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Congrats! So... when is it coming out?

Then, some brave  bold developer will shatter the illusion with a game full of death and dying.

I am that brave developer that's going to give you just that game in a couple of weeks.

What made me fall in love with adventure games was that the gameplay mechanics weren't centered around motor skills: I didn't have to jump and shoot and rush to the finish line before the time runs out. I could go around exploring, talking to people and nabbing things whose primary function was not to kill. As luck would have it, my first adventure game was The Fate of Atlantis -- and one of the first tasks was to knock out a goon in a back alley -- but that is beside the point. It was still something different. Something completely unlike Mario -- one of those NES games that I never finished.
My second PC game was Little Big Adventure -- and boy was it a mixed bag. On the one hand, you had this grand adventure, lots of NPC's to interact with and beautiful lands to explore -- and then you had CHECKPOINTS! Death was frequent and the enemies plenty, heavily armed and unyielding -- so very often you found yourself repeating the same huge levels over and over again. Damn, I hated that game back then. It grew on me, there was just something about it -- and I did finish it -- but it was a tough one. Only last year did I learn that they used checkpoints instead of savegames because the game was originally being developed for the SNES. LBA2, with its proper savegame system, was a MUCH better experience. And yes, it does render autosaves kiiinda useless. But sometimes you forget to save in the heat of the fight -- say, during the final stage, rockets flying in your face from all sides. And then, when you've defeated the boss and walk over to the edge -- and walk right off of it, and fall into the lava below. To have the game autoload with Twinsen plumetting to his death, dying, then plumetting to his death again and dying, isn't just "kiiiinda useless"
Originally it was either technical limitations or coins that motivated game design choices. But ridiculous difficulty level has become something of a cult thing among gamers. A game that's a smooth ride -- one where you always know what to do next and you always have the upper hand over your enemies -- is easily dismissed by the hardcore gamers as "casual". To them, games aren't a way to relax. They're a challenge. Winning is not fun if it's not preceded by failing a thousand times. I kiiinda get it now, after completing Hotline Miami a bunch of times. That game made failure less of a deal. In other games, everything freezes, the screen goes red/b&w, cue dramatic music, and then, when the cutscene is over, the game asks whether you want to quit or try again. In HM, you die just like that, press R and go right back into action. I also liked how it challenged my usual approach to action games. I love to snipe my enemies from afar. Here, stealth gets you nowhere. The game awards you for going in, guns blazing -- or, better yet, playful peek-a-boos. But I'm not going to try Dark Souls now. Super Meat Boy - maybe. But only because I like learning the game mechanics. I like figuring out the patterns -- but I still suck at improvisation. And, even with all animal masks, the whole passwords and A+ on all levels, I still have butter-fingers.

Oops, my bad -- i actually meant "reflection" rather than "shadow", since it's only visible on the glass surface of the display window. I could've had it cast over the letters, too -- easily -- but thought it looked somehow nicer the way it does. Let's assume these are fluorescent letters, beaming with reflected light, shall we? This reflection is not a very visually complex thing, either: just a darkened version of the original sprite -- but having it follow and mimic Magenta's every move was tricky to script.

And I actually like the back alley being all dark, with no gradients. This location seems to thrive on contrasts -- and so the only light in that part are the two mindows.

I'm hard at work recording the sound effects. It's tricky when all you use is basic household items and various grunts -- but then again, you'd be amazed at the kind of sounds you can get from a bag of parboiled rice, or a bunch of old papers.

I've also been tweaking that wretched first location -- and it looks like... this one's a keeper!



I seriously like the brickwork in this one. And that display window doesn't look like a gaping hole of misery anymore. The place finally feels like it's breathing. Aaand then there's the dynamic character shadow.

