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Here we go:

Beyond Reality â€"world of beautiful dreams and terrible nightmares

Ian is an adventurer. But the his last adventure may be too much for him. Rescue mission into dreamworld to save kidnapped girl turns into fight against nightmares in this nice Lucas Arts style adventure .

Today's point 'n click game Beyond Reality is one of the most recent novelties from ever spreading AGS scene. It offers an interesting story, sympatic main character and its graphics and sound are, excellent at many places. â€" but unfortunately it's not free of bugs.

But let's have a look at the plot first. After one of his many exhausting adventures, our hero, Ian, gets into a nasty storm. He gets lost and has to seek a shelter in a nearby hotel. After a little conversation with receptionist lights went out for a while. Then in the darkness, an old man confuses a box of pills and has a heart attack. But even worse, the door open and strange voices could be heard from the outside. Ian rushes out only to see hooded Dream Demon with giant lollipop luring old man's granddaughter out. Abduction is succesful despite Ian's effort and mother of the girl, a member of secret brotherhood and keeper of gates between ordinary and dream world comes late.

After short conversation Ian as a true hero, offers himself to rescue the kid from demons hands. The keeper agrees. Dozens of sleep pills do the job and Ian is ready to discover both, world inhabited by likes of him â€" people who just fall deep asleep, the world created by dreams of thousands of human beings, and, separated only by a thin border, realm of nightmares and creatures from the worst dreams and â€" politicians like Mort Kittensoft. This man was elected a governor which freed his hands to carry out an evil plan. To capture souls of innocent yet esoterically sensible children, which is first step to open a timespace gap which is needed for jump into somewhere between dream world and real world in order to take over both and introduce tyranny. Will Ian be able to prevent this to happen?

Yes, of course, the main premises of plot are not overly original. Journeys into dreams have been there before,  as well as saving little child/world scenario is a bit cliché. But story is presented in a very interesting way and at a high level.. Dreamworld has been created with a lot of fantasy so absence of plot innovations doesn't matter at all. Game is pleasantly long, offers numerous locations and interesting characters (rock painting man, guard with arachnophobia) and the puzzles are entertaining (Bag jumping puzzle has been influenced by MI's spiting contest for sure, but it's not a bad thing at all) As for the graphics, roughly half of the locations are excellent,  the other half is a bit worse but even those are far from being ugly. Music is excellent all the way and, regarding instalation file size, there is a lot of it.

So, standing ovations so far. But, unfortunately, this game is far from being perfect. But it could have been if only the incredible amount of program and scripting bugs was fixed. When the game was first released, about a month ago, it wasn't even possible to finish it. But one has to be careful even now  - some combinations of items could make game freeze which situation only can be solved by loading. So you should save quite often. Game also tends to crash unexpectedly, especially when anti â€" aliasing is on. Then it's not possible to skip cutscenes with Esc â€" game crashes to Windows immediately. Enter some locations in this mode could be problematic as well. I don't recommend to run BR in normal mode under Win XP at all, since it's stable only under Win 95 compatibility mode.  But on the other hand, why miss a beautiful adventure game with excellent atmosphere and gameplay because of bugs that can be avoided by frequent saving and occasional glance at a walkthrough which is also available at Plne Hry.
 
   
 
Maybe unilin read another review by a mistake...

Anyway, congrats, fix the bugs and you will be The Ki... The Queen.

jaz

Hmm,

I do speak Czech and I have translated a couple of reviews from BonusWeb for people who asked for it (Conspiracy of Songo, Postman Only Dies Once, Apprentice, WWTLF) and I have seen a thread in which someone translated Little Johnny Evil. So it seems this topic pops up every now and then.

I have read Unilin's post and I cannot agree with his "overview" since meaning of this article is almost completely different. It's quite a positive review. I will try to translate it for you ASAP.

jaz

Holly shit, man!
You said my BG was brilliant... in that case I don't know what to say about yours. Amazing.

jaz

Allright, I haven´t posted any artwork for a long time but now I have found some spare time. I even plugged in my tablet I have bought over a year ago. Till yesterday it was just sitting on my desk, yeah some fourteen months! I can´t believe it myself. I started to fiddle with this toy, only wanting to do some sketching, try pressure sensitivity settings and stuff. I didn´t have any intention to make a BG. I wanted to sketch a furnace because I´m working on a game where it will play an important role. Then I wanted to try some coloring then I added some stuff here and there and then it just snowballed.

