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Great game! I really liked the music!

Here's a few suggestions:

- The verb coin should be bigger and underwater-themed. Maybe like a big clam or something. Right know it looks like the use icon is a *hand*!

- You did a pretty good job of giving all the hotspots interactions, but you missed a few, like the Sam's sign.

- On the map screen, you should just have to left-click on a location to go there, instead of bringing up the verb coin.

- Sometimes, you have to use an open doorway to enter a room. Other itmes you just have to walk to it. Whichever way you choose, it should be consistent throughout the game. Also, to enter your house, you must use the door to open it, then use it again to enter the room. Seems odd.

- When you barter for "tickets" you only get one ticket (hence "admit one"). When you trade this ticket, the recipient says something like "Oh, boy! Tickets!". But maybe I'm nitpicking.

Anyways, best AGS game I've played in a while.

I think that when you're older, and your butterfly tattoo has stretched and deformed into a death's head, you'll have more important things to worry about. Like being able to go to the bathroom by yourself.

The main concern with piercings around the forehead, eyebrow, and bridge of the nose is what the artists call "drift".
Depending of the elasticity of your skin, the piercing can be too shallow, and the jewelry can actually work its way out.
Personally, I think facial piercings tend to be disconcerting for the wearer, especially during conversations.  Have you ever had someone talk to you while they're staring at your nose or eyebrow (not looking at your eyes)?
Freaky.

Speaking of nipple piercings, I knew a guy who pierced a nipple the night before he competed in a fencing tournament. During his first pool, the ring got ripped out, and you could see the blood soaking through his lamé (metallic vest worn over a fencing jacket). Lovely image there.

If you give a piercing proper time to heal (i.e. nipple = ~6 months, etc.), it will never truly "close up" when you take your jewelry out. The skin may become a little closer (depending on the guage of the piercing), but the skin on the inside that was touching the metal will have healed. Your body fills the resulting hole with a calcium deposit.

When I was in Vegas last year, there must've been some weird convention, because I saw a dozen or so biker types with earlobes that nearly touched their shoulders. I guess skin can get too stretched out for those hubcap sized spreaders.

Why?

The little of the game I've seen so far is very atmospheric.

A few things, though --

1. I was mildly annoyed that I couldn't skip any of the lines in the intro cutscene.

2. Whether directed at a hotspot or an inventory item, the LOOK AT command rarely elicits a response of any sort.

3. How do you eat the sleeping pills? I can't just USE them, USE them on myself, on the empty pill bottle, or anything.

The ifghting worked something like this:

If you clicked ahead of Jones, he would take a step forward (unless he was at the closest he could go to his opponent). If you clicked behind him, he would take a step back (there was also a limit, if you took too many steps back, he would run away).

If you click on your opponent's head, Indy would throw a high punch. If you clicked on your opponent's chest, Indy would throw a medium puch, and if you click on your opponent's stomach or lower, ndy would throw a low punch.

Every time you punch, your punch power would go down to zero, then recharge. Different opponents had different recharge rate and punching power.

If you landed a punch, it would take as much of your opponent's health as power you had in your power bar. So you could whittle your opponent down with an enormous volley of punches, or you could knock him down with a few key punches.

There was also a "sucker punch" button, where Indy would automatically win against most opponents, but he would not get any IQ points for doing so.

Finally, if you clicked on Indy's head, he would block high. Same with medium and low. Some of the slower opponents "set" their fists, giving you a clue where they would attack. If you blocked a punch, it wouldn't take any of your health (or maybe 1 chip, I don't remember), but their punch power would go back down to zero.

I remember in FOA, that I managed to beat Arnold in a fistfight (not crushing him with the boulder) and the game froze.

The hardest guy though, was Fritz. He was guarding Sophia when she was in the cage in the underwater Atlantis. Although you're supposed to make a robot crush him, I tried fighting him once. He had a lot of health, but his punch power bar had a low max compared to Arnold or some of the other guys. The catch with Fritz was that his punch power recharged instantly. He could throw a volley of punches and each one would do you full damage.

