Hi. Thank you for patching the game.
Now that I've completed the game twice with dead ends both enabled and disabled, I'd like to give some feedback and I have a few questions:
1) Although most dead ends and time limits were indeed disabled, there are a couple of borderline cases I though I should mention:
a) The shark is still a hazard with dead ends disabled, and while you can swim away if you're very near shore, if the shark attacks while you're in the middle of the sea, it is unlikely you can escape. Now, it does seem that Autosave offers a way around this, as there appears to be a new autosave with each ocean screen. Still, there may not be enough warning for a new player who doesn't necessarily know to expect the shark.
b) The overall day/night cycle time limits are disabled (if that option is chosen); however, there are some other shorter time limits that may still be issues for some. I'm not talking about obvious threats like the ogre or the troll, as the ability to escape from those is usually feasible (though getting stuck in a corner in both cases could be an issue). I'm talking more about becoming exhausted by swimming in the ocean and, particularly, running out of breathable air in the whale's mouth:
i) In regards to swimming, while you do receive one warning, if you got lost at sea (fairly easy to do if you don't swim straight out to Genesta's island) you probably couldn't get back to shore in time. Even Autosave may not work here, as it appears to use a new autosave slot for each ocean screen you enter.
ii) The whale mouth is particularly insidious as you get very little warning of the danger at all. In fact, the first time I played just now with dead ends disabled I somehow seemed to run out of time too quickly in the whale and had to restore to a location before getting swallowed. If this time limit will remain, more warning for a new player is important.
2) On the other hand, it is impossible to see several death scenes if you disable time limits (specifically, getting killed by the zombies, and, of course, running out of time altogether). I know not everyone cares, but players may want to be informed of that.
3) One thing that might be particularly concerning to new players is that the introductory statement, if you choose to disable dead ends, doesn't in any way explain that there are still many ways to die in the game. This could come as a particular shock to a player mainly used to adventure games with a "mortality failsafe" policy (i.e. it is not possible to die in that game, essentially the policy classically associated with most Lucasarts adventure games). I'm not saying that I myself only want to play adventure games with "mortality failsafe." (I actually enjoy both kinds.) It's just that there are some players who expect it.
4) Aside from my feedback, I had a couple of questions:
a) Did you deliberately remove any possibility of Lolottte's goons waking up? I never saw it happen even when dead ends were enabled.
b) I was just wondering if you were planning on placing the random Sierra game plugs in that message in a bottle eventually. I really enjoyed that part of the original game.
Thanks again for all the work you put into the game and letting me enjoy it again.