Voila:



When I started I was a little bit disappointed because it wasn´t that easy to draw as I would have expected and the lines were a bit shaky. But then I was just like OK, don´t try too hard, make it your style.  

So, any C&C on style are welcome. I probably won´t use this BG in a game  (but one never knows and I´m lazy....) and I know some flaws myself, but I´m considering going for this style. So what do you think? And what do you think about the character?

Laters

jaz


EDIT:

Since I had some spare time during holidays I was able to make a couple of things

Preliminary walkcycle:



movement still needs some tweaking, should serve as a base for further work

Character: how it should look in the game



NPC: a quick sketch of one NPC I did just for fun, but I like him so he may appear in the game...



Critics, comments???


And, yes!  Happy New Year everybody!

*EDIT* 0105/04: south walkcycle: Im not quite happy with this. Any suggestions? please read the lower post. Thanks.

I don´t see it as well....... :'(
I wanna see some exclusive s*** too, pretty please.

Maybe you could try to upload it to 2dadventures?

Great job Alynn these are just sweet. They remind me old Sega/Nintendo games somehow.

And now to positive criticism...

The first picture is almost perfect, only the door seem to be too small. Also no objects cast shadows except long table or bench on carpet which looks odd. (Maybe it´s supposed to be that way and it ´s only that color of the carpet is darker in the middle)

As for the second one, I feel uncertain about perspective of the house. It just doesn´t look right to me. I know that you have followed vanishing point rule, but there´s something that bugs me and I don´t exactly know what. But maybe it´s just me.
The trees as they are look good but you have the blurry ones in foreground while the pixel stuff is in the background. It should have been reversed, detailed trees first, blurry ones in behind. (maybe it can be a bit difficult to make since I guess you have used the same sprite for both rows)

But these are just minor flaws, all in all it rocks! What game are you working on, may I ask you?

yeah, you 're right junc. These top of the line ones cost a pretty penny. I bought mine for about $500 and when it first came out it was some $800. But there is a considerable group of smartphone users already. You may also see things from American point of view. Most people in the USA don't buy a device but a wireless plan and they don't much care about what phone they get. Also market is not that saturated and even though big players like Verizon or Cingular offer interesting services, most people just don't give a shit as long as they can talk, talk, talk. In Europe, however, carriers don't have much space for growth providing voice services only. So they have already turned their attention to different types of services including data and also games. There already are hundreds of games available and easilly accessible. It's easy as pie to get one. Yesterday I was on my way to subway and I was just browsing phone-related webpage. There was an article saying that an interesting strategy game Townsmen is out and ready to download. It looked nice and so I have just logged on to carrier's  page and chose download. It cost me about three dollars they will chalk up on my monthly bill (it was an expensive one ) I was all set halfway down the escalators and I was already playing in train.

And there are many pople like me. If you say that smartphones are not common right now you are partly right but there are already millions of these devices sold.

Some figures from first quarter of this year (remember that these are almost one year old):
http://www.cellular.co.za/news_2003/1-_2003_phone_sales_figures.htm

Also according to IDC company study, market share of cameraphones (i.e. smartphones) in western Europe was 15% in third quarter which represent 27% growth compared to Q 2 2003.  That represents some 3.7 million units sold in three months in western Europe ONLY. So I don't think Jaguar Syndrome is likely to happen.

Maybe we got a little off-topic but it's interesting...

junc, of course these things are not perfect and they will never be. There will always be some feature you lack. But it's the same with computers, there will never be a perfect computer. It's an evolution. If people would wait for perfect gaming computer to come, we would never have had games like Monkey Island or Doom because we would think that the machines are just not good enough. To make a good game is not a matter of device but a matter of creativity. What I was saing is that cellphones as they are now are a solid gaming platform already and they will no doubt improve.

As for your question, there are devices that run on Windows. It's not exactly Win CE but a "clone" named Windows Smartphone. But there is also an OS called Symbian which IMO is even better.  You can of course synchronize these phones with your PC via cable, infrared or Bluetooth. As for battery life, these have generally about a week of standby time/up to 4 hrs talk or work time. It's not perfect but four hours are close to enough

here are some interesting ones:

http://www.sonyericsson.com/p900/main.aspx?regionCode=uk (Sonny Ericsson P900)

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/devices/devicesdisplay.aspx?module=deviceDisplay;Smartphone;americas;75    (Samsung i600)

http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/1,6566,015_291,00.html  (Nokia 6600)

jaz

EDIT: you will need to copy/paste the last link

You made some valid points, junc, especially battery life and cavemen that don't know how to behave.  

