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Mm'kay, I should be posting the unencrypted version of this on its board either today or tomorrow, if I do, I will reference it here in a few days. I also have plans to lengthen its title theme a bit and release it as a resource, so watch out for that.
Well, I haven't actually understood it (or rather just made my own interpretation of the maybe non-existent hidden meanings... :smile,
but I still find this game very... INTERESTING.
I can't say I would like or dislike it, it's just DIFFERENT. But in an interesting way.
Somehow I overlooked the wooden key the first time I played it, so I didn't pick it up before the fire. And then the bookshelf was moved one space up, so it wasn't visible anymore...
I think you should either make it a bit more evident, or make sure it can be seen even after the fire, because there will definitely be more people like me, who try to play in full sunlight and then can hardly see what's going on on their monitors...
Wow, Reives. Didn't know you had that in you. I guess you needed a break from the more....traditional storytelling in Quintessence. Superb craftsmanship, the atmosphere, music, etc...all very well done, but I'm more interested in the story.
I saw it as a commentary on nuclear warfare, taking place sometime in the future during a nuclear holocaust. I noted that the dates on the calendar extended beyond 2008, and the vanishing continents could represent the world slowly being destroyed by nukes. "Birdie" is reminiscent of the cutesy names given to the planes bombs (close enough) dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (i.e. "Little Boy"). The caller's insistence that Leah may be able to "kill" Birdie reveals humanity's complicity in nuclear destruction...if we could scrounge up the courage, we could come together and put an end to all of it. I could be totally off..or letting my own opinions on foreign policy inform this. I won't hide that I think nuclear attacks are a cowardly form of warfare, an inflated form of hit-and-run, and something that treats its victims as...faceless, ignoring their individual humanity.
This actually reminded me of the work of directors like David Lynch or Jan Svankmajer. Rich with metaphors and symbols...but nearly devoid of actual explanation. I suspect some of your "the story is what YOU make it" is showmanship. I sense you do have an interpretation in mind, we just won't hear it. And it's probably better that way. After all, learning the secret behind a magic trick always makes it less enchanting.
One of these days I'll finish Quintessence and give you real feedback on it.
The ultimate creepy part for me is after I opened the music box and the fire set on fire, the music box was no longer there but the music kept playing. Quite the awesome.
@volrath:
Little boy was the name of the bomb itself that was dropped on Hiroshima. The plane that dropped on Hiroshima was "The Enola Gay"
This is one of the most beautiful, and yet terrifying, games around. It relies on people's perspectives of reality, rather than people's sense of being led. I hope you make a sequel!
I'm gonna make this simple and clear and avoiding any previous and yet controvesial comment that might contradict this
The game is extremely well made. It creates an gaming atmosphere that many games can't. I hadn't time to play it completely.. it looked great anyway.
For my taste, this is one of the bests ambientalist mapping that I've seen around.
@Maria:
Glad it was of that effect. And ah, thanks for the heads up - I think that was a mistake on my part; I'll have to look to see how that was caused. My apologies.
@Shiroun:
Aye, as Chimmy said, everything disappears one by one. Africa was not the last to disappear but rather the second last (I think), but it was the most visible last-sight.
John McEvan":13vgmd01 said:
It'a a reference to racism and it's effects on global warming.
I'm surprised that you are the first person to have mentioned that. A theme along the "end of the world", as well as your concept of "birdie", was something I had in mind; especially noting with the disappearance of the continents. However, I admit that I did not specify in my pseudo planning the details such as the metaphor for Leah's actual role and the like.
But this is great, I have to say, and is exactly what I looked forward to. To me, reading the interpretations in feedbacks here of the general molds are a lot more interesting than making it/playing it myself, heh. While I did have a set few possible plot segments in mind when I made it, saying much at all about this myself would completely defeat the purpose of this unconfined interpretational experiment. I suppose that I was a little naive into thinking that such an action would not be easy to be misunderstood, though. Better be careful in the future.
Thanks for giving this a try, and more so for the thoughts.
Thanks for the feedback, guys. Glad that the new lightings are okay for ambience. But again, as for a sequel, there will be none - Sequels are made to continue an actual linear story, which this holds none enough to make one to have any valid connection.
The unencrypted version, if released tomorrow, will be referenced here in a few days from then. However, note that I will have to censor the tileset in the unencrypted version, since I do not have the distribution right. c: They're Zanyzora, and you can find them all on her site - minus Euphony's bath tub and sink which I will have to hold back, my apologies.
