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I second everything that was said regarding switching to high res. You're doing your graphics a disservice by shrinking them to 320x240 and anti-aliasing them like there is no tomorrow when they seems to have been drawn and designed for 640x480 or higher, at least from what I can judge from your sketch thread. Remaking the first game, with its crazy finale cutscene would probably be too much work, but I sincerely hope the future episodes will be in higher resolution. Or a whole lot less anti-aliased at least.

Other than that the game is great, the sounds and musics are fantastic, and, excluding the anti-alias and low resolution problems, the graphics's coloring and design are excellent. I especially love that view of the city from the charter. And that final cutscene was bloody amazing! :o I can't wait to play the sequel!

Edit: Complete rewriting.

That's why I'm not going to vote this time. There used to be a time when TIGSource covered these competitions on their main site, testing all games and posting the most notable entries, which helped reducing the number of compo games to play greatly, nowadays their site is rather dead.

In this day and age of digital distribution, mega sales at ludicrously low prices, indie bundles and pay-what-you-want business model, there is always a game somewhere that's sold for cheaper than it normally is.

In the last months I stumbled on sales that might have interested some of you, a couple months ago all 5 Tex Murphy games were sold for 50% off on Good Old Games, then it was the 15th anniversary edition of Out Of This World and Sanitarium that were 30% cheaper, then all the Telltales adventure games were dirt cheap on Steam and even cheaper on Telltales' official site, Monkey Island 1 SE was given for free to anyone who pre-purchased MI2SE, there's also been several pay-what-you-want indie bundles with World of Goo, Osmos and Machinarium and other games worth playing, and all this time I told you nothing because I thought "Man, if I report all those sales, they'll start to think I'm a spammer." Well, not anymore.

From now on, if anyone spot a game that might interest some of us and that's sold for cheaper than it normally is, please bump this thread and tell us about it.

To the moderators: Feel free to move this thread wherever you feel it's more appropriated.

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Machinarium is sold for 5$ (75% off) until August 12 (that's tomorrow!)
http://machinarium.net/blog/2010/08/05/machinarium-pirate-amnesty/

The slightly adventurish Cat Poke is so far the best game I played in that compo.

Just finished it, nice game except for these couple of moments where the platforming was slightly more difficult thanks to the lag caused by having too many objects moving in the screen at the same time.

Anyone managed to unlock the locked doors in the main menu?

Such an interesting topic, yet, no matter how hard I try, I can't think of any game I'd completely trash the gameplay to replace it with another. Except maybe Yume Nikki.

Yume Nikki is a small indie game made with RPG maker. You are this little girl, and you explore your dreams. Every time you fall asleep, you find yourself in that room with 12 doors, each leading to different, strange, creepy places. In your dreams you'll find powers that will allow you to reach further area. The game ends when you find all powers.

Yeah. It sounds awesome on paper, but not a lot of game frustrate me as much as Yume Nikki does, because it is one of the most original and most horribly executed game idea I ever seen: Instead of focusing on acquiring powers and using them, 99.9% of game consist of fine combing huge, looping, empty rooms and mazes with a couple of landmarks in them, in search for said powers or doors that will lead to more huge, looping, empty rooms and mazes.

If it was up to me, I'd keep the same concept of a little girl exploring her dreams, but I'd completely trash that shallow gameplay to replace it with Loom's gameplay, focusing on acquiring special powers, solving puzzles with them, meeting and conversing with strange creatures, and exploring beautifully drawn but none the less creepy and abstract locations, with a tighter plot to wrap the game.

Dear sir, your game is the next level shit. Congrats!

Those faces. Every single time a new emotion or facial expression was shown, my mind was blown. Only thing that could have used some work is the eyes, they don't blink or look around nervously but otherwise it was perfect. I look forward to see more things like that in adventure games, and I look forward to play more of your future games to see their conversations and cutscenes if you use the same vectorized, Out Of This World looking, graphical style and if conversations are rendered just like they were in By The Numbers, with expressions and emotions.

I smell a game that will be discussed for years to come. Once again, congrats!

[go away from the kitchen]

Mister L: Yes, you can escape her by running away, but she'll remains in the kitchen. If you want to make her go away from the kitchen so you can steal the cheese before Ed do so, you must sacrifice a kid.

Don't ask me which of the 5 version does that. In fact, I'm not even sure sacrificing a kid make her go away. She could remains in there until her timer runs out. But I know it pissed me off greatly because I was used to one of the versions where when she's in the kitchen, you make her run after you, leave the kitchen, enter again and she's gone, back in her bedroom.

Say, are you gonna improve the role of the secondary kids in your remake? It always bothered me that 95% of the puzzles could be solved by any kids and the only time their unique skills were useful was for a couple puzzles to deal with the purple tentacle, fix the phone or microwave the hamster.

And now I wonder if one of the kid will get tied to Edna's bed post this time.

I played some versions where you can't use that trick. She remains in the kitchen for a couple minutes and the only way to get her to move is to sacrifice one of the kid.

goto www.letmewatchthis.com ... click the TV Series option ... then type in Star Trek in the search box.  And behold ...

Thanks for the link, it will sure be handy when I'll get a better internet connection, mine's stupidly limited to 20GB of bandwidth per month.

I was a kid when I got into Star Trek. My first ever experience was with Interplay's Judgment Rites game. A couple months later Wrath of Khan was aired and like all kids that age, I recorded it and watched it religiously every weekends. Later I did it with Star Trek 1-6. I somewhat disconnected when the TNG crew took over, not knowing who was who.

