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It's now the 11th and nothing's happening yet... or is there a separate thread that I've overlooked?

Yay, I got there in the end!

There are a few things that are not suggested but you still have to do. On the other hand... there are a few things suggested that you don't need to do... 
This one is not suggested but hey... it's an adventure. Try the things that are not obvious just for fun. Or to get further in the game.

Kind of like "try everything on everything", then? Hm, that's not what I'd call fun. Oh well, I'll try that. Thanks for the hint. And thanks to Crazy, too.

Thanks, OneDollar. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that helps very much...

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I already have the fuse. Why would I want to make a "cherry bomb"? I haven't done anything that suggests I would need one.

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Hm, I'm stuck...

In the inventory I have

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PI badge, sample glass, fingerprint powder, comb, spatula, fuse, pillowcase, cherry pie.

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I have

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won Mr Smee's game and ordered a cocktail (Hook has gone downstairs to make it), put molasses on the rock, talked to the pigs, Granny Smith and Neptune.

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I don't seem to be able to do anything yet with

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the rotten stone in the graveyard or the egg outside the tavern.

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Thanks for any tips (no direct answers, please).

Thanks. I've tried a few configurations that seem to fulfil all those requirements, but nothing happens. Can anyone PM me with an arrangement that works? Sorry, I don't like using outright solutions or walkthroughs, but either this puzzle is a bit too strict or I'm missing something.

Here's my current arrangement:

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* my downloads at far left (right way up)
* post-it note in top left corner (right way up)
* photo in bottom left corner (standing on its right edge)
* CD in space at top right of "my downloads" (with sloping edge at top)
* reels horizontal and sticking out of space at bottom right of "my downloads"
* iPod vertical, with screen at bottom, to right of "my downloads" and above reels
* files upside down and next to iPod and reels
* open notebook vertical, with sloping edge at bottom, positioned to right of files and towards the bottom of the area
* blue notebook horizontal, with spine on right, above open notebook and to right of files

Nothing is overlapping or touching, and everything is squashed up and inside the dotted lines.

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Thanks for all the replies! It seems the best thing to do is take a shower, so, I will.

A shower can work provided you don't stand there scratching your head, desperately trying to come up with ideas - if you do that, you might as well not have a shower at all. It can work because it relaxes you, and while your conscious mind is distracted, ideas are free to bubble up from your subconscious. Other things that can work in the same way are a long hot bath, or even a good sleep.

Other potential sources of inspiration:

* What's been happening in the world lately?
* Have you done anything interesting lately (gone on holiday, done something new, etc)? It's always good to write about what you know.
* Read lots of good novels and watch lots of good films - not so that you can pinch plots wholesale, but to give you ideas about the sort of things that work well as plot elements and that you could adapt for a game (and also to see what doesn't work well).
* Have a break away from your routine (go on holiday or go somewhere new at the weekend/on your day off) - not having to think about all the day-to-day stuff can help bring fresh ideas to mind.
* Note down your dreams, if you remember them. Maybe there's something there that could be turned into a game.

If all else fails, read the game idea thread - there are dozens of suggestions there for people who are stuck for game ideas.

One word: Plagurism. 

It's plagarism and it doesn't help.

No, it's "plagiarism", but it STILL doesn't help

Seriously, though, once you've got half an idea of something that might make a decent game, get yourself a partner to work with - someone who is keen to write a game too, and has one or two ideas of their own. Then spend several hours with them working out the game - the plot, the puzzles, what the the characters will look like, etc. You will probably need to do this several times if the game is longer than a very short one. It's quite difficult to come up with a complete game all by oneself, and getting two heads together can make a big difference to what you come up with.

The answer to the word puzzle is given when you start solving

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the virus puzzle.

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I'm stuck on the file clean-up...

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I've arranged the pieces so they fit together more or less, with small gaps between them, but nothing happens. How do you do this?

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Gaye, have you...

1.

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shown the Dictaphone to Eve, so that she explains to you how it works, and then played the message recorded on it?

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2.

