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So to summarise what people have been saying...

It seems that the consensus is that having too few hotspots is a more likely hotspot than too many.

Gravity - I'm really not a fan of generic messages myself, and as I'll be writing the interactions, they should be easy enough to avoid  8)  At least, if there are generic messages in the game, you'll all know to blame me now.  :

My eyes only bled a little  8)

Looks interesting.  I think the limited colours give it an eerily alien style.  I'll definitely be playing this one when it's released.

I pay per minute â€" just like most people.

I thought most people these days paid a flat monthly fee - surely it's not just in the UK that this is the standard?

Ryan doesn't want too many hotspots because he's our programmer and it will mean more work for him! 

But strangely, in all the discussions about the game's layout and design, I don't think we have talked about it much on our own forum.  Weird (and probably my fault for not having time to do the writing much recently.  Real life can be so time-consuming sometimes!) 

If you're dealing with a comedy, then every hotspot is a potential joke, so the more the merrier (until you run out of jokes).
If not, then I agree with what been said about a laboratory having much more hotspot then a corridor, but I find 6-10 hotspots a reasonable average.
Another point of consideration is who is your target audience, the more casual gamers you want, the less hotspots you should put...

Good points.

It's not an all-out comedy, but has a lot of comedy elements. 
I'd say we're aiming more at the middle ground adventure game market (possibly up to hardcore adventure gamers) - everyone on the project is a big adventure game fan with many years of puzzle-solving behind them, so I can't imagine any of us wanting to make a game that we wouldn't enjoy ourselves - so it's hopefully going to be somewhere between the style of Monkey Island and Broken Sword.

Thanks for your comments.

For obtuse reason you still have to register on the site however,

Why are they doing this? This is a major barrier to spreading the game.

Aside from that, does this chapter actually have puzzles in it?

No idea about the registering thing I'm afraid, as they count me as "press" (!), I've just been emailed a direct download link.

There are indeed real puzzles in this one - not sure how many yet, but it is a proper adventure game whereas the first episode was really just an introduction to the plot.

You'll probably get more from this episode if you're familiar with KQV, I think.

I should probably mention that we're using a multi-level interaction system similar to that in Jolly Rover - i.e. the cursor will indicate whether anything new can be gleaned by looking / interacting with an object a second, third or whatever time.

My main concern is the player spending too much time on things that aren't actually going to achieve anything useful, but with the game world still feeilng fully fleshed out.

Thanks for your comments so far, they've been helpful.  8)

This is an issue we're currently looking at with the Journey of Iesir development - in a typical location, how many hotspots do you need to make the game feel immersive without becoming over fussy?  A bare location with nothing to do is boring, but having hundreds of things to click on can feel overwhelming and frustrating, particualrly when the action is not important to progressing the storyline or solving puzzles.

So... how many hotspots do you think are a good baseline?  I'm tending to think 6-10 is a reasonable figure, but I'd be interested in everyone else's thoughts (especially as I'll be writing all the interactions for them, so I hope no-one suggests 20+ per location!  )

It's got some nice features, and the option to turn off the narrator voice is very welcome.  I don't think this will turn into a KQ version of what Tales of Monkey Island became for the MI series anytime soon though. 

Impressive backgrounds, though I'm not quite sure how well the character sprites go with them (are they final versions?).  I look forward to this one's release.

The graphical style reminds me of Sam and Max: The Animated Series! 

Looks like a very interesting project, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

Congrats on the release!  Looks terrific.

Another bump... To happily announce I'm finally done with implementing all the new content. We just need this weekend or so to polish the new dialogs and a few rough edges.

Glad to hear it's nearly ready! 

Great, now it sounds like the entire purpose of this post is to attack my own game. Hmm... 

It's a cunning plan - we now all feel compelled to defend it! 

Elvis?!?! 

Where??!!?

*cough*

"Sanctuary" might already be taken.

*cough*

Who said that? ¬¬

Is it?  Sorry!  I did a search of the forums and only found someone back in 2003 talking about making a game with that name though - ?

Well, I might end up sticking with 'Shelter', then. I thought about 'Sanctuary', but that seems to have a bit of a religious connotation to it (is that just me?) that would feel out of place in the story.

I dunno... it could be, I wouldn't have thought people would necessarily think of it having a religious connotation, but I can see why they might, I suppose.

I think "Sanctuary" would make a better title than "Shelter", but I don't know if that would really fit with how your plot unfolds?  Maybe with an appropriate adjective indicating whether it truly ends up being a sanctuary or not?

(If not... "False Sanctuary" might not be a terrible name... or then again maybe it is!  )

Horror games aren't really my thing, but I like the graphical style.

Completed it, loved it, reviewed it.

http://captaind-pc-gaming.blogspot.com/2010/08/freeware-adventure-game-review-journey.html