Merry Christmas, Alfred Robbins

EKM · Mon 29/12/2008 02:38:52

Finished it. Good game.

Spoiler

I was wondering why the atmosphere of the game had a somber tone. I mean, the guy was 42 and the music and dialog made him seem like he was old as dirt. I understood after the cryptic phone call that this was going to be more than just a regular Christmas. That ending was crazy lol.

[close]

Hope you make more.

HillBilly · Tue 30/12/2008 15:38:45

Quote from: EKM on Mon 29/12/2008 02:38:52
Finished it. Good game.

Spoiler
I was wondering why the atmosphere of the game had a somber tone. I mean, the guy was 42 and the music and dialog made him seem like he was old as dirt. I understood after the cryptic phone call that this was going to be more than just a regular Christmas. That ending was crazy lol.
[close]

Hope you make more.

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it.

In other news, the last couple of days have been spent killing those horrid bugs, and adding a few more responses for the actions that deserve it. If you haven't completed it yet, I'd download the new version.

m0ds · Tue 30/12/2008 18:55:59

Looks great! Nice one. I will check it out...just gotta get something released beforehand

HillBilly · Tue 30/12/2008 19:18:49

Quote from: Mods on Tue 30/12/2008 18:55:59
Looks great! Nice one. I will check it out...just gotta get something released beforehand

Hey man, when nature calls...

neon · Tue 30/12/2008 20:14:28

Nice one, nice ending. I thought it's just another pieceful weloveusall-christmas story. ;-)

HillBilly · Tue 30/12/2008 22:02:48

Thanks. I was aiming for that first impression, so good to know.

I've launched a website, MYRLIK. You can check out the MCAR part if you want. I've also done a slight update by adding custom icons to the game.

qptain Nemo · Wed 31/12/2008 03:21:25

Uh, wow. The ending sure was something...
...But I'm impressed by whole game anyway. It has a very strong style and atmosphere. And music (Hey there, i stole your car! I'm talking about ye music!) is simply charming and very atmospheric. And it's just of a good melodic quality. Slightly reminds me of Frank Klepacki's ambient tunes. So, expecting more neat music from you.
And the game itself, as I said, is pretty. The blending of a warm christmassy feel, dramatic tension and weird suspense was very well executed.

blueskirt · Thu 01/01/2009 09:24:48

Awesome game! I first played the 1.0 version before coming back here (out of frustration over the game's stubborness to not let me use the nail polish like I wanted) and download the latest version, and I must say you did an excellent job in the latest version at adding with all those additionnal clues that greatly improved the game's responsiveness, great job there.

Excellent story!

Spoiler

After the strange phone call I immediately hid under a pillow fort and layers of security blankets expecting a serial killer or some monster to pop into the house by the end of the game, when it was time to climb down the attic stairs, I knew something bad would happen, I was completly prepared to any possibilities, yet the ending completly caught me off guard, nice job!

[close]

As for the music, I loved the title screen music, but I didn't hear much of the ingame music (the one played during 95% of the game) because the volume for that music is too low IMO. In order to properly hear the ingame music with all its subtleties, I must raise the volume a lot which make the footsteps and the phone sounds too loud. But otherwise all musics greatly fitted the story and atmosphere.

Sole glitch and inconsistency I could find in the game were:

Spoiler

Glitch: If you put the hairclip back on the wife's hair when she is asleep, if you go in the kitchen while the wife is awake, the hairclip will be floating in space.
Inconsistency: If you go in the kitchen when the wife is awake, the package will still be on the kitchen counter as if she didn't open the package at all.

[close]

-Edit-
Many things

i stole your car · Thu 01/01/2009 15:29:57

Quote from: captain Nemo on Wed 31/12/2008 03:21:25
Uh, wow. The ending sure was something...
...But I'm impressed by whole game anyway. It has a very strong style and atmosphere. And music (Hey there, i stole your car! I'm talking about ye music!) is simply charming and very atmospheric. And it's just of a good melodic quality. Slightly reminds me of Frank Klepacki's ambient tunes. So, expecting more neat music from you.
And the game itself, as I said, is pretty. The blending of a warm christmassy feel, dramatic tension and weird suspense was very well executed.

Hooooly shit I don't believe you even know who Frank Klepacki is! He did one of the most amazing tunes for an old DOS game (one of my favourites) called Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon. So that's a pretty big complement, thanks pal.

If anybody is interested at all in the music I can put a few extra hours into tweaking the music for a soundtrack release.

CROS · Thu 01/01/2009 22:43:48

Definitely release a soundtrack for the game! Be sure to put it up on Game Jolt, too.

qptain Nemo · Thu 01/01/2009 23:20:07

Quote from: i stole your car on Thu 01/01/2009 15:29:57
Hooooly shit I don't believe you even know who Frank Klepacki is! He did one of the most amazing tunes for an old DOS game (one of my favourites) called Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon. So that's a pretty big complement, thanks pal.

Well, I not only know who he is, but I am his fanatical fanboyish fan (and of Westwood studios also), so it was indeed intended as a big compliment.

Which one tune from EoB2 do you mean? I'm more than sure I'll be playing the game again, so it'd be interesting to pay extra attention to your favourite tune. By the way, EoB2 has a simply amazing pixelart intro from which I never get tired of watching.

Quote from: i stole your car on Thu 01/01/2009 15:29:57If anybody is interested at all in the music I can put a few extra hours into tweaking the music for a soundtrack release.

