Danny Dread is on Call.

[GreenBoy]

I'm surprised about that to Arjon, I would of thought that would of been picked up pretty quickly.

Cheers for the nice comments Scarab and Snake, I was slightly worried that my sense of humour wouldn't work very well for a adventure game.

I used the lip sync feature feature for the talking animations, I only used 5 different frames but I think it came together really well.  It's also why the clowns gestures are so random.

Music was supplied by the very talented Mods who also did Art of Theft.  Very clever man that.

[Scarab]

It's also why the clowns gestures are so random.

Heh, well his erratic behaviour reminded me of this guy:
So if it wasn't a MI reference... It looked like one 

[GreenBoy]

Heh heh.   8)

Old Stan did cross my mind when I was designing his character.

[tzachs]

Hi, great game so far, loved the humour and graphics.

I found a dead-end bug, though:

Spoiler

Start the game, look at the gap three times. Danny says "that's where I found the ping pong bat...", but I haven't found it yet. You can try and use the ruler all you want at that point, it won't work...

[close]

[Leon]

I found a dead-end bug, though:

Ooohhh... nice find. I've tried a lot in that room, but not that persistent...   

[arj0n]

I found a dead-end bug, though:

Ooohhh... nice find. I've tried a lot in that room, but not that persistent...   

Yeh nice find indeed. Tried a lot there and did found some but not that one.

[GreenBoy]

Oh man that was just some plain stupidity on my part.  I have no idea what I was thinking when I scripted that.

I'll fix it and re-upload.

[anupxxxbmw]

Awesome Game mate... i Like the funny talk between the Farm kid and Danny...

[Ryan Timothy B]

This game was a lot of fun.  I liked all your animations, it was very entertaining to watch.  The music was interesting.

It was overall a fun game, but there were a few things that really prevent the game from standing out in my mind, which were (nothing too serious, so please don't take it the wrong way. I just want you to know what I, as a player, felt you could have improved on to make a better game for everyone):

Spoiler

The paddle hiding in the crack. I had no idea there was a crack there and I even rolled my mouse over it in the beginning, I guess I just didn't see it.  It definitely didn't look like a crack, it should have had a darker shadow.  I had to read a walk-through for that problem only, which is sad, cause pixel hunts aren't fun.

I also didn't like how when I put the second or third or infinity sheep into the machine, the dialog was always the same.  I at first didn't know I had to talk to the girl, I thought it was clear I had to grab another sheep--but that's obviously not the case.  So I had put 3-4 sheep in the machine until figuring out that the 'deformations' ended up repeating.  The doctor doesn't even comment on the results being unexpected, which is why I never once thought about talking to him about it until I ran out of ideas.  Having the doc oblivious to what is going on with the sheep in that machine really makes him feel like a cardboard cutout.  I don't talk to cardboard cutouts.
And after the 3rd or 4th sheep Danny should be saying something along the lines of "this machine isn't working right".

Same with the clown.  I gave him 2 cups of coffee thinking that Danny would ask for what he wanted the second time around.  Which he obviously doesn't, but the dialog the first time made it seem like he would ask before giving the coffee the second time.
Also after getting him drunk it would be nice to see him slightly swaying back and forth instead of just standing there motionless.

I'm also not a huge fan of the fadeout to perform a certain action within the same room, especially on a game like yours with all those animations on the majority of actions.  I think you would have done better to have Danny stand in front of the sheep and fence with his shoulders and arms moving like he does with everything else.  Remove the sheep from scene and have the sheep reappear when you return to that farm.  Much more professional.  Sure you won't have the 'guybrush putting a dog in his pants' animation, but much better than a fade to black action.

Also, when you have a sheep and try to 'use' the machine door, Danny says you should talk to the Doc first.  I talk to the Doc and there isn't anything in the dialog about 'hey I have a sheep'.  So I click on the doc with the sheep and he says something along the lines of you putting it in the machine.  So then you click the sheep on the machine and you go through the whole "hey, i've got a sheep" dialog again. Argh.. lol
You also can't skip dialog in half the scenes by clicking, it got tiring.  It's nice to have the click if the same dialog pops up, or you read faster than the dialog timer.

[close]

That's pretty much it.
Anyway like I said, don't take this the wrong way.  I think you've got great skill and I was impressed with your overall work, there were just certain things that could have been improved to make your game even that much better in my eyes.


Oh, and one typo I noticed:

Spoiler

After putting the first sheep in the machine and you complain over and over (which was very funny, I liked it a lot), the Doc asks you if you're done.  Danny says something about having more lines and the Doc says 'That's to bad. [..]'.  It should be 'That's too bad. [..]'

[close]

[GreenBoy]

Thanks Ryan for your frankness, I have to say I do probably agree with most if not all of what you mentioned.

The music was made to match in with the cutscene for several scenes, and it does sound fantastic, trouble is that if you click through the music will be out of sync.  But I can see how that would be irritating if you have to do something more than once, I think until we have some type of iMUSE module or whatever for AGS that type of thing may have to be put on the backburner.

As for the pixelhunt, well, I did try to make it a reasonable sized area but I do probably agree some sort of visual indication would of helped.  To be honest I think next time I make a game (if I can be bothered) I will have to have a much more carefull plan in place for the puzzles.  This time it just got thrown together.

Next time I would love to get 4 cups, that would be a dream come true.   

[SuperDre]

Just finished it.. it's a funny little game.. hope you'll make another.. thanx..

[CShelton]

This little adventure was pretty enjoyable!

The writing is good, clever, and not terribly corny. I do hate clicking through endless exchanges in conversation, but this was pretty concise. The conversations were short enough for me to not start click click clicking.

Graphics, animation, sound, all very well done.

I did read that you said the puzzles weren't really pre-planned, and while I was forced to combo click to figure some of the puzzles out, it was still a fun little adventure.

[Julius Dangerous]

great game, nice colors and fun!

[GreenBoy]

Update. Update. Update.

Thanks to the efforts of PuNKKoMmANDO77, Danny Dread is now able to be played by the Italian community.
Oddly enough us poor little kiwis are taking on the Italians at football in only a few hours, I'm hoping this will be enough to make them be kind to us.  Dreams are free right?

[Igor Hardy]

As I see it never did get mentioned in this thread... ddq wrote a great review of Danny Dread a few months ago: http://hardydev.com/2010/02/11/danny-dread-is-on-call-review/

[m0ds]

Nice review! I enjoyed reading. I recently made an MP3 version of the music for fun.

www.screen7.co.uk/music/midi/scores/DDIOC_OST_SE.rar
(17mb)

Oddly enough us poor little kiwis are taking on the Italians at football in only a few hours

It's okay, they didn't stand much of a chance either

[GreenBoy]

Wicked fun, It's nice to hear that music again and this time in glorious MP3.

Thanks to ddq for his article, I loved it.  Of course it was mostly positive so it's no surprise I did.

Here's another one I found, this time by Find Therma.    http://jd-adventuregamereviews.blogspot.com/2010/01/danny-dread-is-on-call.html

[qptain Nemo]

This was a hilarious game which I enjoyed greatly! Very well done!
And Greenbody, you have a simply brilliant avatar and personal text combination @_@

[GreenBoy]

Thank you very much.  And to think I wa considering changing it.  :o