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hypnotised the steward so that he will reveal how to open the door?

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3.

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spoken to the steward again to get him to reveal this information?

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4.

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spoken to both Eve and Nick?

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5.

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heard Nick imitate the recording?

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If so, there's only one thing you're missing:

Hint:

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Nick can imitate the captain's voice. You have the combination. The combination has to be read out in the captain's voice. Nick would be able to do this, and so all you have to do is to (see answer below if you still can't work it out)...

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Answer:

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...show Nick the combination. Note that this works only AFTER you have done the other things above, otherwise Nick won't know why you are showing it to him.

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Thanks.

Hm, it's a bit of a pixel hunt... can you point out exactly where it is, please?

EDIT: Ah, not to worry, I've found it. It's

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in the lower-right corner of the screen.

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[Gaye]

Gaye

Have you tried...

1.

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Talking to Eve and Nick - they might be able to give you a clue or help you in some other way. Sometimes the only way to move the game on is to talk to them.

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2.

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Looking at the furniture - talking to Nick can help here.

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What have you got in your inventory so far?

Hm, I'm stuck already...

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I've got through the portal and am in the place where the block of ice and gate are. Nothing seems to work... I've tried knocking on the house door as well.

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Thanks.

[Tamanegi]

Tamanegi

I enjpoyed the game very much, but one thing bothers me, and that is the more-forced-than-necessary linearity. For example it makes no sense that

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you can only look behind the planks after you discovered the panel, or that searching the room apparently doesn't mean "look behind things", so the janitor has to remember a box is off before it is examined, i.e., I wanted to look behind both objects even before the game allowed me to, and for example mentally ticked the planks as "not important".

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Also, red herrings are okay and necessary, but

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then they should make sense, not like the stairs that you couldn't get because of a bunch of EMPTY boxes that were in the way.

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This frustrated the hell out of me.

That said, it was a well-executed plot, excellent graphics, nice puzzles (although they relied a little much on "do again what failed earlier") and a certainly original concept. I missed at least rudimenary sounds or music, though.

Thanks for the comments, Tamanegi. I'm glad you enjoyed it, but I'm sorry if some parts of the game seemed awkward.

I think you might have seen a few things differently from how they were intended:

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* Grace suggests that they search the boxes, not the room - hence it makes no sense to Vince to look behind the planks until later on when they need a light source. If he'd found the torch too early, it would have made the stepladder/light bulb red herring irrelevant.
* The boxes are heavy even though they are empty - I think the ones on Vince's side of the ladder are crates, and the ones behind (in front as we see them) are boxes, which he is not able to reach. The one in front of the panel has to be light because it needs to be moved by the bad guys.

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Music and sound would have been great, but I had trouble getting music to work and by the time I was thinking of music, it was close to the deadline.

Your feedback will help us to make the next game better. This was our first!

Crazy

The first room is one of the hardest puzzles in the game. Don't worry - most of what comes later is easier!

Thanks, sthomannch. I managed to work it out for myself in the end.

Erm, I'm stuck at the end...

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I'm in space with the plunger, branch, key and overalls, but nothing I do seems to get me any closer to the magnifying glass to use the plunger on it.

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Thanks.

"Procure" to me suggests going out and hunting for something. I think "acquire" would be more suitable for picking something up that is already to hand.

One typo: it's "retrieve" ("i" before "e", remember).

Now for some constructive criticism on the GUI design from a software engineering point of view.

The graphical interface paradigm familiar to most computer users is that highlighting at the top and shadow at the bottom of a control means it is a button that can be clicked (the highlighting and shadowing make it look raised). Reversing these gives either a button that is being pressed or is permanently selected, or a text label that is just there to display some information and cannot be interacted with (compare the "CAPS" label that appears at the bottom right of some word-processing packages when you press caps lock). The highlighting and shading on the load/save/quit buttons should therefore be switched round. Swapping them round just to give some variety is a bad move, as it will confuse the user.

Grey on grey can be hard to read. I'd recommend increasing the contrast by using black text on the buttons.

