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[EDIT - good fun to be had by all, to the repeated cries of "rigged!" and "UK bias!" . Glad I didn't disgrace myself, managed to come second to the all-conquering Matt.Thanks guys and gals! Probably won't be able to join you very often, you I will when I can.]

Gonna try to join today - let's see if my kids remain occupied by their grandparents for long enough!

EDIT - good fun to be had by all, to the repeated cries of "rigged!" and "UK bias!" .  Glad I didn't disgrace myself, managed to come second to the all-conquering Matt.

Thanks guys and gals!  Probably won't be able to join you very often, you I will when I can.

@Mandle: I Don't see the point really, the demo is available for free and it has the 2-3hours already, so just play it and enjoy

My point was that you and your team could see some kind of monetary reward for a product that looks superior to many professional studio games. Also it would reach a wider audience as the majority of players are not interested in playing a game that they know will leave them hanging. It was just a suggestion of course... No stress no worries!

I did consider whether we could make this (which is part of what was going to be "Act I") into a standalone adventure, but decided it wasn't worth even discussing with the team too much.  I don't know how much time Marcus, who was writer before I joined, had spent on creating the overall story arc initially, but I do know that I spent many hours on the overall plot synopsis and making sure that each aspect, and each character, had a tangible meaning and importance in the game, along with trying to put across the message of a voyage of discovery for both Mikael as the player character and for the whole subcontinent of Iesir as a whole, which was (my understanding of) Dan's main vision for the game.  To try to condense this all down to what would have been probably about an eighth of the envisaged full game would have felt incredibly cheap on our part.

I think in some ways we were guilty of wanting perfection too much - at some points we should have said "hey you know what, this is really good, let's move on to another part" instead of always saying "this is really good, but how could we make it even better?", but trying to condense the whole package into a fraction of its original intention was not one of those mistakes.

We did of course consider episodic release, but we really wanted to make the complete game - and as the recent poll on my Troll Song dev blog has shown quite clearly, players much prefer this as well if it's even vaguely within the realms of possibility.  How many of us would have remembered classics like The Secret of Monkey Island, Zak McKraken, The Dig, Sierra's Quest games, or whatever, even half as fondly if they're been episodic?  Sometimes a studio / individual is pushed into using episodic or split release forms (including myself), but where a full game is possible, it's always preferable.  I would cite Ceville and the Tales of Monkey Island series as examples - in terms of overall quality they are rather similar, and of course if you put together all the episodes of ToMI there is much longer gameplay overall, but I remember Ceville much more fondly because it tells a complete story, along with being an insanely fun game.  (I'm not even factoring in the incredibly awful movement interface of ToMI!)

Sorry for rambling a bit but yeah, in the end we did discuss a couple of ideas and probably also had our own ideas for getting some money back - after all most of us have spent MANY hours on it - but in the end fidelity to the project itself turned out to be more important than earning something from an incomplete development.

In truth I think all of us hope that somehow it will become possible for us to get the funding needed and make this game, but considering even the likes of Bill Tiller have had difficulty crowd-fundraising the amount of money we would have needed for an adventure game, I don't think a Kickstarter is particularly feasible.  Among other things crowd-funding is something we have considered as a team, and put effort into properly costing the project, as well as assess the likely chances of a success.  I think we would be able to get a fair amount raised, but nothing like the amount we would need for 4 of us to work full-time on the project for a year, plus some part-timers, plus other expenses.

I'm incredibly sad that the demo is all people are going to see of this game , but it's still nice to have it actually out there and we can get some feedback on how much people enjoyed it.  Like many amateur dev teams we made many mistakes both as individuals and as a team, but hopefully the demo will show just how much potential was there, it just didn't all come together in the end.

Is it that SEGA game set on a space ship with DJs or something?  Can't remember what it's called.

I think you would enjoy The Marionette:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1228/

Congratulations to you and your other half mate!!

Since the database records whether a game includes voice acting, could this be added to the fields that can be searched for on the "Search By Category" page?

[EDIT]

Congratulations on the release!   Will give it a go when I get some time.

EDIT - okay I've given it a while, it's a short but enjoyable game and I suspect has more depth than I've seen so far.  Looked like it could have benefited from a little more randomness to the events.

Forcing the player to provide their own avatar graphic was a very odd choice.  The game will crash if you don't - to be fair the install instructions do make it abundantly clear that you need to do this, but not providing a generic image to make the game run properly without the player generating the image and saving it to the game's directory might put some players off.

But overall, interesting and thought-provoking simulation, albeit very short.  Impressive for a debut release!   I managed to win my first game, and produced a wonderful avatar for myself...

[How much quicker can the game be completed without the toilet humour?]

How much quicker can the game be completed without the toilet humour?

Might give this another play at some point.  Apart from the aforementioned toilet humour I really enjoyed it.

Return to The Planet of the Apes?

Great news!  Eric is a fantastic composer (and a jolly nice chap too )!

Don't you mean:

First place: 1 copy of Bad Rats
Second place: 2x copies of Bad Rats
Third place: 3x copies of Bad Rats

Nope and nope...

Okay so how long before you put a proper screenshot up?

Fashionista Extravaganza: Black is the new Black?

Black Cauldron?

@CaptainD about RoboKnight...

Oh dear! That screen awaken a memory about a game I used to play a lot! Had completely forgotten about it! Thanks for the wake up call! I just spent the last 2 days trying to figure out the name, found it a couple hours ago... and went down memory lane with a couple other games! Thanks! Even if I never even heard of RoboKnight before this!

Haha maybe we're both showing our age...

Well we do have sun here and volvo is no longer owned by swedes but i totally understand your way of thinking haha

Well I did learn to drive 20 years ago...

Speaking of cars some more, it grinds my gears that some people have their headlights on when it's a bright and sunny morning...

Are they Volvos, by any chance? I'm sure I'll be corrected but I heard Volvos always have their headlights in because they are from Sweden, where the sun don't shine.

Yeah I learned to drive in a Volvo, and you couldn't turn the headlights off.  Same for Saab I think.  Can't remember if it was only Swedish cars though.

As it's clearly an older game, perhaps Return of the Jedi?