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Spoiler

- The plot-point with red herring letters incriminating Bennett/Ray was the only weak story beat in the whole game (except maybe Batra doing his own burglary, though I could ignore that).  It seemed like a cop-out to have them both explained away as being planted by an eeeevil all-powerful organisation, with very limited reason except to add some suspense to the plot.  The story was strong enough that this could have been taken out entirely and replaced with a better reason for Ray to attack Bennett (on that point...)

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Spoiler

I don't think there are any letters incriminating Ray? And the notes/letters pointing suspicion at Bennett weren't planted by Antevorta, I don't think. "Don't trust the police" was probably planted by Ed, or if genuine it might have referred to the chief, who was involved in the conspiracy. And the "instructions" to get rid of the journalist turned out to be a personal letter to Bennett.

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Spoiler

Sorry, I meant the "get rid of the journalist" instructions - I assumed this was a letter from Antevorta.  There was that specific bit of evidence pointing at Bennett, so it could have been Ed who planted it, but I'm not really sure why he'd need to (there's not really any logic behind why he'd need to frame them once they got down to the vault already, as the murder was unplanned).

Always like a good that encourages speculation regardless - makes a change from most game plots

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[The Use of the Soundtrack:]

As I missed out on the Gemini Rue big box, I had get in on the ground floor with this one and am very happy I did!  So much to praise about the game and it's all been said, but the bit I was most impressed with was:

Spoiler

The Subway Map clue giving Ed away (and the reveal of why he chose the crappy apartment) - excellent plotting!  Love when a clue is hidden in plain sight like that.

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Would love to see a design document, though maybe that should wait to be a reward in a Kickstarter for the next game?   As a total AGS amateur, it's both impressive and daunting to see such a quality product.

Constructive feedback below in the spoiler-tags of some of the incredibly minor things that bothered me (or I didn't get!):

Spoiler

The Use of the Soundtrack: While there's some fantastic music here, a lot of the best tracks seemed to play over quick timed sequences (e.g. Anna's nightmares) or one-off dialogue sequences (e.g. lots of the main theme variations).  The problem was that much of my time in the game was spent in areas with some of the weaker tracks - especially the hospital.  As that location had so many rooms and so many puzzles throughout the whole game, with the same muzak every time, I kept having to mute the whole soundtrack to stop the repetitiveness.  I'm used to doing this in situations like the 'puzzle box' where I'm stuck doing a logic puzzle for far too long (due to my own stupidity in most cases!) but it's the first time I remember doing it in a game outside of that - especially in a game with a good soundtrack!  Thinking more about adding variety to the music in the areas where players will spend the most time would be great, but letting the music be muted without silencing the dialogue would be very welcome.

No compelling reasons to save the vault: Considering the middle part of the game seems to hinge entirely what to do with the vault research, this seemed very lop-sided.  As a player, we've already seen how the technology can cause worldwide panic, we've seen it kill a likeable character and we've heard many warnings about what it could do.  The only reason to save it is...SCIENCE!! (in the form of a one line comment about how it could be used for good).   If we'd seen any kind of potential positive impact of resonance, this would have been a much more thought-provoking decision.  It might have also made Ed's desire to save the research a bit more authentic (also, I didn't really understand why a rational guy like Ed trusted XI more than Morales.  As a "mathematical" thinker, it seemed odd he'd believe them whole-heartedly.  It didn't come up in my playthrough, but did they tell him Morales was a murderer? )

Minor Quibbles:
- The plot-point with red herring letters incriminating Bennett/Ray was the only weak story beat in the whole game (except maybe Batra doing his own burglary, though I could ignore that).  It seemed like a cop-out to have them both explained away as being planted by an eeeevil all-powerful organisation, with very limited reason except to add some suspense to the plot.  The story was strong enough that this could have been taken out entirely and replaced with a better reason for Ray to attack Bennett (on that point...)

- Ray seemed a bit of an afterthought compared to the other three; a bit like he was dropped in just to be a red herring and wasn't really fleshed out enough.  We don't really learn anything about him apart from his job and his only 'contact' is Ozzy, who was more of a wacky comic relief character like Saul/Tortoise who doesn't shed any light on Ray (unlike Reggie and the guys from the station, who helped humanise Bennett).  I kept thinking his "infiltrate the group" comment in the notes would hint at something bigger from him but it never came.

- Why is the bad guy always British? :p  I know Batra said his mother was from Newcastle, but I hope that wasn't an attempt at a Geordie accent!

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I remember looking forward to this game years ago - even have the trailer somewhere on my computer

Eager to try it over the weekend!

Very pretty game!

Hope the story and dialogue will love up to it - right now the plot sounds a little Futurama-y, so I look forward to hearing more details.

I have no social life, that's how.  :'(

Also, human sacrifice.

What I'm taking from this tutorial is...kill your friends?  Might try that if I get a game looking as nice as this in such a short period of time

I hope the owl is Cedric 

From a player's perspective, I'd think it's less about throwing in a gimmick to allow you to reuse the same backgrounds:

- Rely on a huge number of inventory items to do a more object-centric game
- Add more characters and more detailed dialogues for a story-driven game
- Code some mini-games, so people will spend more time on puzzles

Of the two ideas, I'd be more interested in playing #1, as #2 just seems very "been there done that" (and it'd be hard to live up to DOTT). 

I actually take the opposite approach on the graphics. I think the simplicity involved was what made it all the more interesting.

I agree with this - having a stick-figure hero was a great move.  It helps quick-start your imagination more than a detailed sprite would have done.

