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Loving it so far -- although I haven't gotten very far, got hopelessly stuck

Spoiler

in the apartment, and I can't get the key from under the bed nohow. Help!

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The backgrounds are really stylish, with rough contours and toned down color palette, and the music's really climatic. I'm really curious how this jazzy story relates to the eponymous ancient aliens

I agree with Andail, the puzzles seemed a little too generic, and I had a hard time picking up some items (the fuse and bottle opener), had to click a bunch of times before he stopped giving me the the "no can do" response. BUT to me both games were so much more about the ATMOSPHERE.

The Reaper: Ben's artworks get more and more mind-blowingly gorgeous with each project, and this one, with all the lime-greens and shattered class/crystals (including the game menu and the cursor), might be his finest to date. The main character seems like a departure from Ben's usual -- the quirky hot babe True, there were some similarly dark overtones in PISS, but the girl was wahaaaay too hot for a war veteran Oh well, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief if I like the feel of the story The bottom line is, I'd definitely love more of this.

The Rebirth: I'm usually not a fan of serious stories or contemporary settings -- but I really enjoyed the main character's evolution/devolution. He started off as a strong, composed, no-nonsense type with a deep sense of responsibility -- yet in the face of a tragedy it took very little to make him SNAP. I really liked that particular puzzle, it was perhaps the most intuitive thing to do, I didn't even hesitate there.

Oh, this one was an unexpected gem The grim humor took me by surprise -- but even when I got the hang of it and tried my best (or worst, depending on how you look at it), I wasn't as evil and amoral as the Bunny... ouch! I mean Rabbit! -- would've liked me to.

Also, absolutely, loved the graphics, especially the rural area. My favorite was the tree -- such a simple technique, yet so detailed.

I remember someone gave it to my as a gift few years back and I put it away "to read later" cause it wasn't Discworld. Great!

Big mistake! I have a collection of ~40 novels by Pratchett -- and Good Omens is in my Top 3. Though most of his non-Discworld works are young adult novels -- including the Nome Trilogy (a.k.a. Bromeliad Trilogy), the Johnny Maxwell trilogy, etc. -- they are all quite intelligent and funny.

"American Gods" was a great read, too.

I managed to stay strong in the face of all the temptations and only got FEZ (finished the basic run in two manic days) and Primordia (still on hold, need to do some actual creative work before I indulge myself again, but really looking forward to it).

Oh well, too many games, too few hours in a day

Speaking of FEZ -- or Phil Fish, to be more precise -- here's an eerily familiar-looking fellow. Who, might I add, has pictured himself thusly many times before this particular instance, dating back to June 2008. Hm...

I also heartily recommend the comic!

Me too! I've beem trying to stay away from games for a while, reading a lot -- but once I started playing Fez in the evening yesterday, I went on till 3:40 am. Great game, btw.

So... what did you guys get so far/planning to buy? I bought Primordia and Fez, just now -- and I think that's it.

Speaking of reputations... Ben, stop complaining and just bless us with yet another game featuring a hot/sexually neutral young lesbian/girl of unspecified sexual orientation and her quest for meaning in life/love/peace of mind, will ya?

Back on topic, though - Jaffles makes a good point there: too many games, too little time. It's not that I don't WANT to play all the wonderful games here. It's just that work, my own creative endeavors -- aaaand right also pollen allergy -- leave me pretty worn out and brain dead. Doesn't help in solving puzzles I'm not even going to check out the Steam discounts, not just yet, anyway -- because in the past 12 months there has been such a flood of great titles that I wouldn't know where to start: Dishonored or Hitman? Max Payne 3 or Bioshock 3? Mortal Kombat, maybe? Fez, definitely. It doesn't help that I'm a crazy completionist, either (maxed out on Just Cause 2, at 99.95%) And then, when I'm done, I kick myself for playing instead of doing something creative. Too many things to do, too few hours in a day!

Thanks for the great insights, Ben My problem is I'm not the most outgoing or sociable person, even online -- so I have a hard time contacting new people trying to plug my products. I can't REALLY complain -- I might be very poor at marketing, but even despite the lack of pre-promotion for Gray, it's got plenty of attention, and was even featured a couple of time And yes, including Softpedia, Adeel. They uploaded Gray soon after I released it -- but they e-mailed me about it, and I think they did a thorough job, with nice screenshots and everything.

Still, I will try to plug my next project extensively from the get-go

As far as retro games are concerned -- or anything retro, for that matter -- there's always going to some nostalgia-driven group that will keep the trend alive. Do any of you remember Little Big Adventure? It's an action-adventure game from almost twenty years ago - and there's STILL a lively community around it, not just talking about it, but making tribute games, short movies, quite impressively looking remakes AND constantly keeping in touch with the creators about a possible sequel.
Another example: consider vinyls. You'd think that thechnology would be dead and gone forever. It went underground, mostly to be seen in DJ scene -- and now it's back, with some mainstream releases premiering on CD and vinyl at the same time!
People love oldies -- old cars, old music, old movies. And old games. Hence the success of all those adventure game Kickstarters. It doesn't even have to be memories from their youth. Just like 60's music is still appreciated today -- and I don't mean just the Beatles. And so will adventure games in the 2040's, perhaps? Perhaps it won't be mainstream -- just like retro/cover bands aren't mainstream today -- but they exist, and there are people who go to their gigs. So I guess we don't need to worry. Adventure games got pushed back into a niche -- but it's a very colorful, creative niche