Oh, I'm familiar both with Blomkamp's movies and Die Antwoord (of whom my girlfriend happens to be a fan). I also highly recommend "Zoo City", by Lauren Beukes (also a native of the RSA) -- a dark urban fantasy novel. There was a pretty awesome soundtrack for the book available for listening online, but it looks like the publisher took it down (probably when they noticed it being played on loop by me )

Oh, that trailer resonates with me on so many levels. I dabble in dystopian sci-fi myself, and that kind of disgruntled underdog type of hero, living in a world of technological advancements that either change nothing or change everything for the worse (the cig was a brilliant touch!), is exactly my kind of thing. I read the short story, too. I liked the stylized language, incorporating the tech terms in very inventive ways (I had to laugh at the "dongle"). And by the way, are you familiar with Afrofutirism? My only encounter with the aesthetic was the music of Janelle Monae, and it touches upon issues of white supremacism and slavery in the guise of flesh vs. machine, too.

I second that! If everyone casually did something like this when they're bored, the world would be so much more awesome.

Holy heck! It's almost like a two-episode combo!

As luck would have it, I replayed Fate of Atlantis just the other week, as well -- and agree about the Atlantis part. It's downright depressive: the color scheme, the music, navigating back and forth and back again between the samey rooms, all while dodging the nazis... What it was was one long key puzzle, which is my least favorite thing in adventure games (though, strangely enough, getting the stone keys' arrangement right was fun). Granted, in a game about an archeologist there's obviously going to be a lot of exploring to be done in dark depressive places -- but I liked the action and human interactions so much more.
Same reason why City was probably my last encounter with the Arkham franchise. It's just so dreary -- and so brown. And you can never just waltz in through the front door. No, you go round the back and sneak in through the basement window. And just when you think your caution gave you some advantage -- someone pulls a barrel of V out of their ass and kicks your butt. Paraphrasing the famous catchphrase -- "I'M BUTTMAN!" And those underground ruins... and sewers... Ugh... I love Batman -- but I guess I'll stick to the comics.
I guess what ultimately ruined "tomb raiding" for me was Far Cry 3 -- which was an insanely fun game as long as it let me play outdoors. But there's this dude that holds your friend captive and he'll let him go only if you get him this one thing from the ruins... and then this other thing... and another... "Oh, thanks! But I changed my mind and decided to kill you and your friend."
So now I stick to colorful games with lots of human interactions and dialogue -- such as Hotline Miami

Ah, The Killing Joke! When I read it, I wasn't even eleven yet -- but even then, as a kid, I knew this was something special. And that's what they should be making movies of. Yes, we know, Bruce's parents were killed when he was a kid, we don't need to hear the story over and over again in every single Batman flick -- or have a whole tv series now revolving around his teenage years! The 90's cartoon did it right, why can't anyone take a clue and give us a tv series instead of a movie. The Arkham games are actually a step in the right direction -- with an ensemble cast of villains all with their own little agendas. Gameplay-wise, they're a mixed bag -- fun fights, but the graphics are so depressively dark. It's so hard to find your way in most of the time -- and it's usually somewhere at the back, and hidden so that you can only see it from a very specific angle. And it seems everyone's got a vat of V at their disposal at any time. I'm an obsessive completionist, so I finished both Asylum and City, but I think that's it for me.
As for the Magenta comic -- yeah, it's my gift to her, and I doubt anyone else would even get most of the humor in it. Plus, it was a rushed thing, I only had a few afternoons to work on it and get it printed. It wouldn't be a bad idea to start a new comic about Magenta when I'm done with the game -- because I have PLENTY ideas, and to think that to make them into a game would take a year EACH is just scary. But who knows, maybe the game will become wildly successful -- and I'll have no other option than to get crackin'

Andrea: The thing is that the RGB magenta (as seen on your monitor) differs from the magenta ink used in print, in that the latter is warmer in tone. So, it's hard to reproduce pure CGI magenta in print using just the single ink. Hence the "unprintable".

Anas: That's what I was going for Not as powerful an effect as it would've been if I used green and red, but yeah, I liked the sharp, cartoon style contrast (Penelope Pitstop comes to mind).

Kasander: I developed Magenta as a parody of the superhero comics. I grew up reading those and the genre is still dear to me, but it's true that a lot of times the supers are the least interesting part of the story - even more so in the movies than the comics. Nolan's Batman, all the recent iterations of Superman and both cinematic incarnations of Spider-Man were terribly bland. So, very often, it's the villains that elevate these stories. Or the secondary characters (J. Jonah Jameson was epic!).
And yes, there is going to be a supervillain to match Magenta!

