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Yet that's how it is. In a FPS the moment they find ammo in a crate, most players will smash every other crates in the game, just in case there's more in another. If you put a clue, develop the plot, trigger an event or tell a joke in a conversation, most adventure gamers will read them all, just in case it happens again.

I suppose it depends how you handle it. People have been mentioning using people instead of monsters to 'humanise' the horror, but I'd think that an animal or monster would be more scary....you can't really reason with them. But then again, some people would just think "they're just dumb animals, what is to be scared?"

I don't think they should all be humans. I love lovecraftian monsters and co. as much as the next guy, even if I'm getting tired of ghosts and scary little girls, but in the idea Crimson Wizard posted I thought lynching mob chasing human would be better. But that's just me.

Another thing that fit/complement pilferinloot's point on inability to escape: Keep your players powerless and vulnerable, always. Give them a shotgun and non clunky controls and your game will switch from horror to action.

I second what anian said. An horror game succeed when I'm scared to progress forward, when I fear what may lurk around the corner, even when there's absolutely nothing. It doesn't means that scares are not important, without events that are out of the ordinary every now and then, I will eventually calm down, but it's mostly a matter of thick atmosphere and unknown.

Okay, then, here's another one. Make it twist, let player control zombie character being pursued by angry villagers. Depict the horror of realizing your soul and consciousness are locked in the rotten, crumbling body, and that no one will gonna help you, at least not before he shoots your brain.

It's a bad idea, because hating zombies is a feeling shared by all. Make it an human being chased by more human beings and the psychological aspect will ramp up. And now I just thought of a game idea, but unfortunately lack of balls from mainstream publishers/developers and/or the controversy it would generate would discourage anyone from doing it. Plus they would probably screw it up, or prove once more that Truffaut was right. Too bad, for it would be damn scary. Oh well.

Then I played A Second Face, though.  It put the system to good use, but what I found myself doing was writing down a list of everything that looked remotely like a keyword and then compulsively running through that list with every character in the game, to make sure I didn't miss anything important.  So I'm not sure that one will solve the adventure gamer's compulsion problem.

Haha, glad to see I'm not the only one who did that.

Of all the games I played, this one was certainly the shortest game with the loudest bang, like many mentioned before, I hope we'll see some sequels someday. You could pull an Half-Life jig there, where sequels take place in the same event but from different points of view and each new pieces slowly reveal the big picture. Keep up the good work!

Or you put such event in a scrolling room, in an area where no exits are visible. You'll just have to be careful not to make that room too important,  if they can skip walking in every other rooms, players will get annoyed if they must walk through this room every time they want to go somewhere else.

Thanks for derailing my week with this awesome website. As funny as they may be, stupid customers stories make me lose faith in humanity, which tends to give me headaches, that site was different however, these morons were humiliated, insulted, thrown out, beaten, got their credits ruined, and/or sued... all happy endings, so it was a fun read and The Book Of Apocalypse was a thrilling.

Where was I now? Oh, yeah, take a break from Curse of Monkey Island to give the new version of Dual's H2G2 remake a try.

Our definition of absolute power vary greatly, as for your question, I'd do exactly that.

When you have a scripted event involving a walk area, like when a cutscene is triggered when the player walks on a specific spot, it can also be a problem. If you're not careful, players might break the game by skipping the trigger for the cutscene, or genre savy players might be tipped off there's something around the corner when they suddenly can't use the double click trick.

Personally I don't mind the double click trick, or adjustable walking speed, or map you can teleport wherever you want, for me the player character can never walk too fast in an adventure game. That said, playing CMI yesterday I noticed that I tend to metagame in long scrolling room with the double click trick, instead of waiting for the whole room to scroll before the door I want to enter become visible, I'll often double click to enter and leave rooms I don't want to go to because it makes the screen scroll faster.

When you say corrupted can you be a little specific? Cause I'd definitely love to investigate on that.

The error message I get in the dark room and the one I get when I try to load my previous savegame are the same: Game has been modified since save; unable to restore game. The thing is, I never changed anything in the game settings (the setting.exe file) and the only option I ever messed with from the options menu was the Skip Style to "Timer Off". And every other savegames works perfectly, all but this one.

-edit-
Currently downloading the latest version, I'll try to take a break of Curse of Monkey Island tomorrow to give this new version a try.

Nah, I'm not angry, and I intend to finish the game one of these days.

I'm at the part where you can hop in 3 or 4 different scenarios, one with Ford, one with Arthur, one with Zaphod... First thing I notice about that part is during the black screen moment where you gotta look, touch, listen, etc, your way out of the darkness, the game randomly crashes when I try to interact with the triangle, the huge spiky tail and sometimes with the circle.