When I really like the music in an AGS game I just take a resourse ripping program and gather all these sweet tracks in a matter of seconds. And I guess your music won't escape this unevitable fate. But of course it's a great idea to release the soundtrack, especially if you feel like enhancing it. So please do it. I'll download and enjoy it in any case without hesitation.

i stole your car · Thu 01/01/2009 23:58:21

Well thanks for all the kind words guys. I'll start working on putting together that soundtrack, it shouldn't take too long at all.

Also the Frank Klepacki tune is indeed the amazing introduction music.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_FUdqAzkHp8

EDIT: It's approaching 3am and it's done! I'm just going to clear it with Hillbilly that he's fine with the package and if so, I'll post the download link tomorrow

i stole your car · Fri 02/01/2009 11:17:36

Right well here it is. Enjoy!

[DOWNLOAD 7MB]

Tracklist:

1. Title
2. Ambience
3. The Attic
4. Finale
5. Credits

It clocks in at just over 7 minutes and also has a little readme file for anybody interested in the random musings over the songs that were going through my head during composition. Thanks for all your kind words regarding the music and I hope you all enjoy listening to it over again.

qptain Nemo · Sat 03/01/2009 03:27:45

Sweet! Thanks, Jake! Got and relistened it right away. And enjoyed again.
But don't get too proud already, make more good music for good games!

Also thanks for stoling my car, I don't like cars.

i stole your car · Sat 03/01/2009 18:37:37

Hey I might not ever make a game soundtrack again so I wanted to make the most of it, it's a bit OTT I know.

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens · Sun 04/01/2009 03:29:06

I had the distinction of playing through the game 4 times and found the comparisons between your actions in the game and the ending to be quite interesting. Well done.

Dave1985 · Thu 22/01/2009 23:38:21

Just finished it at the second playthrough, got stuck due to a bug at the first. This definitely does not earn a plus in my book. Shouldn't have bothered with the second playthrough though, the game itself leaves a lot to be desired for in my opinion. I'm going to get very critical, but not because I wish to offend anyone.

Puzzles: the note hidden invisibly under the fridge was a downright dick-move; it was completely illogical, and pixel hunting puzzles are something I generally frown upon. Otherwise, nothing special, mostly fetch and deliver, occasionally combine, very linear progression (tree getting decorated by the wife part after repairing the figure and lighting the candle, for example. By the way, said part didn't occur on my first playthrough and I had to check a walkthrough to discover I'm indeed stuck and need to restart) and doesn't require brainwork at all. Interface could have been a bit more user-friendly as well, took me a while to find the cycle items buttons, and I don't see why all items couldn't have appeared simultaneously in a GUI, anyway.

Graphics: busted for extremely lazy use of gradient filters! It's actually quite unnecessary and at points it's downright hideous. Filters are usually bad for you anyway, so you ought to try to avoid them in the future. The cartoony graphics don't fit the really fucking depressive mood in my opinion.

Plot and characters (spoilers, whatever): this is what I consider to be the worst quality of this game. It starts out as depressing (in a bad way) and completely uninteresting, becomes really tasteless at the end, and the ending is about as shocking as the sun coming up in the morning (lol the postman went postal and pwned his family, what a surprise). It's not deep, it's just disgusting. This isn't the way psychological horror works. I think that the symbolism between the boring stuff you need to do and the actual killing is more clumsy than interesting.
You probably expect the player to be shocked by the ending, but why should he be? Do I relate to the main character in the slightest at the end? Nope, because I don't know bugger all about him (and therefore I don't care about him either). He's got no personality, and him not uttering a word doesn't help this in the slightest. Half Life could get away with this sort of thing, but this is an adventure game. Apart from the fact that his wife has a few quirks with lace doily and nail polish, and that they're not in the best financial situation, we have no knowledge of any valid motivation that could explain why he should have flipped like that, so the whole family-killing thing becomes meaningless and gratuitious. Sod that.

Ultra Magnus · Fri 23/01/2009 08:41:41

Well I liked it.
I did have to look up how to find the note, but apart from that I thought it was a pretty good game.
The music especially added a lot to the atmosphere.

SuperDre · Mon 23/02/2009 19:09:12

I liked the story, I liked the graphics, I liked the ending, but I certainly did not like the 'puzzles', I agree with above about pixelhunting (that's just plain awfull).
I really liked the style, so I hope next time you'll rethink the puzzles and make them more logical or at least not have us pixelhunt (maybe instead of only using the red cursor, maybe red cursor + tooltiptext as a lot of other adventures are using (like about every adventure these days)..

LRH · Thu 16/04/2009 00:24:19

Sorry to dig this up, but I just played this and I want to talk about some things. I'll post after I figure out how to post spoilers.
Edit: Alright, I've got it...

Spoiler

Okay, so, when the game begins, you see a light come on. However, the light appears to be on the very top of the building. How can we have an attic with a window later on if this is true? The attic can't metaphorical, the character mentions being there before. The attic "extending" makes sense as a metaphor. Also, I don't really get the point of the phone call, other than its purpose of telling the player something is amiss. There doesn't seem to be any significance to it and it isn't a re-occurring theme. Other than those things, the end scene did make me jump and I saw some clever bits of the story fall into place. (I.E. the son is strangled, but before we see the main character tuck him in gently.) Yeah...

[close]

Any thoughts?

Merry Christmas, Alfred Robbins

m0ds