Topic: Clotilde Soffritti in: Never Buy a Used Spaceship

[lorenzo]

Thinking about buying a used spaceship? Think again!
In this cautionary tale of great emotional impact (?), our heroine Clotilde finds herself stuck on an old spaceship, directed towards the sun!
Only you can save the ship! Oh, and her life too.




Have deep and meaningful dialogues with a huge* cast of characters!


Explore a (really) small ship! Try weird alien food and drinks!**

• One player character!
• Lots of stuff to click on!
• Comic book style cutscenes!
• 720p graphics! Lots of pixels for the whole family!
• No less than 13 inventory items!
• 15 rooms, not even a third of them playable!
• No moral choices whatsoever!
• So many puzzles!
• Several gripping minutes of gameplay!

There's a puzzle involving colours in the game. If you have trouble with it, you can find a "colour-blind mode" option in the settings menu.



Here! Click the inconspicuous download button!


(it's on itch.io)




Lorenzo Boni: story, coding, graphics, animations.
Dave Seaman: testing, proofreading.

The game uses Snarky's SpeechBubble Module.

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*At least 3 characters included.
**Food and drinks not included with the game.

[Laura Hunt]

I took a small break from working on my own game to play this and it's been a nice 20 minutes or so! Love the art style, the music selection, the cutscenes and the humor, actually this could be a great cartoon and I'd totally sign up to know more about Clotilde's adventures I have to say that some parts of the first puzzle are a bit obtuse and I ended up just using everything on everything, but I had fun nonetheless. Nice little game!


QA Notes / Bugs:

Spoiler: ShowHide

- Lots of audio crackling. This seems to be an issue with a lot of AGS games. Are your audio files clipping by any chance?
- "Swift Army Knife" -> Shouldn't this be a Swiss Army Knife?
- "I like being able to breath." -> Should be "breathe".

Thanks lorenzo and CaptainD for this short and sweet treat!

[Durq]

Just finished playing. Absolutely fantastic all around! I hope this is just the beginning.

[CaptainD]

QA Notes / Bugs:

Spoiler: ShowHide

- "Swift Army Knife" -> Shouldn't this be a Swiss Army Knife? - I'd assumed this was a pun!...?
- "I like being able to breath." -> Should be "breathe". - HEY!  Stop making the proof-reader look bad!

[lorenzo]

Laura Hunt: glad you enjoyed the game!

QA/Bugs: ShowHide

Regarding the audio crackling: I have no idea! I'm not too good with audio, so maybe it's my fault. I could have made some bad loops?
Anyway, I'm not sure I've noticed any crackling myself, aside from the hermit scene at the end with the fire, which is an intended effect.

What do you mean by the first puzzle? I saw some people playing the game and they didn't need any help in completing it, but maybe some parts could use more "signposting".

The "Swift Army Knife" joke is intentional. Probably not the best pun, if it seems like a typo! While "breath" is a typo indeed! I'll fix it if/when I'll update the game. Thank you for the feedback!

Just finished playing. Absolutely fantastic all around! I hope this is just the beginning.

Thank you very much! I'm really happy you liked the game! Hopefully, there'll be more adventures in the future.

[Slasher]

I've just spent a while playing this game and have not finished it yet.

First impressions: Really nice graphics and game play is really good.

I liked the music and the heat of going somewhere hot 

Great potential and I want to see more 

[Laura Hunt]

Laura Hunt: glad you enjoyed the game!

QA/Bugs: ShowHide

Regarding the audio crackling: I have no idea! I'm not too good with audio, so maybe it's my fault. I could have made some bad loops?

No, it's not that. Might be that the volume of the files is too high and they're clipping or you're using tracks in wav format rather than ogg and together with the high resolution it's making AGS struggle, or who knows

What do you mean by the first puzzle? I saw some people playing the game and they didn't need any help in completing it, but maybe some parts could use more "signposting".

Mostly the part with the slug and the battery, which I wasn't able to deduce and I just ended up trying to combine everything in my inventory. Maybe I'm just bad at puzzles

The "Swift Army Knife" joke is intentional. Probably not the best pun, if it seems like a typo! While "breath" is a typo indeed! I'll fix it if/when I'll update the game. Thank you for the feedback!

Definitely feels like a typo, maybe if it was written S.W.I.F.T. or something like that it would be more obvious that it's on purpose?

[Vincent]

I just finish to play it and I had it a lot of fun! 
I really enjoyed everything from the plot to the graphics, animations, music and dialogues. Just when I was about to dive the word "The End" appeared... 

[Drmcscott]

Excellent little game. Would like more!

Graphics were unique and very pleasant. Now slightly depressed at my effort!

Good Job!

[Shadow1000]

Awesome game! Professional-grade comic book graphics. Good sense of humour and fun puzzles. I would recommend that you put captions or hover-over effects for the last puzzle to identify the colours. I had a lot of trouble guessing what some of them are.

[lorenzo]

Thanks everybody for the kind words! 

Laura Hunt:

QA/Bugs: ShowHide

I believe I used all OGG files, I have no clue on how to fix those audio issues.
I hope they weren't too distracting.

The battery puzzle: the clues to solve it are in the battery's description and the food producer computer (the ingredients).

