Matt to the Future (demo)

[Snake]

 Matthew Pike has gotten himself into quite the predicament this time; He's managed to inadvertently create a zombie apocolypse on Christmas Eve!
 To make things worse, Matt gets bitten and is slowly turning into a zombie himself. Being the only one who can save Christmas, and the demise of human kind, Matt must travel back in time and prevent himself from making this horrible mistake... before time runs out!

This is the Christmas gift I made for my stepson. I planned on a full game but since I only thought of this after Thanksgiving, a demo is all I could handle completing.

I posted the demo here in the Announcements forum because I'm not sure this game will ever be a full game. It all really depends on what he thinks. He played it last night and completed it with my help. He's not really into adventure games and I pretty much walked him through it, but he loved it anyway (which is the only thing I was really looking for). It is infact a COMPLETE experience though, it's not just a demo with one room and no ending. It's an actual completed piece of work, so I'm hoping it's not a big deal if it stays here in this forum? The game includes the intro and initial puzzle.

Beware, it's got a few minor bugs here and there - time was running out VERY quickly - but they are nothing that will deter or stop progress completely.

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SCREENSHOTS
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It's not like...

Ah, crap!

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CREDITS:
Everything was done by me (story help from my wife) except for the MIDI music and SFX.

Check the Music credits text file for the info.

The MTTF title theme was created by me.

Thanks Chris for AGS!

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DOWNLOADS
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• Games Page
  
• Matt to the Future DEMO (RAR 2.2mb)
  
• And 3 cool wallpapers! (RAR 421kb)
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  WALKTHROUGH
  A walkthrough is now available on Leon's site, Ultimate Game Solutions
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  Thank you for downloading and playing
  PLEASE ENJOY!

[Dualnames]

Care to play through the game with me too? I can't figure it out! Cool intro though.

[Leon]

I can't download the game at all...
Please don't ask me in a couple of months if I've found a copy somewhere... ;-)
Wasn't the game interesting enough or is the full version already finished? 

[MrCheminee]

I've just finished it.

I like the graphics, story and the humor, but some puzzles did annoy the hell out of me

@Dualnames, where are you stuck?

[Dualnames]

I've just finished it.

I like the graphics, story and the humor, but some puzzles did annoy the hell out of me

@Dualnames, where are you stuck?

Right after the intro.

[MrCheminee]

Well, try to look at things more than once, that's how  I solved most of the puzzles.

[Frodo]

I can't download the game at all...
Please don't ask me in a couple of months if I've found a copy somewhere... ;-)
Wasn't the game interesting enough or is the full version already finished?  

If left-clicking doesn't work, try right-clicking, and 'Save Target As...'  

[Snake]

Sorry, Leon, I left DEBUG mode on and had to reupload. It should be fine now.

[Dualnames]

Sorry, Leon, I left DEBUG mode on and had to reupload. It should be fine now.

That's how I beat the game! Pwned it!

[Snake]

Sorry, Leon, I left DEBUG mode on and had to reupload. It should be fine now.

That's how I beat the game! Pwned it!

Heh, damn you, Dualy!

After playing through with Matt there were things that I should have included. Same as Duals, the first thing Matt said after the intro ended was, "What do I do?". I should have had the text pop up and say something like:

Code: ags

Display("After jumping into the chair, one of the wheels broke and bounced across the floor.");
Display("Without touching the floor, Matt must somehow fix the chair so he can move around...");

I guess I just figured it was self explainatory when the wheel "popped" and bounced across the floor. Damn myself for thinking the goal was obvious enough.

...but some puzzles did annoy the hell out of me

Yeah, I guess the puzzles weren't a big hit. Thank you, Mr Cheminee, for the good words on the story and humor though

Puzzles:
Now, being the creator of these puzzles, I found them to be perfectly logical and not too hard (at one point I was worried they might be a little too easy) but I guess that is expected when YOU are making the puzzles - since you know the solution.

From your point of view (everyone who played), can you tell me what I did wrong? I obviously need improvement and I would love to hear pointers from the people you count the most: the people PLAYING them.

I wonder, if it wasn't so much the puzzles themselves, but maybe the descriptions/hints given? Lack of explaination could hurt a game pretty bad. I've read two poeple, at least so far, complain that they didn't know what they were doing. It certainly SHOULD have been clearer that the main objective was to get the porcupine OUT of the lab.

I would love to hear your responces. Like I said above, I obviously could use some advice on puzzle design. I can't help but be disappointed in myself. I really thought they were pretty good. When Matt played I figured, hell, he barely knows what an adventure game is, I'll post this on the forums tomorrow, I'll have people saying they finished it within 5 minutes of posting telling me it was too short and the puzzles were too easy. Shows what I know

\\--EDIT--\\
The game is now on the Games Page, btw.