I'm extremely impressed! I'm not about to go and read all the 4 pages of posts preceding mine, but I played through the whole thing, and I liked it! There were some buggy parts -- in the hall with the upstairs staircase, you can walk on the wall. And sometimes the plant gets the "doorway" arrows next to it, which go away when you walk on them. But otherwise, I was very impressed :D
May I ask, what was the significance of having people:
a.) Play the piano?
b.) Look at the multiplying organisms in the microscope?
c.) Mess with the jumpy teddy bear?
d.) Turn the lights on or off with the big foot pad in the study?
They're probably up to my own interpretation, but I couldn't find anything to interpret from that other than the obtuse gesture of giving the player something to throw them off.
Nice work though, I like slightly creepy mini-puzzlers. Very few games on this site can keep me going until the end, but this one did :D
edit: I finally read through some of the critiques. Honestly, I never came into this expecting a whirlwind of story. Sometimes ambiguity for the sake of ambiguity is refreshing. Pretentious, maybe, but still insightful in a way. A form of French poetry is to make a bunch of slips of paper with a word on them, shuffle them in a hat, draw a number, and create a semblance of a poem from them that you stamp meaning onto. Is it meant to be thrillingly insightful? No--but it's still art. As flimsy of a pretext as that may seem, it's still engaging. Were this a published work, or a commercial work, or even a work that took more than a week, I'd probably critique it harder. But it's not, so I'll examine it for what it is
I was in fact thinking of something along the same lines of Volrath, after I saw the term "birdie" being used; that's why it scared me when the house first caught on fire, I thought the "birdie" had arrived.
Loved the lighting and atmosphere, like everyone said. I think you did a good job trying a new tactic, leaving the storyline up to us rather than displaying it in some extreme ending cutscene (although I somewhat disliked it, too, as I was in the dark for awhile until I read the replies on the thread :\ ). All in all, it's a great game, especially one made in 4 or 5 days.
@Venetia:
Oh, oops - Thanks for the heads up on that passability mistake, I'll get to fixing it. c: The arrows near the plants are actually intentional, although admittedly quite ugly, heh; they appear every new hour when you have not watered the plant yet as a reminder.
a.) The piano didn't really have much of a "significance", but rather was just one of those things I added just for the sake of having something to do, heh. Also, the song played is actually a broken version of "To Realize", main theme from Quintessence. Hello shameless plug. ._.
b.) The organisms change a little each time you look at them, until disappearing completely (although the transitions, if you even call it that, were really horrible - I think I just slapped some filters and altered some tones or something for it. As for its actual direction, I was hoping that it would trigger some interpretations along the lines of biological warfare and the like, combined with the disappearing continents.
c.) The jumpy teddy bear was actually just intended to be "thrown around" by the girl rather than jumping on its own, hahah. . . Call me lazy for having nothing to display that. :p
d.) It was originally designed to be a "door locker" that is placed in front of the eastern door, so that each time you exit it, the door would be locked, making it an one-way passage. Halfway through making it I dismissed the idea due to its inconvenience, and thought that the lights are rather far from the room's main entrance - so I placed it there for an auto-lighting instead of making the players with dark screens to stumble their way across the room to turn the lights on.
Many thanks for your time playing. :smile:
@Regi:
Heheh, that's very cool that you took the fire that way. And aye, it was a very nice break on the opposite extreme from my wife-project. Which I'll be returning to now. c:
@Necrile:
Sure, that is fine. I think another decent use for it is for those who are unfamiliar with some picture commands to learn it through the title screen codes - Which is quite simple when you understand how they work.
(I feel really guilty now seeing how my replies are sort of making people pussyfoot around what they say. For the record, I blame a serious and somewhat misplaced case of the angries as well as a total misunderstanding of what Reives was trying to say at the time. :x
Just pretend that all I said was "I think the game might have been more impressive if the player had been allowed some slow dawning insight instead of an intentionally vague conclusion, even if that was your intention all along," for my sake? :x)
I finished the game about 15 minutes ago and started reading the posts in this thread. After the second page I got tired(lazy?) and just decided to skip to the 4th page and post. I personally loved the game, though I got stuck for a good 10-15 minutes finding the keycard (who knew it would be somewhere I searched already). I have to say, General Ed in college actually helps you in ways you wouldn't believe.
If I were to play this a few years ago, I wouldn't have the same appreciation for this game as I have now. How you made it up for the players to understand the story if there were any at all reminded me of the various lessons in my english class on poetry. I admit, it is a little frustrating finding some things that don't have anything to do with the progression of the game, but they were very nice touches. I expected more from the ending, but I'm actually satisfied with the WTF in here. Again, A few years back I'd have been pissed, but these sort of unresolved questions now make me curious more than stressed.
Congratulations with this, if I were able to do anything close to this in the span of 4 days, I'd be much further along my game than I am now.
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