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Sorry, I didn't know what OROW stood for.  But I still can't see the point of trying to complete a game in one week, expect as a practice exercise.  Even in a short game, I'd like to see some effort put into it to make it good.

And I still don't like the quadruple-amputee style of sprite drawing.  But, to each his own.

I have a few comments:

The graphics aren't bad per se, but the two main characters have no arms or legs.  You could say that their lab coats cover their legs, but what about their arms?  Do they both have their hands in their pockets?  Research girl's lack of arms makes her breasts look like arms crossed against her chest.  And the lack of legs makes it look as though you are too lazy to draw a walk cycle.

Using text for the cursors, especially at such a small size, seriously detracts from the game because you have to stop and read each cursor as you cycle through them.  Graphical cursors, even badly drawn ones, can be recognized at a glance.  I like text games, but if you're going to use cursors, then you have to make them graphical.

And I didn't find any of the jokes funny.

This wouldn't be bad for a first game.  But you have at least thirteen other games listed under your name.  I haven't played any of the others, but I would expect more from a game fourteen.  Not necessarily in length, although the game was quite short; I think I finished it in under fifteen minutes, and I'm rather slow.  I think it takes more skill to write a short story than a novel, because you have to grab the reader in just a few pages.  This game simply didn't grab me.

Something that most LucasArts games had was quick access to the actions through keyboard. Pressing U for Use and that sort of things. I don't know if this game has it (haven't played it, honestly) but it's a good thing to be aware of.

I just tried them.  The only keyboard shortcuts that work are the Sierra ones, e.g. F5 to save the game, F7 to restore, etc.  The Lucas Arts ones don't seem to work.  That would be a nice addition to the game, though.

The game looks interesting.  I haven't finished it, but I've played it as far as

Spoiler

finding the spellbook and figuring out which ingredients to use.

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I have one comment, though:  I've never played Lucas Arts games, so I've never used a Lucas Arts interface.  But I don't like the interface in your game as much as the standard Sierra interface.  The Sierra interface is more convenient to use, first, because you can right-click through the cursors, and, second, becuase it is easier to try an inventory item on more than one thing.  In your interface, to try an inventory item on more than one thing you have to click on "Use," click on the inventory item, and then click on the room each time you want to try to use the time.  In the standard Sierra interface you only have to go through that once, as the inventory cursor persists.  The same is true for the other cursors.  In your interface, the cursor reverts to "Walk" each time you use it.  Also. I like the graphic cursors better then the crosshairs with text at the bottom of the screen.

But overall it looks like a good first game.

I'm not really sure what's going on in this game.  I certainly don't see anything that makes it a new genre.  A new game mechanic, or unique type of puzzle, maybe, but that doesn't really make a whole genre.  Maybe I just didn't get far enough.  I couldn't even kill the dog thing.

Shooting missiles makes them fly down and slightly left no matter where I aim them.  This is due to the "Flux" I'm told. (If that's what makes it a new genre, then playing baseball in a stiff wind would be a new sport.  )

You really do need to get to the end of the game for this to make sense.  When I started playing the game, I didn't get right away how it was a new genre.  It just seemed like some really strange game.  But as I got into it some more, certain things started falling into place.  The ending really blew me away.  The ending is rather subtle, until you think about it some more, and then it makes everything else in the game make sense.

Think of it this way:  Suppose you're playing baseball in a stiff wind.  Someone tells you that it's a new sport, but you don't understand what he means.  But, when you get to the end of the baseball game, you discover that the wind isn't really the wind at all; the wind is actually a Scrabble board, and the baseballs are actually Scrabble tiles.  So you weren't actually playing baseball at all, you were playing Scrabble!

I know that this probably makes less sense than anything else posted on this thread, but that's the best way for me to explain it.

After I sent in my $20 payment, you sent me an e-mail with a bunch of different versions of Flux World, including one called "Director's Cut."  Does the Director's Cut contain any extra scenes that were edited out of the final version?

I've played the game through to the end, and I have to say that the release version is a huge improvement over the beta version.  In the beta version, the second half of the game never got a lot of testing and had numerous bugs.  In this version those bugs have all been fixed.  Fluxmaster obviously put a lot of work into this and tested the whole game thougoughly, not just the first half.

Another thing that I noticed was that there were a few animations that were added to the first half of the game that weren't there in the beta version.  They make the game more understandable for the player.  For a game that can be somewhat cryptic, those added animations certainly helped.  Also, in both the first and second half, when a conversation occurs between NPC's of different tribes, the text window makes it clear who is speaking, and the color of the caption bar corresponds to the color of the tribe.  This feature was also not present in the beta version, and it also makes the game easier to understand.

I definitely recommend this game to anyone looking for an interesting, original game to play.

A few things I want to point out, though:

In the first half, there's still one room where the character sprites can walk a couple of pixels above the horizon.  I suppose you can attribute that to the influence of the Flux, if you wish.

When the player clicks on the "About" button he gets a message that gives copyright information but also supplies the URL of the website to go to to pay for the shareware.  However, if the player clicks the "About" button at the end of the game, it only gives copyright information; it doesn't supply the URL to pay for the game.  I would think that most players would want to pay after finishing the game, so it's strange that the URL is missing at the one time that it would be most useful.  I sent my payment, anyway, but I still thought that was strange.

