of oxygen (that is being rationed out) into the vacuum of the closed system that the society lives in before his/her own supply of oxygen runs out...

The last sound at the end of the game sounds very much like somebody pulling a breathing mask off their face and taking the first deep breath of real air that they have ever known...

I may be way off base with this theory of course...Hope the author can confirm or deny...

[close]

[Cassiebsg]

Okay, gave this one another try and using Dualnames's "hint" I finally figured out what to do... (Honestly, I hadn't seen the letters as they are very dark, so was just trying the numbers... ).

Spoiler

Nice puzzles, though, once one figure what to do becomes a bit redundant after the first 5 "locks". Liked the 2nd one much more... Took me a while to figure that one and then a while more to "un-mess" what I had done while trying to figure it out.
Must say, felt kind of short too. But I like the "wink" at end. I Thought I had died! You evil one!

[close]

[Chicky]

Selmiak, Mandle and Cassiebg: Thanks for playing!

Cassiebg: I'm sorry to hear the letters were too dark, this was something I was worried about for some players but I had already exported all the assets for that puzzle! I'll take this on board for any future updates

Selmiak: Glad you had a go, perfect setting for playing aswell - I was hoping people would play fullscreen (screen edges are ablsoloute black to fit in with the bars you will see on a 16:9 monitor).

Mandle: You've definitely got what I was going for, I really appreciate your enthusiasm towards this release. The ending is up for interpretation but you have pretty much hit the nail on the head for what I had in mind.

Has anyone else played? I would love to hear your thoughts!

[cat]

Hm, after playing the video, the cursor disappeared. Is this intentional?

Edit: Ok completed the game, the cursor did reappear after some blind navigating.

Amazing game! I have to point out that I'm using one of those super old IBM keyboards (and with super old I mean it doesn't even has Windows keys yet) which also makes the appropriate hacker sound
Great atmosphere, with the breathing sound, monitor effect and old console feel.

[tsa]

I finished it too.I didn't know what to think of the game but your explanation helped Chicky, thanks!
It's a great game; I've never seen anything like it. I had fun playing it and only just made it to the end .

[homelightgames]

Wow, that was an intense experience! This is a great example of how powerful the atmosphere of a game can be, with the character's reflection, and the breathing.
I also appreciate Mandle's Spoiler explanation, because I was a bit lost on the meaning of the end.

Great job, Chicky, on such a unique and intense game.

visionmind

[Chicky]

Thanks for the lovely comments cat, tsa and visionmind I'm really happy you all liked the atmosphere I was trying to achieve, it seems to have worked cat, that clicky keyboard was practically MADE for this game!

Happy to see people consider the game a unique experience, i'll be building on the concept and re-releasing something in 2016, a v0.2 so to speak.

[HanaIndiana]

Wow, just lovely! I haven't finished it yet (a bit stuck). I may have to check the hints section because my patience is waning these days. The visuals are A+.

[SilverSpook]

Awesome game!  Definitely deserves the featured spot on the AGS site.  The audio and visual effects are brilliantly used.  When you have that CRT monitor with text scrolling, is that like a series of full-screen images animating?  Which of the effects are things you do with manipulation in AGS or are they pretty much all created outside AGS?

[Chicky]

Hey dude, thanks for the kind words

I'm not much of a programmer so all of the effects were composited in Adobe After Effects, this soon became a massive pain when I ended up with a painfully long list of rooms. I think if you were using Unity or similar you would use a graphics shader to warp the screen and then overlays for the static/glitches etc. In Bitstream's case each 'screen' is a static AGS background with the warped text built in, then all the glitches are room specific pre-made views to run at the appropriate places, a semi transparent static overlay is used to tie it all together.

Now seems a good opportunity to say thanks to Cat for picking Bitstream as the AGS game of the month! It inspired me to enter MAGS this month and I'm now a few days away from having another game for you all to play

Thank you Hanaindiana for the lovely comment too!

[SKYY]

I'm confused.

Spoiler

I might have missed something, but I did a large glyph puzzle, read a file for a login/pw, did a tile puzzle, used the login, and got to a point where the screen turned red and jumbly.  Then I kept blindly navigating the .dx files until I found a drown.exe, and when I ran that the game ended.  Is that it?

[close]