Trance-Pacific

[The Last To Know]

I really enjoyed playing your game. I especially liked the "M" thing. The graphics were very nice, too.

[ThreeOhFour]

Hey everyone!

Glad you're enjoying the game, and thanks for helping us get rid of those little bugs.

To everyone who commented on the graphics - I love you guys  !

Also glad that the Memo concept has gone down fairly well thus far - my biggest fear was that we would implement it incorrectly and that it would appear to be merely a gimmick. Hopefully this is not the case.

Cheers!

[Peter Bear]

Little bug ( I guess )

Spoiler

When you come back to the bar ( and meet the lady there )
Nick asks to be hypnotized once more, and when vince refuses again "No nick how many times must I tell you ), it is Nick that is talking. ( his text color, his mouth moving, but it's Vince answer )

[close]

)

[LimpingFish]

Enjoyable gameplay. Solidly written, with engaging characters. Clean, unfussy art and animation. Nice work.

[Peter Bear]

Ok I ended it yesterday, the game is great.

I enjoyed the dialogs, very well built, and the backgrounds ( As I draw myself, I like to detail how others do, and you do good )

The only bad thing in this game is that it was too short, not too easy, but ok.

Bravo !

Sam : Don't say bravo Max ! ( highly cultural reference needed )

[Akatosh]

Just finished the game yesterday, and I liked it very much! Granted, it's a bit short, and the last puzzle was some guesswork, but still... you have my vote for this month's MAGS. 

[ThreeOhFour]

Thankyou for your encouragement.

Of course, the game probably seems a bit short as we had to limit ourselves ambition wise due to the short time a MAGS competition allows for development. I think we'd prefer to have half an hour of good gameplay to having 3 hours of poorly planned out, frustrating gameplay.

Admittedly some of the puzzles were a little bit of guesswork, but we made sure that we put hints in for basically everything - if you pay enough attention to cutscenes and conversations. It disappoints me that you found the last puzzle to be guesswork, Akatosh, but we did want to make sure that it was not too easy, and I think the hints are there. The last thing we wanted to do was give the player 18 items and 200 hotspots and turn the game into a boring guessfest.

I think also the small size room-wise of the game (ie not being able to walk around the whole thing at one time, not having 20 rooms) probably made the game seem short, as you aren't required to travel far in order to get resources you need for the puzzles. I think the whole point of the Memo innovation was to reward players for being creative... initially I hoped to do the game without any inventory items at all, but time constraints meant we tried to find a right balance between standard puzzles and Memo-type puzzles. Paolo did a good job of interpreting our ideas into puzzles - I think if one had more time the whole usage of the Memo could be expanded, but I am pleased with the end result.

Sorry for writing so much, and thankyou for playing our game. Akatosh - your vote is appreciated, my man.

[splat44]

Ben304,


I didn't found any of those puzzles as being guesswork at all, I'm not where Akatosh saw this.

You also got my vote for this game as well.

Good luck!

[ThreeOhFour]

Thankyou for your vote, and for the luck you wish. This MAGS competition has seem some really cool entries - It's been an awesome one to take part in!

I am glad you didn't find guesswork - I am very concious of how quickly the genre can grow stale with obscure puzzles, and we tried hard to avoid the "get key for door" puzzles.

[paolo]

we tried hard to avoid the "get key for door" puzzles.

Not only that, but we make fun of some of the classic escape-the-room tricks (for example, try interacting with the vent after you've spoken to the steward outside the room).

Thanks everyone for your encouraging feedback and votes. Ben and I definitely appreciate it.

[CosmoQueen]

Played it, finished it, loved it. I look forward to more games from you in the future! Maybe even a possible sequel to this one?

[paolo]

Thanks, CosmoQueen. I'm pleased you liked the game.

A sequel? No firm decisions yet on that. Maybe, maybe not. Remember from the epilogue that

Spoiler

Memos were withdrawn from sale and Vince's broke, so if we did do a sequel, it wouldn't have a Memo in it... but of course the bartender had one too, and we don't know what happened to that one... 