[MrCheminee]

Since I beat the game in an hour or so, I think it was not really that difficult, and pretty decent for a game this size. The fact that the wheel broke was very clear to me after clicking on a lot of things, but I guess explaning that  right after it happened wouldn't hurt.
The trick that I had to click on certain items more than once was something I had to discover and after that, I had not problem with finding the rest of the objects. To me, getting that straight was a puzzle, and actually I like it if I get what there is to get at the first click, but that's just me. The intended puzzles were pretty logical and the clicking around was entertaining enough because of the jokes and references to other games/movies/cartoons. The only thing that bothered me on the ending was the last puzzle that forced me to do something within a few seconds, since I'm not that much into timelimits, but then I mastered it pretty quick and I wasn't bothered anymore. It was more my expectations that tricked me in small moments of unhappiness, I think I'm just easy to frustrate. All in all I think your puzzles were very suitable for this game, so I wouldn't worry about that.
After I got what I had to get on the desk I wasn't able to go on the desk again, that was kind of restricting. I know I didn't need anything from there anymore, but it would have made my area a bit bigger. That would have been nice.
I liked the pretty long cutscenes and I even could appriciate the predictability of the story and found myself talking to it like I do when I'm watching a movie that follows a wellknown plot. For a game, that is a good sign!
I can't wait for the next episode!

Edit:
The animations, music, effects, etc. looked really professional to me, except for the small acts you didn't make an animation for. But you solved those situations pretty clever with the messagedisplay so I almost didn't notice it. If you'd make these animations, to me you would have reached the quality of DOTT, but even without, you're pretty close.

[SarahLiz]

Is there a walkthough for this game?  Hints even?    I have all the items from the bottom drawer & the crime scene tape, but can't use any of them together to pick up stuff (i.e. the wheel) from the ground.  This game is so cute, nice graphics, interesting storyline, etc.  I'm too much of a duntz to be able to rate the difficulty level of "hard vs. easy"...because I have a bad, bad habit of using walkthroughs to get through my fave adventure games.   That's how I like to play them tho. 

Either way, love the game so far.  I don't really have any constructive criticism for ya b/c I am too stumped to get past the first scene...!  Help??

Edited to add:  I have to say, I actually had no problem figuring out that the point was to get past the porcupine & fix the chair so you can move around...to me at least, THAT much was obvious...beyond that though...  I'm currently a bit frustrated (which is a GOOD thing, that means your game is interesting enough for people to CARE to solve it & not just give up & quit!)

~Sarah 

[MrCheminee]

Try looking at the stuff in you inventory

[SarahLiz]

Yeah, I did that, I got the string from the lint but wasn't much successful with anything else, nor was able to combine objects together...??

[Leon]

The game is pretty much event driven so you must do one thing first before you can do another. Things become available after certain events, so:

Spoiler

When you have the crime scene tape, try it on the wheel and it fails, you realizing it's too light. Then take the mouse from the computer and attach it to the tape. Try again on the wheel and succeed this time.

[close]

If you can't take items or do things, try again after progressing, maybe you'll have more luck then. 

[SarahLiz]

Ahh yes, I did manage to get the wheel after combining a couple objects like you said...but nothing else combines.  I'm basically throwing the liver pieces to the little varmint all over the room but can't manage to trap him, kill him, pick him up, whatever the goal is...gggrrr!  Frustrating!  Is this one room the whole demo?  Please, I know this isn't the hints/tips section, but I am dying to know what to do next.  (pretty please?)   

[MrCheminee]

Spoiler

You might want to send him outside... A hint you get when you try to go futher into you lab.

[close]

[sthomannch]

A good demo! Thank you, Snake

I think the puzzle are logical. And sometimes you have to be very fast. Takes a bit to switch from arrow to hair cross (this was the hardest bit for me :-)

Mr. Cheminee:

Spoiler

open the lift door

[close]

Spoiler

move to the right place and throw the liver into the lift

[close]

Spoiler

do you have a replacement for this broken latch?

[close]

[ThreeOhFour]

The puzzles were kinda tricky but I didn't need hints. I think if I played a full length game which had puzzles like this the whole way through I'd get frustrated, but for a game of this length I thought it was alright. A couple of things that I found a bit frustrating, seeing as you asked for comments on puzzles:

Spoiler

Giving us 3 drawers to look through but only putting items in one and then making us look through it multiple times seemed a bit of an odd choice to me. Maybe I'm just lazy, but it might have been nicer to put 1 item in each of the drawers?

Also, I spent ages clicking on that crime scene tape, saying "I know I need you, why can't I take you!?" - it seems like I couldn't take it until I looked at the wheel? I would have preferred to be able to take it from the start, but never mind.

[close]

I thought the idea about using the chair was cool, and I cracked up at the intro because I wasn't expecting such a peaceful scene to turn into that haha.

Nice one, Snake

[MrCheminee]

A good demo! Thank you, Snake

I think the puzzle are logical. And sometimes you have to be very fast. Takes a bit to switch from arrow to hair cross (this was the hardest bit for me :-)

Mr. Cheminee:

Spoiler

open the lift door

[close]

Spoiler

move to the right place and throw the liver into the lift

[close]

Spoiler

do you have a replacement for this broken latch?

[close]

Hey I got it, I just didn't want to give the whole puzzle away for SarahLiz...