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That's some nice pixel art there. Great details
The latest background has less generic textures also, which is an improvement.

Thanks for the kind words, everybody! They're a real inspiration injection!

Have you been inspired by Simon Stalenhags art for the visual style/setting of the game?

I'm not gonna pretend I haven't looked at and to a degree studied Stålenhags art, like most contemporary digital painters I guess, and when you paint sci/fi-landscapes in a distinctly nordic light the association is inevitable...

The particular stretch of road in the top image is the highway leading from Göteborg to my former hometown Uddevalla, by the way

[The team]

AI was embedded everywhere. In our cars, in our homes. In the clothes we wore. For some of us, even inside our own bodies.

Dreading the Singularity, mankind abruptly put an end to AI. The result was a worldwide technological collapse.

Generations later, Vera, a federal homicide detective is sent to rural outpost Nordsund to investigate a string of murders.

Vera soon finds herself pulled into an invisible war about technology and religion. While some want to awaken the Singularity, seen as a last deity in a godless world, others are vehement technophobes.

Whispers of a Machine will feature handpainted 640x360 graphics, an exciting story with existential twists, and multiple endings.

Visit the Steam page and put it on your wish list!

The team
Petter Ljungqvist (The Samaritan Paradox), Writing, Art
Joel Staaf Hästö (Kathy Rain), Writing, Programming
Jacob Lincke, Music and Sound Effects
Pontus Lund, aka StillInThe90s (Camp 1), Additional Animation
Ivan Ulyanov, Portrait Art
Dave Gilbert, Voice-over Direction

The game will be published by


Thanks for checking out this thread! Please write a comment and share your thoughts, or lack thereof.

Of course you're coming, Esseb! And bring some board games in case it will rain.

[first week of August]

You're all awesome.

Yup!

Okay, just thought I could bump this ever so slightly. Not that I need definite answers yet... or maybe ever, but a general idea of the attendance would be nice.

I think the first week of August is pretty much set in stone by now, given the poll result and also what I said about the weather.

To reiterate; accommodation is free this year, which means if you book a flight early on, this could be a really cheap vacation in what may be one of the most beautiful areas of the world. Trust me, I've been around the world a fair bit

I've had my doubts regarding your games, Icey, but a lot of that art is actually really good. Great improvement.

Drop the kid off at the Kennel. It'll be fine.

We can't do that in Sweden, what with the socialist regime and all their "rules"

Alright, this is slightly beside my point about self-referencing jokes in adventure games, but anyways:

Arguments that are against poor execution, rather than the form itself, are naturally acceptable, but saying 'relying on tropes' is akin to saying 'relying on devices and motifs' which is the backbone of all creative work. It seems as though 'trope' is conflated with 'cliché', which is incorrect.

Hm.
I'd say tropes and clichés both refer to stuff that's been done so many times it's readily recognisable (unless you get your definition from TVtropes.com, in which case 'trope' means every little single thing that has ever been said or written in any work of fiction), with the difference that 'cliché' bears a distinctly negative connotation, whereas 'trope' sounds more neutral. But whatever demotes a trope into a cliché is kind of subjective, so yeah, this is borderlining hairsplitting.

I think it's perfectly valid to say that your game or story or whatever shouldn't rely entirely on tropes - arguing the oppposite, and saying that every story can be deconstructed into tropes - is like saying all books fundamentally consist of words and letters, so therefore nothing can ever be original.

That's different to saying that stories can't have tropes - now that would be a bit snobbish. Most great stories share basic story elements.

Anyhow, if my first criticism was interpreted as a direct jab at Gibbous, then apologies to Mr Underhill. I guess I assumed that the "I'm supposed to bother you, this is an adventure game" comment was more of a demo gimmick than an indication of what most of the gameplay will look like. In that case, the demo and project over all looks so stellar I think he'll survive that piece of honest feedback.

My girlfriend starts working after that, which means we'll have nobody to take care of our child from then on.

All of July and week 1 of August is pretty much the window I can give.

September is sadly not an option for me. While teachers get nice and long vacations, we can't really play around much outside of those.

Cool to see such positive reactions to returning to Orust, Sweden

So to summarise Andail's offer for those not in the know, he is suggesting he host Mittens at his family's summer cottage on the island of Orust, close to Gothenburg, Sweden.  this was the location of Mittens
#2 in 2003, although the cottage has been refurbished since then.  Gothenburg has two airports, and is accessible for quite cheap from most of Europe.

In addition to what AGA said:

* The cottage+extra cabin have room for maybe 10 people to sleep relatively comfortably. That's with some extra mattresses squeezed in. The rest will have to sleep in tents, which I'll do personally.

* Everything is basic modern standard except there's no shower, which means we'll just use the wash basin, or the ocean. If we end up doing Gothenburg city, we could even visit my apartment, if only to clean our filthy selves. If you're super picky there's even the option of booking a hostel room (â,¬70 for a double room) in nearby town of HenÃ¥n.

* There's a direct bus from Gothenburg to the cottage that takes some 60-90 minutes or so depending on traffic. I'll probably time my driving up there with the first batch of travellers, so some 3-4 people can go in my car.

