IC Forum Archive

prayingmantis · Posts: 10

Regrettably, Alphasix is taking more time than I expected. My partner's a bit busy lately. This is a reminder of why I prefer to work alone, for the most part. That way I can control all aspects of game making without having to wait for other people to turn in their batch of work. I started a new project two months ago while waiting for him to finish coding Alphasix. Ironically, I crossed the finish line first, despite the fact that Alphasix was about 96% done when I started the project.

Anyway, the game's called Missing, it's a horror adventure game of sorts. The game plays a bit like Deja Vu or Uninvited but with a simplified GUI. The game is pretty short... if I have to guess, you can probably finish it within 3 hours or so.

The game is partially inspired by an indie game called "Scratches", which
you can find about here: http://www.nucleosys.com/site/content/view/53/39/.
If you've played Scratches before, you'll notice that I borrowed some ideas from it. Also, the format of the story is loosely based on an old-time-radio program called "Suspense."

Actually, I think I've gotten most of the bugs sorted out at this point. I'm mostly concerned with the grammar and spelling errors so far, english is not my first language. If you catch typos or grammar errors, please take a screenshot (F12) and send them over to orchard.l@gmail.com with the subject "Missing playtest."

Here are a couple of screenshots from the game:

And here's the download:
http://www.studioeres.com/orchard-l/missingplaytest.zip

I'd love to hear what you guys think about the game :)

Ps. Right-click on the mouse to advance the text.

dessgeega · Posts: 3317

i've only played through the first day so far, but there are some bothersome things, like messages that reappear every time the protagonist enters a certain room. we probably don't need to be reminded that a dark room creeps him out every time we pass through it. similiarly, i should be able to click to skip those walking-down-the-stair animations, at least after the first time i've seen them. as far as i know, there's no loading for them to mask, and they don't provide much suspense the fifth or sixth time.

those should be easy fixes.

i'm not crazy about the way people just pop up when the plot calls for them. gregory says to look for the janitor, but i have to encounter a mysterious stranger before the janitor will appear. it's arbitrary, and makes the gameworld feel mechanical. fixing it would require more work, though - have the characters be around at all times, but give them more dialogue.

it's a pacing issue too, but i think it'd be better if the player were to encounter different information from different directions than to have to discover everything in A B C order. this is an investigation, after all.

and scratches is a terrible game. i will play more missing later.

prayingmantis · Posts: 10

Thanks for the comments so far.

About scratches, I think I understand why you find it to be terrible. Scratches is handled somewhat Gabriel Knight, you have to do certain things to advance the time. This can be pretty bothersome since I got stuck a couple of times for not missing a seemingly minor detail (forget to read a diary.) That being said, I think the tight control allows them to build up the events that happened in day 2 & 3 and they did it well. I think I also heard that the demo is completely different from the actual game.

Have you tried the Dark Fall games, by any chance? They're really free when it comes to exploration. The game's pacing is pretty much determined by the player and not controlled by the designer. It sounds like you prefer this kind of game better than story driven ones.

Oh, regarding the door/stairs animation and text messages. I wish they're easy to fix, but they aren't. It's partly my fault though, the animation script is pretty much in every teleport script (script that whisks you to another map.) Fixing it will require me to redo the entire script. I do plan to make another game of this type though. I will make sure to handle the script better by then.

Admittedly, I usually favor games that allow for freedom of exploration. My previous games allows more freedom in terms of exploration.

dessgeega · Posts: 3317

i have the first dark fall, and i like it a lot.

and what i played of scratches was a 2-day press preview version. i'm not sure how close it was to the finished game, but a review i read confirmed that most of the issues i had were present in the commercial release.

more games should be like dark fall, i think.

dessgeega · Posts: 3317

something's wrong, because i went upstairs on the second day and the room descriptions kept referring to a dream i didn't have.

prayingmantis · Posts: 10

Hmmm? Can you by any chance post the text it displays? I just replayed the that part of the game, everything seems to be okay. I think the text in question is referring to the sequence where you followed the silhouette last night (which is a dream sequence.)

dessgeega · Posts: 3317

i didn't follow a silhuoette, though. after i got into bed, someone came into my room and licked me. then i woke up, and it was thundering.

prayingmantis · Posts: 10

Ah, that dream sequence is on day 2. You're on the third day. In any case, yeah, those text aren't supposed to be there. I'll get rid of them.