~airwave~ - I Fought the Law, and the Law One

[Calin Leafshade]

D: poor heffalump!

[Atelier]

Yay I discovered an easter egg! I managed to coax it out from hiding with pork chops.

[Igor Hardy]

Nice easter egg with the crow btw!

[ThreeOhFour]

Atelier found an easter egg even I didn't know about! :O

Glad you liked the crow, it allowed me to sneakily reference two classic adventure games at once!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Cute game, nice interface.   Backgrounds and animations were lovely as usual, and I enjoyed the more 'traditional' puzzles this time around.  Music was hit or miss, mostly hit.

One thing I thought was a bit odd was the small width of the inventory when there was so much room along the top to support probably every inventory item comfortably with room to spare.  Such are the nitpicks one developer bestows on another.  Also, while I enjoy your short games, I'd really like to see you buckle down and focus on at least one full-length, full-feature game! 

Stop taunting me with these game samplers, you beautiful bastard!

[Fitz]

Finally finished it! Can't believe I got stuck in such a stupid way, either - I could've sworn I tried the right thing but to no avail. Or was I doing something wrong?

Aaaanyway...

Great ending! There was suspense and there was melancholy. Has you waiting for the follow up - in the hope that everything will work out fine and that girl will come to her senses. Great, emotional story. You're right, setting the story in a place and around people the main character is familiar with let you create a deeper bond between both the characters themselves, and the players and characters as well. She knows them and it's kind of as if we knew, them too. So I guess the new game in the series will be even more anticipated than your games usually are (and you know that they are).

So while I wait, I can finally go read 1Q84!

Also, I spent some more time just listening to the music and I really like most songs and truly love some of them. A soundtrack from the game would be nice! Indie stuff rocks, I remember the good old myspace days when I had friend requests from indie bands every day. Incidentally, a vast majority of them was Aussie musicians. And speaking of Aussie musicians... Just yesterday, after getting stuck in the game, thinking about my favorite obscure songs I remembered... this one! Yes, that is HER. Back in 1998, when her carreer was in decline because she was trying to do something intelligent - and shortly before she gave up and the Golden Knickers Era began.

[Ponch]

Ponch: Haa haa. It's probably going to be a slightly bigger game, so it'll take me a bit longer to put together than this one, I think.

So... Two weeks then? 

[Wonkyth]

Arg, this isn't fair! 

I've decided that I'll play the nominees, but that's it.
Damn my studies!

[Tabata]

Oh boy, another wonderful game from Ben!

I love this unique style of the backgrounds and characters with individual charisma, the smooth animations and nice story-line. Also the idea about "presence" of the radiostation in every scene and the possibility of switching it on/off.

Thank you and all the others, who worked on this, for a new pearl (your already build a long chain) - great!

             

[Igor Hardy]

Finally finished.

Ben, I think your art work is already leaps and bounds beyond what you did in games like Faetherweight and Heed which already made everyone jealous. What makes the biggest difference is the amount of fine detail you put in the backgrounds. The overall look is superb.

Similarly amazing is the live radio show. I loved all the songs and their variety. And for some reason I'm a sucker for fictional shows, magazines and programs pretending to be an organic part of a fictional world. Great work there, Sebastian and David!

The characters are all cool and interesting (except that 1-dimensional evil corporation henchman perhaps) and the theme of large scale indieness is a lot of fun. The game being only the first episode it's difficult to say what the plot is about yet.

Overall, I think it's one of the best and most atmospheric worlds you constructed.

Now, the one thing I didn't entirely like is the puzzles. First of all, listening to the radio songs and talks while reading lengthy conversations jam-packed with strange band names and musical theories creates great ambiance and style, but in terms of puzzle-solving and following clues it's an amazing amount of noise for the player to make his way through. Combined with the fact that most puzzles rely on attempting the required interaction at just the proper moment in time it makes them more tiresome than fun, and occasionally frustrating. Also, IMO the game sometimes doesn't give sufficient clues of the type "NOW is the time to DO that thing that was impossible earlier!"

That is quite a pixel hunt with that cable too.

[ThreeOhFour]

ProgZmax: Thanks for the feedback! With regards to the inventory, it was more a choice related to symmetry of guis than anything, though I see your point. I haven't made a game with lots of inventory items for ages, so the amount of items kinda snuck up on me! As for longer games, hopefully doing the episodic thing will help me tell a fuller length story, broken up into more manageable chunks.

Fitz: Glad you enjoyed the ending and story, I was quite pleased once I had designed it all and checked how it all flowed for this first part. I feel it's one of my strongest pieces of game writing to date. As for the music, I agree, I really love some of the songs very, very much. As for the Kylie song, wow, I'd never even heard of that until now. This is preferable to golden knickers

Ponch: Sure, if you don't mind a one room, one puzzle installment 

Wonkyth: Not sure if I understand you fully, but studies are a good thing!

Tabata: Thank you for the lovely comments, they are very much appreciated.

Ascovel: Thanks for the feedback! I've really been pushing myself (particularly with so many amazing artists around the forums these days) graphically now that I've found a comfortable style , it's nice to know this is paying off. I agree about the radio show, when I came up with the idea, I had no clue that it would turn out as good as it did!

As for the characters, hopefully by the time the corporate guy's story has been fleshed out fully he will seem a little less one-dimensional. Glad you found the others interesting!

Interesting thoughts on the puzzles - the frustrations with radio whilst speaking is one reason I gave the option to turn the radios off, and I'm going to do some adjusting at some point which will hopefully fix a few of your concerns. I agree that the conversations didn't fully hint at the puzzle solutions, but adjusted whichever puzzles the testers got stuck on to be clearer, and will be making at least one slightly better hinted at as well. As for the pixel hunt - I did my best to eliminate the worst of them (hence the fact that there are 2 sets of pliers in 2 different rooms).

[Igor Hardy]

Don't take the unpleasant things I said about the corporate guy too seriously though - it was my way of saying he perfectly embodies the characteristic of an evil corporate drone, which was probably the idea.

[ThreeOhFour]

Oh, I didn't take it the wrong way, that's how I intended him to appear! But there's more to him than meets the eye, you just don't get to see it yet

[Stupot]

Nice little game.
I needed the walkthrough though

The music was really cool! but I could have done without Zak's little monologues.  They kept distracting me from reading the conversations properly.

[ThreeOhFour]

Glad you liked it Stu. When I get a chance, I'm going to add an option to the game to allow you to set the speech to be skipped manually only, so that players can wait until after Zak has finished speaking then read the dialogue.

Hopefully this fixes the problem a little!

[Stupot]

Yes! In fact, that's exactly what I wished I could do when I was playing.

[Zenger]

Game finished  .  Excellent work  Ben

[Galen]

Ah, great work. The whole drinks puzzle really confused me though so I looked up a walkthrough. Nothing in the dialogue seems to indicate what fits the bill unless I missed something.

[Leon]

Talking to Rasputin makes it a bit clearer. But I must admit that it's not very clear how his stories and the coma of the mayor are related. I found the cocktail by brute force and noticed the hint later.. 

[ThreeOhFour]

Thanks Galen and Zenger!

I'll see if I can tweak the dialogue a bit to make that puzzle a little clearer.