Years later I remembered I used to be a total fan when I discovered Space Quest 5's main source of inspiration was Star Trek, I also got around to watch all 4 TNG movies and figure out who was who. A couple years ago I watched half the first, all the second and nearly all of the third seasons of TOS, which I loved, I also used that opportunity to replay the Star Trek adventure games.

I'm an hardcore Star Trek fan, but like superhero comics, I have trouble with their business model. TV stations are never airing the seasons I'm looking for. When I wanted to watch TOS, they aired TNG, now that I want to start with TNG, they airs Voyager and Enterprise, DVDs costs an arm and leg, I can't afford to download a TV series on my current internet connection, and with its kabillion episodes, the show is also getting too close to soap opera to me. I know I'll watch the whole thing one day, it will just take a very long time.

I loved the latest movie but I understand that it rubs lot of fans in the wrong way, it's one thing to do as if the other stuff never existed, it's another to explicitly say it no longer exist like they did in the movie, when I watched it and I saw how they retconned it, there was this voice in my head that went "Oh shit, this is gonna piss off lot of people". I can't wait for the sequels, but I worry about its future. Too many people in Hollywood have issues with third sequels, and unless they make a TV series to continue it, they'll revert back to the main canon and the reboot will become a spin off.

Also, don't worry about TOS aging badly. Sure, some episodes are slightly "so bad it's good", but there's also many others episodes where you don't give a damn about the campy stuff because the plot is so excellent or because it talks about delicate subjects. I think TOS will be just as fun to watch in 20 years as it is now.

Judging by the titles they cover, I think the label translate as magazine of independent video-games-related news, not independent magazine of video-games-related news. The video games are indies, not the magazine.

Don't forget TIGSource.com. You can also suggest your game on PlayThisThing.com.

I've always found completely ludicrous this idea that all interfaces should be as minimal or as justified in-game as possible else it breaks the immersion. Interfaces do not ruin immersion, annoyances and frustrations do. Sparkles and messages boxes after every action broke your immersion because they annoyed/surprised you, not because they were visible.

Interfaces should be as intuitive as possible, sometimes it means less, sometimes it means more, sometimes it means better manage/implement the interface you currently have. An interface can occupy half of the screen, if it's intuitive, informative and doesn't get in the way of the game, you won't mind it, on the other hand, an unintuitive minimal interface, or one where you hide vital informations from your players for the sake of minimalism, will frustrate your players and remind them for a moment that they're playing a game.

Played it 12 years ago. What I remember...

Spoiler

You're this girl who find herself in this fantasy parallel universe only to find out it was just a dream, so you go to work in your sci-fi-ish huge city, at the end of your day, you can choose to go on this date or stay at work, whatever you do there's this weird vision of fantasy parallel universe that appears out of nowhere, the next day it get real wordy as you're investigating the vision and there's some adventuring needing to be done, I remember an artist painting in a studio, I remember getting stuck on a puzzle with the mechanical police officer toy, then I don't remember what happens next but you find yourself in this fantasy parallel universe for real this time, no dreams or visions, and it get even wordier as you can talk to every single citizens of the fantasy universe and their moms.

[close]

And that's pretty much it. I stopped playing the game at that point because after I was done talking with everyone, I quit the game only to find out a couple days later that I forgot to save my game, and the prospect of talking with all those guys a second time did not interest me at all.

I can't wait for gamers to discard those stupid "Casual" and "Hardcore" labels for more fitting ones. Casual can either mean a lack of skill or a lack of free time. You can say whatever you want, an old grandma who plays Bejeweled 50 hours a week is ways more hardcore than someone who plays HL2 6 hours a week.

Personally I have no problem with optimization and pandering to the skilled players who lack free time, sometimes short intense rides are better than long boring ones. I don't agree that pandering to casual players is the next step in the evolution of adventure gaming. It's a step in a different direction, which will lead to very different kinds of adventure games for very different kinds of players (which is a good thing even if I may not play a lot of them), but I don't think all games should walk this path.

I believe there is plenty of ways to bring adventure games to the next step, optimization and adventures' arbitrary conventions has been discussed a lot recently, I am also deeply convinced that finding new ways to deal with the puzzle solving aspect in adventure games, other than inventory puzzles, while keeping the brain teasing aspect intact, could bring a wind of fresh air in the genre and open up new story avenues that would have been impossible with the current bread and butter that is inventory puzzles.

Regarding points the article brought up:
I think any games that are structured in hours/days like Gabriel Knight, should adopt the progress meter and objectives reminder ideas, althrough in a more subtle form. Who knows the number of hours I wasted when I played Gabriel Knight, looking for the one action that would finally makes the game switches to the next day.

I don't think it's a good idea to trim dialogues to the bare minimum. Unless if you're willing to walk the extra mile and start pumping full blown animated cutscenes, such cuts in dialogues will damage your game plot, and since meeting new characters and developing the plot is a reward (if not the main reward for veteran adventure games players), it's also counter intuitive to the "Reward Early, Reward Often" points in the article.

So, how are going those good news?

I had a weird dream last night, in between the usual Minecraft and Jagged Alliance nightmares. I dreamed I was playing Hard Space: Special Edition, and in addition to the extra stuff and commentary you generally see in deluxe editions, every single time the crew was in mortal danger, someone lost his nerves and tried to make out with the captain just one last time.

I can't wait to see the results, should be interesting.

I third what Calin said.

As someone said, "without imagination, there is no fear".
So don't go all the way giving clear picture of the shock thing. Leave something for player to imagine, because it'll be times stronger than whatever you can present.

Although I'm extremely unimaginative when it come to text, I agree with the imagination bit. Whenever a monster kills me in a horror game, the next time I will face the monster, a significant chunk of the fear will be gone because what I imagined was far worse than what happened. It's the promise of gore that's scary, not the gore itself.