What Andail said. Marketing's the key -- though it's often tedious and disheartening. I wrote as many sites and individual reviewers as I could -- trying to keep it appropriately short, informative, funny, with pretty pictures and all -- and I haven't heard back from but one of them. All the while, I got some very nice reviews from people who simply happened to stumble upon my game. So I guess Gray doesn't suck -- but I'm forever left to wonder whether my self-promoting or social skills do

I've had more success with sites similar to AGS, where you simply upload your game -- and it reaches the players directly. I'd recommend GameJolt -- it's a bit complicated, but tends to guide you through the process of uploading your game quite smoothly (the actual file uploading app called quite obscurely Distribution). Tried IndieCity, too -- but that one is way more complicated, takes upwards of 7 days for the approval process, the site is confusing to navigate for you as a game creator and generates less traffic (probably because you're required to install their app to download games)

Also, the recent youtube review of Eternally Us shows just how important that medium is in popularizing games -- maybe even more so than written reviews, because you get to SEE the game in action? Another good thing is that in indie world even a game that's been released quite a while ago can get a second life. I don't know what Ben's approach to promoting his games is, all I see is he just keeps making games, a podcast, blogging, and generally being awesome. Maybe that's the right way?

[Clean #4]

Clean #4 - it's simple but somehow very effective, I like the logo's font
Cup Shaped #10 - I like the idea with the cosmic backgrounds, and this one's the "cleanest" of the four. Also, the tagline's great.

Yeah, it's one of those pixel hunting moments in the game Not the most difficult thing to spot, but the cursor only having one-pixel hotspot instead of the whole cursor's surface makes it just a little bit harder than one would like.

Btw, has anyone tried the Easter Egg Edition? There are a few additional things you can do, but they're not super easy to find. I even wrote a poem with hints for it, if anyone's interested

It's so great to see so many different styles in one thread -- from Shane's EGA surfing game to Katschey's mind-blowing "doodles" Each of these is fun in its own way, and each brings back a memory of one game or another.

DoorKnobHandle: I've never really gotten into spaceflight simulations, somehow, but this looks just gorgeous, too good to pass up.

Adeel: How's the work on those going? Any new anims that I haven't seen yet?

Amelie: Romantic horse sims is another genre I've never had a chance to play. I'm intrigued?

And here's a little conceptual graphic I cranked out just now, based on a sketch that's been lying around gathering dust since February or so:



This is how I picture the main character of a yet untitled project. In my head I call it "Wimpire" -- an amalgam of "wimp" and "vampire" -- but that's not going to be the title. I want it to be something that google hasn't heard of yet -- because every time I search for "gray" and "fitz", I get a zillion entries for Graham Fitzgerald. And "wimpire" seems to be the term for Twilight-esque fangers -- who are in abundance these days.

Aaaanyway, I have just a few rough pencil sketches -- but this game's been on my mind for quite a while, probably more than two years. Initially, I pictured it lo-res, with graphics similar to Monkey Island 1 -- with my trademark 4 colors, and somewhat serious and dark in tone. Think Gothic novels. Then I got a different idea, something totally wacky -- strangely enough, inspired by actual (and recent) events -- and as I started doodling, with just a basic idea of what the character should look like (scary-goofy, basically), I came up with this. Hi-res and smooth shading seemed like a natural choice -- with the original four-color palette maintained. A lot of thinking will go into the background art style to keep it consistent -- both with other bg's as well as characters. Right now, though, I'm more focussed on inventing puzzles and weaving them into the game mechanics -- including two playable characters. It's going to be a more puzzle-driven game than Gray -- with lesssss dialogue, so that I could make it a full-talkie without losing my vocal cords in the process

Mods expressed his willingness to do a Summerbatch v2, but it seems it either went pretty much unnoticed (just one person replied) or they contacted him directly via pm and are secretly working on their respective projects. I know I'd love another Summerbatch, last year's was awesome.

Played it, trying several different paths. Short, but definitely fun, with some truly hilarious parts (the marriage!). I'm tempted to make something like this sometime.

This article might be what she needs to read, especially point 2. zaswiadczenie o postawie etycznej (which is the sais Certificate). It's an article from out Natiional Board of Health's website, and it's about documents needed by general practicioners and dentists to work in other EU countries. Says you can do it all via mail, no need to appear in person. The catch is they only prepare the certificate in Polish, so I guess you'd have to have a notary/court translator or some such do their voodoo.

Hope that helps

Same with online auctioning sites - eBay and the like. It looks quiet, like no one's interested in the item - until the last thirty minutes or so, and eventually the item reaches 10 times the suggested price.

Anyway, it gets more and more interesting. There's even going to be a Polish version -- supposedly with Polish voice-overs as well -- which is not a common thing for international releases.

Yeah, over the past week it seemed to have stopped at just about 600k -- and then yesterday it was 730k all of a sudden, and rising every minute. I decided to back it, too. Fingers crossed!

Hm... The door is there just to mess with your mind: you see it as a barrier -- more so metaphorically than physically, sometimes. And that's what adventures are about: challenging your brain! To think outside the box. But requiring a key to open the door is an example of thinking "within the box", so to speak, isn't it?

But considering non-linearity purely as game mechanics: think of Fate of Atlantis. At one point - I forget which exactly, and what it was about - you could choose between doing/saying three different things, which determined the gameplay later on: there was one path that emphasized thinking, one that included a lot of fist-fights, and one with some teamwork. That was a clever thing. Metaphorically speaking, it didn't simply give you a door. It gave you THREE doors. Or - depending how you look at it - a door, a window and, let's say, a chimney?