But all in all I have to disagree.  You say that cellphones should only be regarded as a communication device and shouldn't be used for anything else. Why? Decades ago people used to say "why should we use computers for anything else than computing missile trajectories?" Only later they saw that there is an open field of possibilities. I think that it's the same with mobile phones.
I guess you're an American but note that now cellphone penetration in population is about 95%(at least in our country but I think it applies to most of Europe, Japan, Korea and some other Asian countries are even further)  That pretty much means that everybody has a cellphone. And if cellphones are capable of something, why not take the advantage.
Also I have to disagree that cellphones are not godd enough device for games. I've tried dozens of games, many of them were crap, but there are a lot of highly entertaining and addictive ones. My favourites I spent long hours with were Prince of Persia (remake), FIFA 2003, Splinter Cell, Doom and many others. Believe me, it IS a good enough platform already. It's only a matter of interface. There even are 3D games that look and play good enough.

Maybe people underestimate gaming capabilities of cellphones because they think of them as phones only. I rather think of them as multi functional portable devices. There is a name for them: smartphones.  And almost EVERYBODY carries or soon will carry one around. Even though many are not interested in games, it's a huge target group for game developers. When I got my present phone I was like "whoa, it's faster than a computer I used to have five years ago!" I don't use my "phone" only for calling. Most of the time I use it to  browse internet when on the road, either connected to laptop or on the phone itself (I have agsforums running all the day, really , use e-mail, ICQ, voice-recorder, I also snap a picture from time to time or shoot a short video, sometimes I read e-books or make a memo in calendar. Or I can count what is the level of alcohol in my blood after having three beers and two shots of tequilla (yes, I really do have such a program installed on it )  And I play games too. And I'm sure many others do or would. And maybe there is somebody out there who would play adventure games. If you say

"Unfortunately, I think that these cro-magnon users make up the market that determines which type of games will get produced. I have a feeling that the fast-lane loud talking inconsiderate jerk doesn't have the mental capacity for an adventure game."

I think it's pretty obvious that action games will always dominate any platform. But as more than 90% of people have cellphone I don't think all are jerks with no mental capacity for adventure games. We're not talking mainstream of future mobile games but minority stuff. It won't be realistic to think that adventures could make it big on any platform. But I was wondering if there is SOME chance to see an adventure on this platform that will be recognised somehow.

Rant, rant, rant. ;

jaz

hmm, I kinda expected such reactions...
As I have tried the demo I can say that it was quite playable. I wasn't able to turn T9 dictionary on so I had to type "SMS style" but even this was manageable. (They say that predictive text input will be possible)

But I have to agree that to revive old games is not exactly the right way to go. I's obvious that ports of old Quests have text input but it's more like a nostalgic thing for those who remember.

What I was thinking about was "is there any opportunity for NEW adventure games specially designed for cellphones?" These things sure have capacity to run a point and click adventure and soon computing power and memory will not be an issue. Screen size could be a problem but ,hey, my phone has a 176x208 pixel resolution. And it is capable to smoothly run scrolling (even paralax) BGs. If you make a two screen BG you have a 352x208 resolution.

Let me show you this



It's a screenshot from game I've just purchased - Townsmen for Nokia. It's a strategy, quite simillar to The Settlers on PC, and it plays great. And it looks just sweet. What I mean is, that if there is a place for strategies on market, there could be place for adventures as well. And they could look good. And if somebody comes up with a suitable interface, they can play good as well. I can easily imagine a Goblins-like game.

Regarding battery life, I must say that I'm quite unsatisfied with my battery but even though, while playing TQ demo yesterday I got some 2.5 hours of gameplay before I had to recharge. And I had a web browser running agsforums in the background. And I'm pretty positive it will get better with new models.

The major drawback IMO is the very nature of adventure games. Most of mobile games are designed to entertain you when you have some spare time to kill. Thus easy and quick platformers and shoot 'em ups rule. Adventures on the other hand are time consuming which could make them unattractive for cellphone users.

So what do you think, is there a chance for new mobile adventures?  