* There's a camp site kiosk a 15 minutes' walk from the cottage, and then large supermarkets 10 mins by car/bus, so that shouldn't be a problem. The liquor shop is equally distant.

* We'll all partake in the time-honoured Mittolympics, with fun events such as archery and ring tossing.

Now, I'd recommend going there in the first week of August. That's the latest I can go myself, and since summer weather in Sweden is fickle at best, it's wise to skip as much as possible of June and July. I don't personally mind going earlier, but then we can probably expect worse weather.

Let me know if there's more you need to know.

I'll just throw my cottage on Orust into the mix for the heck of it. We've already been there once (or twice actually , for some), so that kind of goes against the basic mittens tradition of visiting new places, but it has lots of advantages:
* Free housing
* No need to book anything in advance
* Good connections for most Europeans (practically free flights from London with a bit of planning, for example)
* Beautiful scenery with beaches and nature and all that crap, but also close to Gothenburg

If we end up doing a caribbean mittens, I'll even consider having an alternative meeting there anyways.

I don't know if criticizing something equals dissuading someone from doing something. Everything works if it's done well.

There are examples of really good 4th wall breaking in both literature and film, but mostly, I'd guess, in a more surrealist, Kaufman-esque kind of setting/story. If you want to have a discussion about the boundaries between reality and fiction, or a kind of layer-upon-layer type of storytelling, be my guest. I love meta or 'mise en abyme' stuff of various genres, e.g. House of Leaves and Being John Malkovich.

I guess I just find the comedy aspect of it heavily dated. I remember in the childhood of AGS, lots and lots of games tried to be funny (because early trendsetters like Larry Vales and Rob Blanc actually were funny (the game would tell Larry Vales stuff like "you can't interact with that x, it's as feature-less as you, Larry)) but then far too many games were made that had characters telling the player to stop clicking on them, or to joke about how big their pockets must be to hold so much inventory, or "if this was a Sierra game..." etc etc.

It was funny in Spaceballs where everybody would suddenly look into the camera, but yeah, dated is the word that pops up for me.

If I sounded harsh I certainly didn't mean to dissuade anyone from having a go at being funny - my point was just that comedy that isn't funny is kind of a pain in the arse, whereas other genres tend to be more endurable even if they're not perfectly executed.

Agree 100% about self-referencing jokes in adventure games, or other 4th-wall-breaking shenanigans. Not only is it poor game design, because you implement something you know is flawed and hope it's forgiven if you just acknowledge the flaw, but it's also lazy comedy writing because it's basically the same joke over and over again with slight variations.

Third, it ruins immersion because of said 4th-wall breaking.

Comedy is super hard, and really funny games are exceptionally rare gems today. The problem is that too many people think they're funny - based on feedback by parents and drinking buddies - and aren't proven wrong by a broader, objective audience before it's too late - and also because when comedy isn't funny it's just aggressively worthless, as opposed to e.g. suspense, which can mostly be endured just fine even if you're not biting your nails all the time.

Whispered World and its ilk annoy me so greatly in their attempts at humour it makes my soul decay. It's lengthy, repetitious and poorly delivered. Granted, I've only ever seen let's plays of them. 

While an awesome idea, this sounds pretty unlikely for me. I think I'll have to wait for another european mittens, frankly...

That's gorgeous art.

The plot sounds like the kind of urban fantasy my students love to read - is this a way to reach out to the young adult bracket?

This topic has been moved to Beginners' Technical Questions.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=53323.0

Just started playing it, and I'm enjoying it so far. I'll return later to give you more detailed c&c, but I have one bit of early criticism that I thought I should share:

Spoiler

So, the chalk puzzle. I managed to crack the puzzle, but when I tried it on the door, the crockery dealer told me "nobody likes a cheater". I had no idea what this was supposed to mean, until I realised the chalking had to be carried out really precisely. This is something you should almost consider patching up and fixing, because
1. I wasn't cheating, it was just my penmanship being a bit inexact. Being told I was a cheater just left me confused, and cost me lots of time trying to figure out what he meant. Once I knew what to look for, there wasn't any need for perfect lines; in fact, the puzzle can theoretically be solved without using the chalk at all.
2. It's super 4th-wall-breaking to have a game character tell me - inaccurately - that I am cheating. Maybe if I'd skipped using the blackboard altogether, but there's no way he could've told I wasn't doing it right from where he's sitting, let alone cared.
3. The puzzle is already on the difficult side, especially for being so early on, so if players decide to look up the solution you're probably not gonna win them over by forcing them to carry out a relatively menial task that they've already decided they're not willing to do.

Just my opinion. It's a really cool puzzle - the kind I like solving, and designing myself.
Ok, going back to the game now!

[close]

This isn't really my table - I likely won't even program my own games in the future - just wanted to say that I'm also willing to chip in if we need to pay someone to maintain AGS.

I do think it sounds a bit strange that there can't be a middle ground between $0 (which we pay now) and $50,000 (which is Dave's estimate), but whatever we decide to pay I'll pay my share.

Cheerio.

PS:
Also, a huge thank you to CW for everything he's done to this point!

I approve of this game.

It's cool that you're going down the "true" pixel art route - I'd do the same if I weren't so impatient when it comes to painting...