Sorry for bumping this, but I've been fiddling around with the demo-game and re-reading the documentation but I'm not sure how to deal with this (seemingly basic) question:

How can you call a function after a user has clicked on a specific hypertext link?

I've got the pages set up on a GUI button, that the player needs to click through; once they reach the relevant entry, I need to add an inventory item.  As you call all the Hypertext pages with the 'Add' function at the room load, I'm not sure what you'd use to indicate exactly when a user has reached the right link? I'm sure it's straight-forward but I've hit a stumbling block as a beginner. 

Any help appreciated

I won! I am THE TARNISHED HALO. 

Me too!  Not sure if it counts as a "win" though - would be good to know how many possible endings there are.

Enjoyed this a lot, even if I'm not 100% sure of all the story details. 

Very swish - haven't played too much as I don't want to spoil the full the game, but I love the interface (especially the 'HELP' button and the Save/Load phone screen).

Only pet peeve is the seemingly unskippable dialogue - especially since you can still see the hotspot names appearing when you hover the mouse around during the them.

You might want to watch this video that explicitly compares Clock Tower to an existing AGS game (Deity): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0gAPN_ulBic

Considering this game features two of my pet peeves (silly fantasy character names & Myst-style 'figure out this machine' puzzles), I wasn't expecting much but this turned out to be hugely enjoyable from start to finish  

The retro feel worked, the writing was funny without being too smug or knowing and the interface was very polished (despite using the stock Sierra GUI options, it made for a very fluid game - compared to the likes of KQ5).

There were a few puzzle solutions I was sad to see missing:

Spoiler

I thought the best way to get protected from the glass cutting the heroine's hand would be to use one of the gauntlets from the armour but that didn't seem to be an option.  Then I tried using the glass on the rug as that would be thicker material, which didn't work but produced my favourite 'wrong answer' response of the game

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I only have two minor criticisms and they both concern the story:

Spoiler

a) The tone-shift is crazy extreme.  It starts with an incredibly po-faced earnest heroine vowing to save her sister, then shifts into goofy wisecracking mode as soon as she gets to the dangerous fortress.  As the real game story was just "get this Macguffin", it was pretty jarring.
b) You don't learn anything about the story beyond the intro/ending - you get told everything you need to know in the opening scene and that's that.  None of the books tell you anything about the land, nothing in the enchanter's possessions gives you any idea about his motivations etc  - you don't even get to confront him at the end, which is a bit anti-climactic.  

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Still very keen to play any future games (or a sequel) as I know they'll be quality works!

It's funny that you ask because only recently I built this very same system as an experiment. You can see it in action in my game 15 Minutes.

I'm not sure how good your scripting is, but if you say you cannot do much beyond the basics yet I would strongly recommend not trying to build a similar system by yourself.

Wow, that's very similar to what I was envisioning (Tex Murphy-esque dialogue choices with a Mass Effect twist) - love the Con-Flo thing you put together too.  I've got a bit of a disdain to the usual "ask everyone everything" approach as tends to turn the characters into just ATM machines giving out information machines instead of money.   I'm hoping it'll help give interaction with the characters a bit more gravitas.

That being said, the system I made is pretty modular and can easily be ported to another game, so if you really want a dialogue system with a timer I could certainly help you set it up.

That would be incredibly awesome - as I said, I am relatively inexperienced, so I doubt I can redesign an interface from scratch (I think I'd end up having to create a GUI for every single separate dialog in the game, which would get very messy) but I'm patient enough to tinker around to get a half-decent result.   

Will leave some space in the credits for you if you can lend a hand

Very much an amateur when it comes to doing anything beyond the manual basics, so hoping some kind folk could give me a steer in the right direction, as I couldn't find anything on this in the forum search.

My ideal dialog system for a game I'm working on would have all the dialog options run with a time limit - i.e. the user gets to choose from multiple responses A/B/C OR let the time run out (which would count as 'no response', which would impact the dialogue accordingly).

Is it possible to overlay dialog on a GUI with a timer?  Or would it require a completely new GUI that would bypass the dialog options entirely (with buttons representing the A/B/C/D dialog options)?  As my design document as quite dialog heavy, I'm trying to work out how to code this as 'elegantly' as possible.

Any help would be appreciated!

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but does anyone have a mirror of this file (and the demo)?  Didn't realise AGS could do this and its given me some new inspirations.

Wow - just finished playing this and had to write my words of praise.

Looooved the art-style and ambience of the world.  I hope there'll be a sequel (or especially a prequel) on the horizon.

The only thing I could recommend would be something smoother for the "present" option on the inventory - I didn't think it was very intuitive to have to select the inventory item, then click "present".  That and a kickass soundtrack - if I had my recording equipment with me I'd volunteer myself but someone more talented can surely step in to help.

I always thought of QFG3 as the black sheep of the franchise.  That one seemed to either throw you into a situation with absolutely nothing to do (particularly wandering the plains) or force you along a LSL5-style pre-ordained path with absolutely no freedom involved. 

I have a fairly detailed design document for 75% of my take on 'Leisure Suit Larry 8: Lust In Space'.

Unfortunately, the Larry games (even the early SCI ones) have the kind of art I could never replicate, so I'll never get the chance to work on it

That was a pretty fun demo.  The only problem I had with it was the annoying number of hotspots which meant nothing and the dreadful response "Let's do something more important". 

Also, there is a misspelling of "cannon" as "canon" that should be fixed.  Would like to play the full game though