I mess around a bit in Arthur and Ford's scenarios, I'm quickly led to believe I did something wrong or forgot to solve a puzzle at the start of the game, so I decide to restart from the start, this time paying closer attention to the small details. It pays because I solved a puzzle I didn't solve earlier. I reach the part where I was before I restarted, instead of getting Arthur or Ford's scenarios, I get Zaphod's one instead, the game autosave in the boat, auto-save during the ceremony, I spend close to 40 minutes trying to figure out a way to escape without success, a quick glance at the hint thread reveal I should be having

Spoiler

the fluff and a key

[close]

to proceed further, which I don't. Since the autosave is in Zaphod's scenario, I try to reload my previous savegame, which I saved in the Heart of Gold, just before the scenarios splitting moment, but that one got mysteriously corrupted and my last savegame is in the pub, at the start of the game.

I'd restart right away but right now I'm a bit tired of replaying the same part, I'll give it another try later this week, when I'll have changed my mind with something else.

As for the inventory, if it was just a matter of limited inventory, it wouldn't be that bad, where it is problematic is that you can't select items when they're in a container, you must first make some free space in your inventory by cramming items into other containers, then remove the items you want to select from their current containers before you can select or use them.

When I realized I was spending more time micro managing my inventory than I did exploring the HOG or solving puzzles, I just stopped wasting my time with all those containers, I dropped every single object I had and began to use the Thing like a limit-less extension of my inventory. And in bonus, I always have free space whenever I encounter a new object I can take, and my items are all in one place which make it more convenient when I'm looking for something. And since I doubt dropping everything in the Thing is the way H2G2 was meant to be played, even if it's more convenient this way, one can wonder what's the point to the containers and limited inventory.

Is an update to your game currently in the work?

I'll need to restart the game from scratch a third time because the autosave feature saved me in a walking dead situation and my previous savegame got corrupted for some reason, at which point I'd rather wait 'til the game is in a more stable version before I try again.

Also, other than making inventory management and navigation a chore, what's the point in having a limited inventory in Strag mode if you can simply drop everything you carry to store it in the Thing?

...Full Blast...

That explain why Leon's walkthrough couldn't help me during the temple. In my head, "Easy" meant "Easy", "Normal" meant "Hard" and "Hard" meant "Full Blast". D'oh!

I'll go replay the game see if I can unlock all the achievements now.

I gave that tough temple second combination puzzle another try earlier this morning and I finally solved it, and finished the game, with a disastrous Bronze rank, but to quote the immortal words of Captain Zapp Brannigan: We have failed to uphold Brannigan's Law. However I did make it with a hot alien babe. And in the end, is that not what man has dreamt of since first he looked up at the stars?

Excluding the infamous first puzzle which, I believe, everything has been said about already, and the issues where you got to be at a very precise spot to discuss with Tagai, Scatty and interact with the temple's puzzles and the ruins' consoles, the game was fantastic and I really hope we'll see more of Jack Hardin, his crew and their cheesy adventures.

Funny thing, during the epilogue, I found myself taking Shatner-esque poses.

Awards unlocked: Versatile, Pantsed, Amicable and Rank C

I'm putting this game on hold until walk-through for higher difficulty levels than easy get posted.

The game is great, all these corny dialogues and situations have me laughing out loud and I intend to finish the game, but I'm afraid I'm all out of patience for combination puzzles. Currently I'm stuck at the second one in the temple.

The demo got a 1 hour trial. The good news: I think I finished the game in less than 1 hour, the bad news: if I finished it 2 minutes earlier, I'd have enough time to watch the ending cutscene. Bummer.

It's not like Machinarium. It's a more like Samorost, Bowja the Ninja and Journey of Reemus: The adventure is splitted in several single room challenges which you must solve before you can proceed to the next, you can't travel back and forth between rooms, puzzles are solved by clicking on objects all over the place, no walking, no talking, no inventory puzzles and the game focus much more on puzzles than story.

Some rooms consist of a single puzzle, may it be pattern recognition puzzle, myst kind of puzzle, or figuring out the combination to open a door. If you're allergic to any of these things, DON'T PANIC, the game come with a hint button that activate when you've been stuck on the same room for more than 5 minutes. Unfortunately, there are at least 2 rooms where you must click on several tiny hotspots very quickly, so if you don't have lightning reflexes with a computer mouse, these rooms will make you very very angry. There is also a couple of illogical puzzles as SSH feared.

Overall, the game is a 7/10. The game design is casual (no inventory, no interface, just clicking around on hotspots) but some puzzles are clearly in the hardcore realm. The game won't please everyone here, if you're a fan of Samorost, Bowja and Reemus, or if you don't mind fun little puzzle games where story take the backseat, you'll certainly love the game, otherwise give the demo a try to see if it's your cup of tea before buying it.

-Edit-
Yep. My free trial ran out of time right at the start of the final cutscene.

I'm smelling a new RON.

Hopefully the steam version won't include the retarded Playfirst DRM. Dave lost a bunch of sale because of that.

I'm currently playing it, it looks awesome so far, my sole complain is the game deceptively make you believe you can save on more than one slot but actually overwrite the same slot.

Enough posting, I head back to the game.