But I digress.

The odd-number pricing ($9.99 instead of $10.00) has been proven to be especially effective with price-sensitive consumers (like us).

Even-number pricing is used to enhance a product's perceived value. For example, if you've ever shopped for cologne, you might notice that the price ranges from ~$15 - $100+ for a comparable sized amount. You might ask yourself, "How much better can the $100 cologne be?"

The simple answer: marketing. In order to appeal to a certain segment of consumers, cologne is priced accordingly. A "one size fits all" approach rarely works in business, so a designer that makes cologne will make as many different kinds as are worthwhile market targets (which his/her research indicates).

This is closely related to the concept of price discrimination, which occurs when an identical (or close-to) product is sold for different prices to different groups of people. An example of this would be airline tickets.

Different groups of people have different demands for the same product, and those demands have different elasticities. Because the demand for a typical business trip is relatively inelastic, it will almost always be more expensive than a vacation. The airlines recognize that many business trips are planned over a weekend, and not very far in advance, so they charge accordingly.

On the other hand, the demand for a vacation (flight over the holidays) is relatively elastic (because the exact date and location tends to be flexible. And if prices are too high, maybe you won't even take a vacation at all.), so it tends to be cheaper.

Because the tickets can only be used with a certain personal identification, the airlines prevent the resale of tickets, tightening their control on the market.

However, considering your position selling a video game, you must estimate your profit. In your liabilities, include the price of the time you plan to spend working on this game, the cost of a business license, packaging costs, webspace and domain costs, taxes, and any tools you have to buy for this project.
Compare your profit to your opportunity cost, which is the value of the next best thing you could be doing with your time.

Here's an simplified example:

Say you spend 700 hours making your game, which you sell for $10 + S & H.  Your game is amazing, and you sell 700 copies.
Let's say you don't register a business, don't pay income or sales taxes, and have no overhead.
Your return comes to $10 per hour (this assumes, of course, you make all your sales within the first hour that you've finished the game, which is highly unlikely.)
Even just looking at this extremely optimistic example, it would be more profitable for you to spend your time at a corporate internship.

Basically, it's very difficult to make enough money with an amateur adventure game to justify your time, so it needs to be about more than just money. AGS is a great hobby, but there's a reason most of the games made with it are free.

You could add a dark foreground with like heads in jars and stuff.

But there's always the irony with bigger sprites:

When they're bigger, they can show details better, but those details animate much worse.

But the height of the character sprites would be about 1/3 of the height of the screen.

As I said, that's rather large.

It doesn't sound like a long game. How many backgrounds are planned?

1/3 of the screen's height (480) is 160 pixels tall. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) The concept art you have (Jake in color) is 158 pixels high, including the small margin.

That's a considerable size for a sprite!

How many frames were you planning on having for the walkcycle? The way the character is shaded now, animating him with sufficiently smooth inbetweening would be a monumental task!
(and that's assuming he had no more than 4 angles...)

Is that Boston Low? With a beard?

What kind of dimensions are you thinking of?

I think it adds depth to the game if you include hotspots that have no bearing on the game. They can enhance the atmosphere and give you insight to the main character's personality, especially if you have original comments when you try to interact with them.

The first GK was the bomb! Then I found out they used digitized photos for the backgrounds. Still a great game, though.
I like the way each game in the series focused on a different aspect of lore (voodoo, werewolves, vampires). Will your new game have a similar theme? (I'm prying here)

I haven't played "Who Wants to Live Forever" yet, but I definitely will soon. I remember that bridge background being up in the C&C forum.

Also, what's the deal with the new Indy fan game that's on your website? Is that actually in development now or are you still looking to put together a team?

Ooh, tell us more about:
"diatonic chord scales in B sharp!"

Do whatever you want with it.

It was originally a quote from the movie, "The Mean Machine."

Awesome flick, especially if you like prison football.

I'm sure the prequel will be bigger, longer, and uncut.

heh