Hey, anybody aware of this?

http://opentrap.narod.ru/

(56'ers note that it could take some time to load all the pics)

I have found this websit a couple months ago and quickly forgot it. Now I have stumbled over it one more time. These guys port old Sierra quests (SQ, TQ, KQ, LSL, Black Cauldron) to Symbian enabled mobile phones.
Since I have one of these gadgets I have tried the Time quest demo and it was cool, just like in the old days. I'm definatelly looking forward to further releases (that is, should they obtain rights from Sierra).

So my questions are:

Any of you tried this and if so, how did you like it?
Do you think adventure games on cellphones have some future?

jaz

The best program to learn the basics would be pencil and paper
In my opinion it´s not good idea to start with computer graphics before you have some basics down.

jaz

Well Vel... just because it´s such a positive review

Who Wants To Live Forever? A suggestive question in the title of even more suggestive game. WWTLF is an interactive movie, but a good one, full of emotions and with unexpectedly sad autumn mood. Old love doesn´t rust!

WWTLF is one of the most peculiar and unique adventures recently. WWTLF is more a short interactive movie than a game, but it´s not bad at all because the plot is strong and authors have more than succeeded in evoking sad autumn atmosphere. You won ´t understand what I mean if you don´t try. This game is very moving even though the graphics are not excellent and there are some things that could have been thought out better.

Main character is an elderly writer Andrew Barksdale whose women had passed and his last â€" and only â€"friend, Sean, is dying. Now he is alone with a shelf full of books. Wait â€"there is something more. Last wish. To find a girl named Gail and to give her a present from the dead friend which he haven´t given to her even though he had loved her all his life. He wasn´t able to express his feeling and he was only to see his love to marry an old rich man. The man passed and she inherited his millions and now she lives in luxury in his mansion

Andrew goes to places where he spend his childhood with Sean and remembers long forgotten memories of kid´s games and first loves. Nostalgic mood is replaced by a deep depression at the end Heroes realise that their lives are vain. Possible connections between them are getting clear shapes and they see that they could have lived thousands of happy days if should they have chosen different way, but nothing can be brought back. They all die. But completely. When Andrew reaches the end of his way he gets an interesting offer…

WWTLF is a short game (maybe term game is not appropriate) Regarding it´s linearity and difficulty the playtime is about 15 minutes. Nobody should get stuck in this game.

Controls are simple, it´s enough to click with LMB, RMB on hotspots, no inventory is necessary. Only one more difficult aspect of the game is the diary in which are encrypted some important information necessary to solve the puzzles. The difficulty is really really low, but it´s not a minus If we consider WWTLF an interactive movie then the story has to flow fluently and rich plot should grab the players attention and that´s what low difficulty and plot does.
 
Music is excellent and exactly fits the mood it really enriches the atmosphere. It´s also thanks to music that nobody will laugh at sometimes overcomplicated relationships. Itś a pity that graphics don´t match the sound. Some screens are fine but some just seem too simple. Especially the characters are too schematic and they don´t fit in the detailed Bgs. They lack more shading. and facial expressions are too sharp. Only few BGs are excellent, especially the autumn forest.

Who wants to download WWTLF can expect pleasant 15 minutes which will maybe make him to think about whether he doesn´t live the same life as heroes of this interactive movie. I can´t say that this game will force people to forget their vain desires and turn toward people they love and so on but even to think about it is a good thing.

P.S. you won´t need a walkthrough this time but it´s available in any case.

eigen means "own" in German.
But this looks more like Dutch to me (I might be wrong, calling all Dutchmen... )

Ah, of course...  *jaz slaps his forehead* It even is a popular saying in Czech that "Postman Always Rings Twice" It probably was so obvious that we both have overlooked it. I have seen the movie a couple of times.
As we also say: "We haven´t seen a tree for all those woods"

BTW I´m glad you guys found my translations useful.

Maybe I could make a list of AGS games reviewed on plnehry with short description of every game if anybody is interested. If so, Dave could change name of this thread so it won´t be necessary to start a new one.

jaz

Hmmm,

I´m sorry to say that Novo Mestro didn´t get much positive review.

Which Noir movies BTW? I don´t get it as well.

Hi Bro, enjoy...


Apprentice â€" a magic adventure


To be an apprentice of a great wizard, that´s Pib´s greatest wish even though his father had been a pinnacle of chivalry. But Pib is different and today is going to be his great day, the day of his first spell. Will he succeed? It´s up to you…

Big freeware adventures like KQ 2, The Uncertainity machine or recently reviewed That Night Before don´t come out every day. Fortunately there are is a fair number of smaller interesting projects.  Apprentice is one of these a pleasant game that keeps you entertained for about an hour. The game was created by H.E.P. using AGS by CJ.

