Sepulchre

[Calin Leafshade]

Not sure what I think about this one.

I like the fact that its not another DOTT, monkey island or *insert other lucasarts or sierra title here* tone-clone (seriously, stop making those, people) but it does feel a little... amateurish and i'm not entirely sure why. I can't put my finger on it.

The excessive umms and hmmms and ahems in the dialogue certainly don't help but besides that I think the dialogue is fairly well constructed (except for an apparently scottish man using the word "boyo" which is a welsh/irish expression)

The constant corridor walking was also an issue and the multiple artificial gates bothered me. Some of that I can forgive since I realise this is supposed to be a kind of nightmarish experience for the player character but from a player's perspective I think it could be a little jarring.

I actually didn't like the music much. I felt it lacked coherence as a soundtrack and there wasn't enough meat to it. I don't think it was necessarily bad but I think a lot more could've been done with it and it was an opportunity wasted.

The story was "light" if i'm being generous, "empty" if i'm not. The problem with the reveal is that it's sort of evident quite early on but also nonsensical with the information available at the time. So you kind of go "I think I know what's going to happen but that makes no sense" and then it happens and the fact that it doesn't make sense is just hammered home twice as strongly. I don't mind ambiguity but ambiguity that is telegraphed very early in the story is problematic when it tries to resolve later.

On the plus side, I enjoyed the lead actor's performance. I always enjoy that particular class of British voice actors in games because it seems exotic for the medium to me somehow (see Dear Esther for another excellent example). I also really loved the

Spoiler

huge bags.

[close]

They were superbly creepy.

The visuals were good except for that massive, ugly font obscuring the screen. It should have been half that size *at least* unless you can provide a justification for it.

The interface was very solid but I'd expect nothing less from a game with 304's involvement.

All in all I think it was a positive release and I had fun playing it. Despite my perceived problems it's still a head and shoulders amongst the competition. Seven stars out of 4 and a half elephants.

[Armageddon]

Well after I put my e-mail and fake name into your site I get a link to a setup .exe. Well That's okay I guess, but for such a tiny game a .zip would have been nicer. Go along setting it up and then it wants to create a shortcut, mmm, what's this? No checkbox for saying no thanks to a shortcut being created. Oh well, I'll wait for someone to mirror it. (I know I'm very petty)

[Gilbert]

What? You call a 170MB AGS game tiny?

I have downloaded it yesterday but haven't installed it yet. I'm actually okay with the register-to-download thing, as long as it only needs my e-mail, and not my credit card number or other personal info. If it tries to create a shortcut I'm also okay with it, as long as it doesn't force me to install those "awesome" google search bar or quick launch icon, etc.

There is one problem though. Since the game has been updated I have to go through the registration procedure once again to download it, as the previous link to the "purchase page" in the e-mail no longer works (it now shows the file as 0b). Seeing that there can be yet other fixes to this game in the future I decided not to go through all these hassles again ATM. Personally I think a more appropriate method is either make the fixed game available from the same link, or auto-send a notification to those who have already downloaded the original file to a new download link.

[Khris]

I'd mirror a zip file if circumventing the setup were the only issue. But even the setup isn't that big of a deal, and you can in fact choose not to have it create a desktop icon. I always install to a temporary directory, copy game relevant files to my usual place, then deinstall it right after. Takes a minute or so. And the setup doesn't create registry entries afaik, so simply deleting the directory should undo it completely.
While I hate setups (in case of AGS games at least, where it's completely unnecessary from a technical pov), I understand that bringing a game to a broader audience than just the forums as a zip file is guaranteed to do more harm than good.

Got the new version, and pressing F5 out of habit no longer messes up the game.

And I played through it, and liked it quite a bit. I would've liked it even better if the story made more sense in the end though, as Calin already mentioned.

[Lewis]

Hey all.

There is a strong rationale for the way we're doing it but we're hearing people's comments and will look into what else we can do.

For those who ordered the game and then lost their download with the patch: please do just grab the free version again, it should ping you a new download link.

For those who ordered the Special Edition and lost their download: please email and we'll do what we can to sort it out as quickly as possible. We've been quite amazed by how many people have been playing the game, so we're all pretty busy, but we'll do what we can to rectify asap. In the meantime, please consider getting the free version and we'll sort you out a treat when we're able.

[Chicky]

It was nice to see you guys on Joystiq today Congratulations!

[ThreeOhFour]

Thanks to everyone who has played it, you're great, and it was a cool project to work on!

[dbuske]

Thank you, I am downloading.

[SarahLiz]

Been waiting for this one, gonna grab the special edition version now.    Congrats on the release!

[Crimson Wizard]

I played it. It left me with couple of hypotheses about what's going on.
I don't know, maybe I see things differently, but those bags made me chuckle, not scared .
What scared me was the painting...

Since I can't help it, few notes on bugs and things that stand out for me.