Using "converse", etc, is fun and original, but "talk", etc, are readable at a glance. Using longer, Latinate words means that the user has to mentally "translate" the words when looking for the button they want. (Of course, once they know where the buttons are, that is no longer a problem.) Shorter, simpler words on buttons are immediately understood.

Icons are better still, as has already been mentioned, provided they are clear and can easily be distinguished from one another. If you use icons, you may need to make the buttons bigger so the icons are big enough to be understood.

Space out the bottom three buttons to reduce the chance of the user pressing the wrong button.

Make the layout of the buttons symmetrical so that they line up at the right edge as well as the left.

You can get round the problems of how to draw the letters by typing the text in a font of your choice and then putting this text on to the buttons as text labels in the AGS engine. If the result still isn't good enough, use antialiasing to smooth out the pixels (eg, by typing the text into a word processor, capturing the screen and cutting out what you need in a graphics program). Text can then be made quite tiny and still be readable. I used this technique in Trance-Pacific for some of the text in the Memo GUI.

Reduce the gap between the buttons and the inventory slots. It looks like something has been left out. Either make the inventory longer, or make the whole GUI shorter.

Make the arrows into buttons (with highlighting and shadow) to make it clear they can be pressed and are not just part of the background image.

I hope this is useful to you. Is this going into a real game, or is it just for fun?

OK, for anyone who might be interested, there is now an Italian translation of the game (version 1.06).

Oh, and the typo that Monsieur OUXX found should now be fixed too.

Little error in the dialogs.

Missing word : "We don't anyone to know about, especially not the Aboriginal community"
--> "We don't WANT anyone to know about, especially not the Aboriginal community" ?

If one was to be really pedantic they could also add:
"We don't WANT anyone to know about 'IT', especially not the Aboriginal community"
But we all know what is meant.

Yes, you're right, it was meant to be "We don't want anyone to know about it, ..." Well spotted, and thanks for pointing it out.

[Reini]

Reini

Here's how I solved it.

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Click on the question mark next to the dials. You'll get taken to a "cheat sheet" showing the names of all the creatures.

Go to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) and, for each creature, type the name of the creature into the search box (on the lefthand side of the page) and press "Go". On the right of the page, when you get there, you'll see a table that gives you the scientific classification of the creature, including the phylum. Make a note of it.

When you've done this for all the creatures (or enough of them) you'll see that there are several that fall into the same phylum, and that this is true for several phyla. Now go back to the puzzle, and for each creature in each phylum that has several creatures in it, write down which ring that creature is in (outer, middle, inner).

Note that there are only six creatures in the middle ring. Look through the list you've made. You'll see that for at least three of these six creatures, there is a creature in the same phylum in the inner ring, and a creature in the same phylum in the outer ring.

Now it's just a question of lining these creatures up so that they fall between the black needles in the puzzle, using the three knobs at the top right. When you've done this, use the knob at the bottom right to complete the puzzle.

As far as I am aware, there is only one solution, but there may be more than three phyla having a set of creatures in all three rings, so you might have to experiment a bit until you get there.

Hopefully this makes sense and is helpful.

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I liked this game very much - it was better than the first part, in my opinion. Some of the detail was a little hard to see because the rooms were so dark, but I got there in the end.

A few bugs I spotted (sorry if these have already been mentioned or fixed):

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* Once you've put one or more ingredients into the cauldron, looking at it again says "An empty cauldron hangs suspended".
* If you speak to the pharmacist after using the pills, the dialog option "What can you tell me about these pills?" still appears.
* When you look in the coop, the message "A box without treasures..." flashes up on the screen for a fraction of a second - far too fast to read. Is this meant to be there, as it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the game?
* Using the ember on the hay in the inventory gives a different response from using the hay on the ember, and one or both of the responses suggest this is not the right thing to do, even though it is. Perhaps these should say "Not yet" or something like that, as you need to put the hay down before you use the ember on it.

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Apart from that, a big thumbs up from me for the outstanding and beautiful graphics and a great game.