The game starts with strange intro that is separated from the rest of the story, that really wasn´t necessary. Main character, a wizard apprentice Pib is confrontated  with history of his father â€" a great knight. Pib is forced to choose a „career“ of knight instead of his beloved magic. Pib refuses but it´s a classic nightmare. He wakes up pretty nervous in the morning. This motive is not very important in game itself so we only hope that more will be explained in possible sequels

After intro the game concerns on Mortimer Pibsworth´s aka Pib´s big day. He has to leave the  theory ond create his first own spell. He gets the instructions from his elderly master to obtain three ingredients necessary to perform the magic procedure which outcome is to remain surprise to the very end. Master then leaves for nearby oasis to get some magic water. The ingredients are cheese, cucumber and oregano powder. Cheese is not anywhere near so it will be necessary to make it from cow milk. It´s not as hard to figure out as how to get the powder since Pib doesn´t know the herb or how to get a delicious cucumber sandwich from angry woman at the crossroad.

Apprentice sports a nice comprehensive story that doesn´t go too far away for a project of this size. It would be hard to save the world or princess on seven screens and not to make the game looking awkward. Plot of apprentice is on appropriate level and the point is surprisingly bitter.

Game design is very good as well, all tasks and combinations are logical except opening the closet and sandwich book puzzle and if you think a little bit you can solve all the puzzles without combining everything together.

Apprentice is a point and click adventure but the interface might have been better, All commands are on roll up panel at the bottom of the screen or under 1, 2, 3 and 4 keys (look, pick up, talk, use) and it is not possible to skip through with RMB which is  surprisingly useless. There is a magic book â€" like inventory which is stylish but it´s only possible to look at two items at once which forces the player to list through up to ten objects. It´s almost like in Tomb Raider which really is not optimal.

Graphics are in 320 x 200 and even though the game works in higher resolutions, it pixelates noticeably. But otherwise there is nothing to complain about its drawn glory. Especially Pib´s room, magic tower and barn interior are just sweet. But the other backgrounds don´t fall behind. Maybe Pib is a little bit of a disappointment since he is not very detailed and his movements are bit clumsy

Music, however, is excellent, little bit short but it wont annoy you soon. Fairy tale tunes are memorable

All important had been said and it´s upon everybody to decide whether to download this slightly bigger file or not. Walkthrough is also available at plnehry.

Allright Dave, here it is:


Postman Only Dies Once.

What a weird name for a freeware adventure game by Reality on the Norm Team (apparently a misunderstanding of RON concept) that was created using AGS. This game has won numerous AGS 2001 Awards (2002 Awards haven´t been awarded yet, only nominations were presented)

Main character of the game is detective Max Griff. Experienced private eye doesn´t do much bussiness lately and his office floor is covered by unpaid bills. One evening Max sits behind his desk meditating over his critical situation when he hears somebody screaming outside. His intuition tells him that this might be an interesting case and he rushes out quickly.

Outside he sees dead postman laying in puddle of blood, a good friend of many town folks. Standing over the postman, there is an instant suspect â€" a zombie  And what the hell â€" there is a sheriff rushing into the scene. It doesn´t take him too much time to solve the case. He demands an explanation and when our orderly zombie is not able to speak a word, he promptly arrests him and puts him into local jail.

It seems like another unhappy end of the case. But next day an unexpected visitor comes to his office- an intrusive journalist Mika that pays him to investigate the case and forces him to take her as his partner.

That´s when the player takes over the control. His mission is to walk through the town and question all possible suspects, find out who was the real murderer and free our poor innocent zombie.
This all comes as a classical point and click adventure game, like most games created with AGS (note that it´s possible to make for example an arcade game with AGS)

I wont tell you more of the story because it would spoil the fun it´s on everybody to fight his way through, but I can tell you that the story overall is very good and that a vast majority of players wont know how the game will end till the last moment.

Atmosphere of the game is specific. Town where the game takes place is kind of Wild West style, there is a sheriff but is significantly more civilised than the towns were in the second half of 19th century. And particularly: one encounters undead frequently. Somebody might like such a hotch-potch, somebody may just grin but in any case it´s an interesting mix.

Unfortunately technical side of the game is not the best we have seen. All graphics are computer drawn and one can tell. Main character is OK but his animations doesn´t match the those of Dieter from Permanent Daylight. Environment is mostly visually poor and too thick outlines of the objects don´t add much to overall feeling.

