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Love the graphics, fun dialogue, and I'm so close to the end, but then -

Spoiler

I can't find the man-made item.  I've got everything else in the cauldron, the wood under it, I know where to get the magnifying glass, the conch is ready to go.  I'm curious if the brown thing I see over on the left side of the screen, just up and right from the raft is supposed to be something, but I can't click it.  Am I missing something or is this a glitch?

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First, I brainstorm a ton of notes for plot, character and puzzle ideas...these end up in a mead notebook, on post-its, and torn bits of paper towel from work.

Then I try to make a full plot synopsis...no really fine detail, but the full game, from start to end, so I know what has to be included.

My artist partner and I start planning the backgrounds, so he can paint them while I start scripting.  I write hotspots and dialogues pretty much on the fly, to let my humor come through naturally, unless I had some specific joke or puzzle to aim for.

(Oh, heh, I also use temporary fill-in backgrounds and characters while waiting for the real art...stick figures and childish bg drawings. )

Then I obsessively nitpick my scripting, getting things positioned down to the pixel, and put everything from my artist into it.  We do checklists to make sure we didn't forget anything (and as positive reinforcement, so we can see how much we've done).

If there's voice acting, I wait until everything else is 99.9% finished before putting it in, since it's so time consuming.  I have dialogue scripts for my actors, but still spot check the length, volume and wording of every line in case  they improvised or made a mistake.

Then I beta test it with obsessive-compulsive care, *then* release it to other beta testers.  Once it's all good, hooray!

The demo was practically unplayable on my comp, too...jumpy, slow graphics, and speech animations lagging far behind the actual voices.  And what's up with that dumb "click and drag in the direction you want to walk" control?

Oh!  Uh...yeeeahh...see, I got...a copy from the past...sent forward into the future...and de-aged again from the distant future...bugs are hard to fix in time travel.

Woooooo!

LOVING the game so far, guys, just had a weird bug to report:

Spoiler

If you use the glasses on the pig to set it on fire twice, they loop through the whole "Hoorah, it worked!" bit again, but instead of showing the caveman guard changing to the nerd guard, it warps back to Dan and Ben falling into the trapdoors outside the warehouse at the beginning.  Then it goes back to the outside-warehouse room, only you can't see Ben and Dan.

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Pish tosh!  And, conversely ironic, I am also a teetotaler.

Paid my monies, downloading now!  Woohoo!   Congrats on the release, guys!

I was totally loving this game...the graphics were incredible, the puzzles were fun, it was cool diagnosing the machines and helping them...I wanted it to be a lot longer!  And then-

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It turned out to just be another "The cool adventure you're on is just a metaphor for fixing some childhood mental trauma." game.  *sigh*

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Still, when I walked into the office and saw the computer desk, I was like "Ahh!  It's the MCP!"

"There's a Monster at the End of This Book", but with an alternate murder ending.

Professor Screech is awesome!

Also, the pic title sounds like the next spinoff sequel to Saved by the Bell.

Kind of a joke entry, unless I win, and then it was totally serious.

The atomic Hypercrane, strolling the swamps with its body kept safely far above the reach of any leaping mutant frogtopuses.  Its keen eyesight allows it to spot fishes, which it attacks by falling over in a wide arc, stunning them with its enormous bill.  Hypercranes may soon be extinct, as none of them are ever able to get back on their feet after a successful attack.

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I tried to, and it kept seeming like he was getting close to turning himself into a woman, but then he'd always change his mind at the last second.  Which dialogue option is it supposed to be?

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I got the same error during the fight, for room28.asc, line 206.  And I can't figure out-

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What am I supposed to do during the fight?  I've dodged all around, he's made his whole room girly, I've used every inventory item on him, Spencer has joined in and turned female, I've exhausted every dialogue option I can find...what am I missing?

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EDIT:  Whoops, should say, I got the game version before you fixed the error, so I don't know if it's still there or not.

He totally needs to break down into the Robot right in the middle of that.

Looks awesome!

I can stand sex and gender swapping, but I can *not* stand how those boots do *not* match that dress! *snip-snap!*

Downloading now.

"You chose to sleep with Dr. Manhattan!  You get CANCER!  The end."

Haha!  Funny theme.

(Also, um...you've set the contest dates for nearly 11 months long. )

I've tried it a couple times, and it kept turning out badly.  My advice is, if you're going to pay an artist, you have to set deadlines right at the beginning, and crack whips over them.  I'm a really laidback, understanding guy, and I think that's what kept screwing me over.

A big problem is, at our level, we can't afford the $50/hr most really pro, fast-turnaround artists are going to ask for.  So we'll be stuck hiring talented amateurs for less money, and because they're amateurs, they're far more likely to start bailing out on you when the project is a few months old.

The problem I kept running into is the artist would start out strong at the beginning, producing to deadlines, but as months go on they'll lose interest and work slower and slower.  New projects interest them more, and your payments start to be not as important as the fact they're bored or worn out on your project.  Soon you'll be hearing "Don't send any more money until I catch up on the art I owe you, I swear I'm getting right on it!"  And then they never quite catch up, and since you're withholding payment as asked, they start thinking, "Well, the money isn't rolling in anymore, so I'll devote 0.5% effort to his work, and 99.5% to this other work over here that's just started paying me too."

That being said, sites like iFreelance.com are a good place to post ads with your project and cost requirements.  Just be ready to delete a lot of letters from companies that don't even bother reading your requirements (a lot of them seem to be from Korea, for some reason), and artists who look at your $500 firm budget, and demand $100 per background anyways.

Like the others said, too, consider the profit you stand to gain against your investment...talk to some other commercial game developers and find out how much they actually made back.  It's fine to pay for a labour of love, but it's even better to have other people pay you for it.

This looks amazing, and I can't wait to play!

(But, er..."sweet" bread...not "sweat" bread.  )