Spoiler

1. First of all, there's no link to winsetup created in programs folder, which may make it difficult for players outside AGS community to figure out how to configure graphics. I would also suggest to add "Run setup" option to the last installer's page (if installer's engine allows that).
2. The LMB/RMB interactions are largerly inconsistent. Although quick "tutorial" on startup teaches me that LMB = interact, RMB = look, in reality RMB acts as "use" on many occasions.
3. Player can open main menu with Esc key, but can't close it with the same key.
4. Sometimes the player character fails to face the conductor when talking to him. To reproduce - stand to the left of him, then click on him to trigger conversation).
5. The middle door in the second carriage lacks "walk to" point; unlike other doors player does not come close to check if it's locked.
6. Barman keeps repeating "No thank YOU mr Lang" if you keep clicking on him after all dialog options are used, which does not make much sense on its own.
7. The main character's voice actor is ssss-ing really loudly in his mic, this makes me cringe. Also barman's voice is one level quiter than others, I think.
8. The opening&closing inventory produces very annoying sound, IMO. At first I did not realize it is even related to interface and thought the door has opened somewhere.

[close]

Also, I was almost sure that in the last scene

Spoiler

I must click on his own bag to get inside
.

[close]

And the last thing.
Have you ever saw "Madame Tutli Putli"?

[Cogliostro]

Okay, I tried to download it, entered in name and email, and waited.  After an hour, repeated the process.  It's been two hours and there are still no emails from the OwlCave.  Is the server on the fritz?

- Cogliostro

[SarahLiz]

Yep yep. I bought the special edition and got the confimation email, but no download link--only a purchase invoice.  Also tried downloading the free version and had the same result.

[Khris]

I went through the process again and got the email immediately. Did you check your spam folders?

[kaput]

Will there be any clarification on this at all?

[Obko]

Spoiler

I think the protagonist never was a passenger. Did anyone else get this?

[close]

[SarahLiz]

I went through the process again and got the email immediately. Did you check your spam folders?

I went through the process twice, and immediately got an email each time, which both did the same thing:  nuttin'.

[Tenacious Stu]

Just played this and really quite enjoyed it for what it was. Although I don't really understand what is going on, but perhaps that's the point? Leaving the interpretation to the player and letting them think about what everything means. Perhaps reading some of the short stories will help with that.

Artwork was great (As ever, Ben). I kind of liked the music too, was really subtle. Although there seemed to be a high pitched noise that changed when you moved between carriages? (Intentional?) There is a lot of walking around, but I felt this kind of added to the creepiness. Like, I'm just wandering around on this empty train... Creepy.

Nothing really stuck out in a negative way, although I agree with Calin about the "Boyo" line of dialogue. That was really something that broke my immersion from this game. Like when you are reading a book and you see a typo and it reminds you that you are reading a book and breaks your immersion, when I thought "Wasn't he supposed to be Scottish?" that did it for me.

Voice acting was great. Really good choice for the main character, but when he said his very first lines, I was like "What the F*ck is he on about?", but then I warmed up to him. It's a shame that all of the speaking character's dialogue wasn't all to the same recorded quality, but you can still hear everyone and understand what they are saying.

Spoiler

Although I like the story, some elements I just did not get. Like, why was he apologizing at the end? What was with the Victorian photos? Why did the bartender act like he knew him? The train inside the dirt box I get, but a lot of stuff is really left to interpretation.

[close]

I'd like to see a thread discussing the interpretation of this game.

[MaximumJohnny]

Hey there folks!

I did the voice of Don in Sepulchre and wanted to just chime in on the "boyo" thing quickly. I can get how that would be a little bit immersion-damaging if you've got ideas about how a person from a certain area does or does not talk.

The thing is that I added the line myself with permission from Lewis and Raze. As an actual real life Scotsman I was given a bit of room to inject my own speech patterns into the character's dialogue (to a point, obviously!) and it was me who slipped "boyo" into that one line.

It's something we say, I promise. It's also something that you'd usually see or hear coming out of the mouth of a stereotypically Welsh character, or to a lesser extent an Irish one, but I guarantee you Scots throw the term around too. I even went around asking family and friends to confirm for me in case I was deluded!

Of course it probably shows poor judgement on my part to have used it when it is so widely considered something that Welsh people say, but that rests on me as opposed to on either of the game's lovely word-smiths.

[kaput]

I'd hate to continue this heated debate, but I'm Scottish and I've never heard anyone say boyo . I would expect something more like 'lad' or 'son' or even just mate/pal in that context. But I'm sure you'll agree that here we mostly address each other as c*nt. Each to their own I guess! It did sound a little put on in any case. But all in all the rest of your performance was fine Mon' the Scots!

[Tenacious Stu]

I don't doubt for a second that there are Scots that do say this, but I guess it's all about stereotyping. I mean I'm from Hull and some of the phrases we say in Hull don't apply to the whole of Yorkshire and you wouldn't link them to a a stereotypical Yorkshire person, even though we say them all of the time. But if I were to have a Yorkshire character in a game which used this phrase, people may feel disconnected to them as this doesn't line up with their stereotypical view. I was at a talk with Charles Cecil last year, where he said that stereotypes are your friend when you design your characters. If you use stereotypes, then people can instantly relate to the character and feel as though they know them. For example, the 'old drunken Scottish train conductor' conjures certain images and expectations in your mind, which unfortunately "boyo" was not a part of. For me at least.

I don't think that it's inclusion damaged the game in any way, I really enjoyed it. It was just something that stuck out to me, that's all.

But I'm sure you'll agree that here we mostly address each other as c*nt.

I laughed out loud at this