The past week's seen some further development of the game menus and a newly added dialogue tree -- with one dialogue option branching out into four, and those further branching out. Boring, right?

BUT just today I've reached a significant milestone! Finally... after many failed attempts... I have devised...

THE LOGO!!!

Oh, it definitely feels different -- not just by virtue of a different aesthetic, but the sideview results in a completely different gameplay experience than the topdown view. Though the way he plows through a row of enemies in the teaser -- and then the lightsaber execution -- definitely look familiar Still, if I were to compare it to anything, I'd say it looks more like Slain.
Also, how crazy does the gameplay get as his hallucinations progress? A couple of weeks ago I actually came up with an idea for a twisted remake of Mario, much in the vein of the later chapters of your game, where goombas would be walking heads or something and when you stomp them, they'd crack, squirting blood and brains. You can take that idea if you'd like, I doubt I'd do anything with it myself, anyway

Holy shiznit, how the hell did I miss this? It not only looks amazing (seriously, the graphics make me gasp in awe -- and weep in shame over my own artistic ineptitude), it also promises to be a lot of things that I'm looking for in a game. I love me some cyberpunk, I love the 80's -- and I love Hotline Miami! I really like the idea of the setting getting more trippy as the hero descends into hallucinatory madness. That's what I loved about the first part of HM (and was ultimately disappointed in how bland the ultimate explanation was). Also, do you have a musician in mind for the project or are you going to license tracks like Dennaton did for HM? One that instantly comes to mind for me is this -- always made me think of some techno version of Castlevania.

Insanity I'm all too familiar with -- but quality-wise, I tend to do the polar opposite. As a result of which my most recent MAGS entry turns one year old next month And still looks kinda meh.

And I, for one, was actually waiting for something new from you guys. Barely Floating was great -- and this new release delivers, as well. Loving the art direction, too. It makes me neon green with envy!

Now that's all fine and dandy -- but when, pray tell, are you going to release that talkie version of JACK, for which I almost tore my vocal cords?

This the second lo-res adventure game with isometric view in production that I've seen this week. I like - even more so since there's something very reminiscent of Little Big Adventure in the graphics, which is one of my all-time favorites.

[The tentative deadline: August 31, 2015]

It's been over month since the last update -- and I'll honestly and shamelessly confess that I spent most of that time playing Hotline Miami I finished it, then finished it again to get all the password letters. Then, as I kept on playing in the effort to gather all masks, with little success, I rage-quit, deciding life's too short to waste it like that, and rage-uninstalled the game. A few days later, I installed it again and stormed through it, finishing it, gathering all secrets and mosts of the masks in one sitting. Managed to get all masks this time. And then, when I got a B- on a level whose highscore I couldn't beat, before, for some reason I decided I surely could get an A+ if I tried -- on all levels!!! I was wrong... But that didn't stop me from trying -- cleared 8 levels with A+ so far.
But then I remembered there's a different game that needs some attention -- and once I sat down to work on it, it was hard to pull me away from it. I finished the boss battle sequence -- which I expanded beyond what I told you about last time. I made some fun cutscenes. And over this past weekend I finally fleshed out the checkpoint system with icons and captions -- including these:







Still some work left to do -- mostly with the audio editing. And that first room's background, which gets uglier every time I look at it But I'll get there!


The tentative deadline: August 31, 2015.

If I remember correctly, you need TWO people to initiate the override -- one for the room downstairs and one for the panel (the blue lights) located halfway between the first and second floor. To get to that one you need to jam the wrench in the elevator's mechanism as it travels between floors. If you haven't found the wrench, the worker crushed by the elevator has it -- go up with the elevator with one team member and then switch to the one that's on the ground floor to examine the body.

Thank you! And happy birthday to fellow Bloomsday birthday boy Wogoat!

I mentioned GameJolt earlier in this thread. They allow games that are still in development -- and I've put Magenta on there a while ago. You can post news items that appear on the main site's news feed to remind people of your game. If I remember correctly, you don't even have to have any downloadable builds on there. Hope that helps.