The conclusion: PODO is only slightly above average adventure game. It has an interesting story, rich dialogues, both, funny and serious moments and can entertain a player for more than a couple of minutes, but it´s only a second class game compared to Permanent Daylight, P.D. or recently reviewed hit â€" Out of Order.

Well I think that it´s a little bit harsh review but to sum it up it says it´s a good game and that´s an unbiased opinion of independent person.

By the way, this server is a part of iDNES servers which are run by the most popular newspaper in the country so you can bet they take things seriously and their webpages get some hits. As I have noticed this article had 2562 views, which is not bad for a freevare adventure.

Sorry for any grammar mistakes/typos as I have whipped up these translations pretty quickly.

jaz

EDIT: they seem to know a lot about our community at plnehry, isn´t that nice?

OK, here you go.......


Conspiracy of Songo â€" a perfect adventure

Conspiracy of Songo is simply one of best freeware adventure games of this year. It´s long but not too much difficult, it offers an interesting story with a light twist of conspiracy, lovestory and a casual joke from time to time. Fluent and enjoyable gameplay is a hallmark of this project.

Conspiracy of Songo was created by well known AGS engine. This tool created by CJ has already been used by hundreds of developers but these titles were in many cases bland with only a few screens standard interface and minimum of puzzles. This, however, doesn´t apply to this game. Sierra interface had been replaced by a single click one and the author had succeeded in designing really logical puzzles using advanced scripting.

But the ground of every adventure game is indeed a story. Here we have two characters â€" Jerry and Sheila who encounter a shark during Sheila´s birthday sail. Trying to escape they shipwreck on the shores of an unknown island. Sheila is injured so Jerry goes to seek help in a nearby town. Soon he gets arrested by two armed detectives and is sentenced to spend rest of his life in a cage for conjectural theft of statute of local god Songo. Next day Sheila goes to search for her missing friend and slowly gets involved into web of mystery of the statute which has power to fulfil the wishes of prayers. There are 25 â€"30 locations that are here to discover for Sheila, the “detective newbie“ , including the island and two towns that were affected by Songo madness. It is possible to interact with about 10 well profiled NPC´s to push the story further.

Design and especially puzzle design is a big plus of this game. It´s true that at the very beginning  player encounters an illogical moment (climbing a cliff on bottle is quite unusual) but this will soon be forgotten thanks to other puzzles like vodka cups puzzle and hilarious job interview. Fortunately, difficulty is not that high and the gameplay flows pleasantly. Somehow harder puzzles are at the end of the games. Authors have almost completely avoided pixel hunting, there is only minimum of miniature and almost invisible objects which should be appreciated. Playtime counts approx. half a dozen hours which is excellent for a freeware game. As for storytelling and game actions, there are only words of praise for Songo.


If we´re to find a weak spot of the game and it´s probably going to be the graphics. It still is well above average compared to another games on PH (the server, PH stands for Plné Hry, Full Games in English), but it´s hard to suppress the feeling of emptiness in some locations as the drawing seems sometimes oversimplified . It´s however, necessary to mention that it´s noticeable that the author was continually getting better, as you progress further you will see more attractive locations. There is nothing to complain about sound, maybe it would be interesting to make a talkie but even without speech the sound is very good. Music varies quite often and it adds to relaxed atmosphere of the game.

To sum it up, I will repeat what has already been written in the first paragraph â€" one of the best amateur adventure games recently. If you are interested in a long relaxed and well made adventure, don´t let the size of this game discourage you.

Pretty positive review, congrats fidodido

The other article is a walkthrough.

Laters

asafii,

unfortunatelly, there is no instant magic cure for your troubles. As I told you, it´s gonna take some time. Dont´t get frustrated when you see the other people´s work but try to learn from it.  It´s the greatest source of inspiration. I always check professional artwork. When I see something that interests me, I try to get some information on artist and his portfolio. For example yesterday I saw a review of "Triplets of Belleville" animated movie. I went to the cinema the very evening.  Not only it was a great movie but the artwork was amazing
So today I´m trying to get some screens from the movie and I want to learn more about other works of Sylvain Chomet, Evgeni Tomov and Thierry Million.
It´s also good to study works of great painters, that will teach you a lot about colors and composition that you will find useful even when creating a cartoony backgrounds.

And come on, post a BG in Critics lounge so that we could tell you what is good and what needs to be improved.

Laters