S.W.I.F.T.? I'll consider that, if other people find the pun confusing!

Vincent: I know, the game is quite on the short side... I didn't want to make something too ambitious, fearing I might not finish it. But I'm happy it provided at least some enjoyment.

Drmcscott: I hope I'll be able to make more small games in the future!

Shadow1000: there's a colour-blind mode button in the settings, that puts labels over each colour. I'm really sorry that you missed it - and consequently had trouble with the puzzle.
I should have written about the option in the game description.
In fact, one of the reasons I put the option in the game was because I remembered reading about the trouble you had with some colours in Tales of Jayvin.

[Shadow1000]

Thanks everybody for the kind words! 

Shadow1000: there's a colour-blind mode button in the settings, that puts labels over each colour. I'm really sorry that you missed it - and consequently had trouble with the puzzle.
I should have written about the option in the game description.
In fact, one of the reasons I put the option in the game was because I remembered reading about the trouble you had with some colours in Tales of Jayvin.

Hmm...I don't see that. I did read the ReadmeOrNotWhatever file before playing and I looked over the Winsetup and don't see this mode. Either way, that's cool that you thought of it, and as I said, great game!

[lorenzo]

Of course I forgot to write it in the readme too!... I wrote that at the last minute.
You can find the option in-game, in the inventory bar:

Spoiler: ShowHide

Maybe I should have made it more obvious. It's a bit hidden if you don't know that it's there.

[cat]

A wonderful little game!

The graphics and animations are beautiful and the story and writing is fun. I loved the Italian food references and the multiple replies from looking at the sun. The UI is easy to use, although I personally prefer text to skip automatically.

The music is well chosen, but I found the looping of the background noise distracting. The sample is not very long, you should make it loop more smoothly.
About the puzzles

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Making the glue was quite clever and absolutely solvable (pun intended) with the given clues. However, I was able to fill the helmet with blue stuff even before I found the photo. As soon as I read the poem, I was sure that there was a puzzle coming up that involves colors.

All in all, great game! I was disappointed that it ended so soon.

[lorenzo]

Thank you for your comment and feedback, cat!

The UI is easy to use, although I personally prefer text to skip automatically.

You can actually skip text automatically, you can set it in the settings menu.

I found the looping of the background noise distracting. The sample is not very long, you should make it loop more smoothly.

Unfortunately, I'm not very good when it comes to audio, so I may have messed up the loops.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Regarding the helmet puzzle. I was unsure if I needed to put a check to see if the player has already looked at the photograph. Maybe I should have!

[Vincent]

Vincent: I know, the game is quite on the short side... I didn't want to make something too ambitious, fearing I might not finish it. But I'm happy it provided at least some enjoyment.

This is understandable. As far as I'm concerned, I had a lot of fun playing this game. I hope there will be a sequel, even as short as this one, but be sure to do many chapters! 


Regarding the last puzzle a minor detail:

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It happened that I digit only one color at the beginning (which was wrong) I came out and returned from the puzzle and the color was still into the code, I had to put the remaining colors in order to reset the puzzle. It would be nice if every time you get out from the puzzle it get automatically reset but this is not a big deal.

[lorenzo]

Thank you, Vincent!

Regarding the last puzzle:

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There is a reason for that. I had to deactivate the inventory bar in first person rooms (i.e. the computer monitors), because looking at inventory items in those rooms caused some problems.
But I wanted the player to be able to leave the monitor, check the poem, press some of the buttons and check the poem again, without losing his progress.

Thinking about it now, I don't know if it the right choice! Anyway, it shouldn't be too hard to reset the monitor every time you enter the room - even with someone with poor coding skills like me.

[Pogwizd]

I finished the game yesterday evening and I absolutelly loved the artstyle and the overall comic-book atmosphere of the game. It was really sad to see "THE END" only 15 minutes into the game but I totally understand your reasons for making the game that short.

Also, given the short gameplay, I personally liked the fact that the intro wasn't too long and after only a few lines of text I knew what the story and goal were about. 

Spoiler: ShowHide

As for the puzzles, I didn't have any problems with the glue one. But I experienced a similar issue as Cat. What I mean is I managed to make the golf balls sticky before finding the captain's photo, which confused me for a second because at that point I didn't know what I was after.

To sum up - a really nice little game : )

[xandmatt]

Wow that was (really) short and sweet - hope we can see of Clotide in the future.

Liked it, didn't find it too challenging. I think I share similar opinions with:

Spoiler: ShowHide

The balance of knowing what the previous owner looked like. I was on the final puzzle and room before I even thought about opening the box.

[lorenzo]

Pogwizd: thank you very much!

Also, given the short gameplay, I personally liked the fact that the intro wasn't too long and after only a few lines of text I knew what the story and goal were about.

I usually dislike long intros, so I tried to make mine as short as possible! I also tried to add a bit of interactivity with the dialogue choices, and some animations, not to bore too much the player.

xandmatt: thank you for the nice words!


Regarding the puzzles:

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Several people seem to have the same problem of solving some puzzles before having seen the captain's photo. If I make an update, I'll definitely address the issue. Thanks everybody for the feedback!