[close]

[CosmoQueen]

Spoiler

but of course the bartender had one too, and we don't know what happened to that one...

[close]

Hmm interesting! 

[splat44]

Hi Ben304,

Congratulations for winning this month contest!

For your first game, it must feel great!

I figure this one was a winner!

[ThreeOhFour]

CosmoQueen - I think we've considered a sequel, but are not 100% on our next focus as yet. Know that the plan is to continue making games.

Splat44 - Thankyou for your kind comments. It is very nice to have won the competition, especially seeing how many other people spent their time on entries. Also thanks to Paolo - this is as much his game as it is mine, and he has been great to work with.

[CosmoQueen]

Well whatever your next focus is, I'm sure it'll be awesome! I look forward to it

[paolo]

*** UPDATE ***

Thanks to Pierre Hopquin of http://regne.net, the game now has a French translation.

I've also noticed that the text scales fine if you play full-screen - for some strange reason, it didn't the first time I tried it. So go ahead and play the game full-screen if you prefer.

[Lucifiel]

Btw, be warned. This is kinda long.

Graphics are kinda cool though they could do with a wider color palette or better contrast? Because they do look kinda dull or muted. 

The perspective is cool although it also makes clicking on an area or item rather difficult, at times. My suggestion is to have a closer view of a room, instead, with either a zoomed-in view or a view from another angle.

For the other characters, I think the hotspot(is that what you call it? The area where you can click on an item/object/etc.) needed to be larger or something, so that it doesn't turn into a pixel hunt.

Furthermore, having some red herrings is fine but it can be kinda frustrating when you're not really allowed to use the items with the puzzle.

Spoiler

For example: C-505. I desperately wanted to use the step ladder so that I could check out the light bulb myself but... man, the game wouldn't let me. And the idea of the character not being able to push an empty box/carton aside was a little... My suggestion would be to isolate the puzzle so you don't have to worry about creating  any possible solutions that haven't been programmed into the game.

[close]

Oh and the usage of a memory-tampering device as a plot and puzzle device was awesome and very clever yet at the same time, there could have been more focus on puzzles orientated around other items. That's because if you allow the player to pick up random items throughout the game, said player will end up with tons of items that they don't need and personally, I've always preferred being forced to solve the puzzle with wit and some thinking rather than applying an item/action to everything in the room. :p

[ThreeOhFour]

Wow, Lucifiel, thanks for the comments. I'll try and reply to everything as I see it:

Graphics were kinda rushed as they were a product of me trying to get used to a new way of doing backgrounds and putting lighting etc in, so I sometimes had more shadow than highlight and therefore not enough contrast. Thanks for noticing it anyway.

The perspective was also me experimenting with a two point perspective as I was totally sick of limiting myself to the one point cube rooms I'd seen everywhere. The plan is to hopefully eliminate the black edgy bits eventually.

About smallness of hotspots.... which bits exactly did you find a pixel hunt? We tried to ensure we avoided all annoying little "omg I can click on the rabbit!?" moments...

The way I saw it, we only really had two red herrings:

Spoiler

The pen, obviously, and the ladder/light/switch hint to frustrate people a bit

[close]

We didn't think those were over the top... just enough to add a little bit more difficulty into the game. We were worried people would finish the game in like 10 minutes.

Finally, well... I had originally hoped to make the game without any items whatsoever, and just use the memory device but it was more sensible to have some items. I didn't think 6 items was really too many and had hoped that the main point of the game would be the memo... I worried that if we had heaps of object puzzles and one or 2 memory puzzles that the memo would get passed of as a useless gimmick. Feedback seems to indicate people wished we'd used it more than we did... are you saying you wanted more object based puzzles, or less of them?

Thanks for playing!

Edit - Thanks CosmoQueen ....

[CosmoQueen]

Wrong tags Ben! It's "hide" not "spoiler"