I noticed a new feature added to your website that allows your home page to be translated into other languages.  However, no matter which language I choose, the final sentence, "May the Flux be with you!" gets translated as "The Flux be with you during the month of May!"  I don't think that that was what you intended.

[T]he room with the man behind the desk is the help screen; you are taken to that room whenever you click on the Help button.

But only in the first half of the game.

It sounds like an interesting game.  I'm intrigued by the idea of Belief Points.  I assume that you get these by picking up objects, etc.  Do they represent the players level of belief in himself, in his abilities?

Personally I prefer option 2.

As someone who has played through the game with the original graphics, I can say that playing the game felt like trying to solve a puzzle where I was never really sure why I was doing it.  Don't get me wrong--the game was very interesting to play.  I think I have figured out some of the symbolism--at least Fluxmaster tells me I have.  But there were a lot of times where I figured out by trial and error what to do without really understanding why I did it.  If better graphics could make the game more understandable, then the game would be a lot more enjoyable to play.

The game definitely is playable the way it is now.  But in its current form, it's more of a puzzle to solve than a story to experience.  So option 1 is definitely okay, but option 2 is better.

I always like it when people come up with new, original icons for look, talk, walk, etc.  If you could come up with icons for save, restore, and exit, rather than just text, that would be very nice.

People often complain about the non-phonetic nature of English spelling, but the way that English is spelled helps people see the connection between words.  For example, the word "draught" is usually spelled "draft" in the United States.  Although "daft" is more phonetic, spelling it "draught" helps show the connection between that word and the word "draw."  As another example, the word "pharmacy" in Spanish is "farmacía."  Although the Spanish spelling is more phonetic (fonético), Spanish speakers sometimes confuse the English word "farm" with the Spanish word "farmacía", even though their meanings are totally unrelated.

The game looks interesting, but I have a few comments:

The sprites look as though you drew then on paper and cut them out with scissors.  You ought to clean up the white aura around the sprites.

The use of the skateboard gives me the impression that you didn't want to draw a walk cycle.  Even if you think the skateboard fits in with the character of the player character, you could still draw animations of the player, say, picking up the skateboard when he enters a building.  The way you have it, the player even skateboards over the couch in his livingroom.

To talk to the old man, you have to use the hand icon rather than the talk icon.

The help messages don't change even after you have completed the action that the message tells you to do.  It would be better to make them dynamic.

The menu bar does not run all the way across the top of the screen.

Your game shows a lot more effort than some first games, but I would fix these problems.

The graphics are nice.  The thing that most struck me was the first-person viewpoint.  It reminds me of the old illustrated text adventures of the early 1980's, before the advent of the AGI interface, but with mouse input.  Kind of retro and modern at the same time.

Sorry, I forgot to look at the readme file.  I got it, now.  I like the fact that the game uses the arrow keys to move around; I always liked that better than the walk cursor.  In general, the interface is nice, but I think the action to escape the buttler was counterintuitive.

Upstairs?  How do I get there?  I could find no staircase, elevator, escalator, or ladder.  I tried climbing the walls, standing on the furniture, climbing on the roof, but I can't get anywhere.

I tried to play this game, but I could only access two rooms, the first room you see when you enter the mansion and the yellow room to the west.  There was only one object that I could click on that resulted in any action, the bed in the first room.  Clicking on the doors did not open them, so I could not go through the doorways.  Clicking on the bed resulted in death.  You post two screenshots of rooms that I have not seen in the game, so obviously I must be missing something.  So how do I get out of those two rooms?

EDIT:  Changed "sofa" to "bed."

Okay, I've finished the game.  Very interesting and original.  I've never played anything quite like it before.

After seeing the ending scene in context (and talking to the shopkeeper), I think that I have an idea about what the symbolism of the game is.  Should I mention it here or in a private e-mail?

At the end (and I'm assuming that this is the end this time, although there was one false ending before), the game asks me whether I want to quit or keep playing.  If I choose to keep playing, I can't leave the hardware store or do anything else.  So is that really the ending, or is there more stuff to do in this game?

Here is my latest bug report:

In the first half of the game, at one point the Telmorg cursor came up instead of the right crosshairs cursor.

In the second half of the game, there were several instances where a paticular sprite appeared twice in the same scene where one would expect to see it only once.  This occured in various scenes and with various sprites.  It looks like some clean-up code is missing.

At what appears to be the end of the game, a message comes up telling me that I have satisfied all the gods and asking me whether I want to go home.  When I answer yes, the game returns to the original scene, with the player in bed in his room, perhaps waking up from a dream.  If I hadn't read your comments posted on this thread, I would think that that was the end of the game, since it seems like a reasonable way to end the game, with the player returning home.  Perhaps the whole thing was nothing but a dream.  But since I had discovered that bug that prematurely allows the player to walk south from the bedroom to the hardware store, and you confirmed that the game ends in the hardware store, I'm assuming that the player is supposed to be able to walk south from that scene, but that that functionality was broken by some other change to the code.

Okay, that took care of that problem, but I still cannot finish the game.  After visiting the home of the Purple Tribe, I am still stuck in the room with the four trees lined up in a row and cannot leave the room.

Okay, I finally got the Silver Mirror and that thing that I needed to start my own business, but now I'm stuck in Melloria and the game won't progress any further.  I can trade with the other tribe over and over again, but nothing else happens.