Old Skies: David Gilbert’s best game by far (and much better than his previous one). The characters and story are incredible. Even though I finished it a few days ago, I’m still shaken. The atmosphere, and especially the feeling of being in the past, contributes to its success. The dialogues too are incredible. Voiceover is top notch. The music is very fit to the tone. The puzzles are more than good (always considering how difficult it is to create great puzzles in non-comedy games). Don’t miss it for any reason!
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Old Skies look and sounds a little bit like A New Beginning, that I liked. I will grab Old Skies then, thanks for the short review! 
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Kathy Rain 2 has been on my wish list since its announcement, and I loved the demo. Unfortunately, I’ve been focusing on other activities lately, so I barely play games anymore. I’ll get my chance in the summer, when I usually have more time!
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I just released “Jeffrey In Space - Act II” - Itchio link here
Trailer -
@seguso will be happy to note that there is hardly any purple in this act. But there is a lot of orange.
Also, it’ll be on sale in December and when the third act comes out too (whenever that is).
Some of the things I’ve learned how to do for this game:
- Used a particle system for some of the background animations (for fire, smoke, water, lightning, etc.), which makes development faster and also better IMO
- Added several more types of dialogue puzzle, like convince an NPC through dialogue, etc.
- Made one of the main puzzles a “combine 4 different inventory items” puzzle and made another one “use 4 things on a background object” (as previously the big overarching quests were all “give 4 items to a character”)
I think I’ve now got a decent repertoire of character-based puzzles (dialogues and “gives”) and inventory-based puzzles. I have some environmental puzzles, but I want to expand my range there.
So for the third act I’ll probably work on adding more environmental-based puzzles.
(Also, I have a page with Walkthroughs for my games now - on Itchio here )
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Alright, dude, you clearly need to be re-educated on principles of chromatic variety!
But orange is better than purple. I’ll let you know my impressions! I’m sure it will be good as the other ones!
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“The Brilliant Coup” turned out much better than it seemed at first, so I’ll post my updated review:
This is an excellent old-school adventure game. The difficulty is very high, on par with Zak McKracken. The game resembles Zak in many ways, both in the character graphics, backgrounds, and settings. It lacks the ability to control multiple characters simultaneously, but it feels the same.
In terms of story, it’s more like Operation Stealth, with some parts reminiscent of that game. The puzzles are great, but very difficult. They are all fair, except for perhaps one, which required me to use a walkthrough. This was the puzzle involving how to get a transparent sheet for the printer. If you get stuck there, try using all inventory items on each other. But this really is the only instance where a puzzle felt to me nearly impossible to solve. All the other puzzles have hints, subtle but present.
If you get stuck, remember:
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Re-examine all objects and read their descriptions carefully. Sometimes they contain subtle hints.
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Some situations change without warning, and you’ll need to revisit places you’ve already been where no one was before, or ring up people again who previously didn’t say anything useful. (Also, open containers that were previously empty, but this last case has a hint, so it doesn’t count). This, if anything, is one of the game’s few flaws: actions you need to retry without knowing you need to retry them.
The second flaw of the game is that the main character isn’t very likeable (but this is subjective). Aside from that, the game is excellent. In the finale, there are several possible endings. To succeed, you need to have done something specific earlier. But otherwise, there are no dead ends in this game.
Other small flaws include the SCUMM interface being a bit old-fashioned, meaning it doesn’t automatically select “use.” What’s worse, you can’t use a keyboard shortcut to select “use” and “give,” which I really missed. Also, the mouse wheel doesn’t scroll through inventory items. These omissions are annoying but are relatively minor flaws.
The character and background graphics are well done. The animations are excellent. The settings aren’t very exotic, unfortunately; they’re ordinary places. The music is well-produced but ultimately too repetitive, so I ended up turning it off.
The dialogues are well-written, and the humor is moderately successful.
Conclusion
What truly matters is that the game is well-designed and very long. Money very well spent. This is one of the best 10-15 adventures of recent years. I’m looking forward to a sequel, but this time with a more likeable protagonist, like a James Bond-style spy. And with a more exotic, non-urban settings.
Great job!
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After 2 minutes, I’m already laughing at the dialogue
Edit: @Paul
Finished! As always, super fun. The humor is spot-on and feels so natural, I’d even dare to say it’s second to no other adventure game. It’s a matter of style, it just comes naturally to you.
The incredible thing is that this is more enjoyable to play than much more ambitious games (like, I don’t know, Rosewater, Kathy Rain 2…).
Even though the mechanics are simple, I somehow always manage to get stuck for about an hour. The gameplay isn’t bad at all, very enjoyable.
The graphics have improved, and this time there are no AI artifacts, so that’s a big step forward too. Next up, maybe try a less realistic background style and with more color variety (ahem). And please, fewer barren and arid landscapes. Will there be a planet with tropical forests?
In the long run, the feeling of staticness always creeps in due to the lack of animations, but fixing that would require an investment (maybe it’s better to wait until AI can handle animations).
Perhaps it’s time to move to the next step, but I’m not entirely sure what that would be. Good job!
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Thanks for playing! Always great to hear your feedback, I always find it useful.
The next act is the final one for this game, so it’ll be in the same style, but a different planet.
Also, on the one hand, I’m glad I made this game three acts long, because I’ll have a full-length game once they’re all done… but on the other hand, I don’t think I’d do a three act game again.
I find it too long to be working on one project, even with it split into three parts. You start to get tempted by different ideas half way through development.
I’d like to do some more Jeffrey games, but I’d make them all standalone (with no knowledge of other ones required), maybe a bit like the original Star Trek series. And each one would be about the same length as one of these acts.
With animations, I’ve been looking into 3D modelling with AI. There is a site called “Meshy AI” where you upload a 2D character and it will make a 3D model of it. It then lets you choose from a lot of animations to use with that character. I’ve tried it and it works well - what I’d try doing next is saving out frames of a walk-cycle and downscaling/pixelating them.
The character animation would then probably look like the Super Nintendo game “Donkey Kong Country”. The issue would be that you’d have to do all the characters in that style, to make it consistent, so it might add a lot of time/work to each game.
I’ll probably try looking into the 3D thing more after I’ve finished Act III, which I now have to start making!
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Even if each episode has its own story, you could connect them with another different story. (Like the Star Trek films.)
Or you could do three different adventures with different characters but a connecting story - like LucasArts planned for Loom/Forge/The Fold.
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Yeah, I definitely like the idea of doing something where it’s a different main character, but the same universe and the stories occasionally overlap.
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sounds like a great idea! In Star Trek, you controlled three characters in parallel. You could also invent three characters with different abilities. One could be a crazy robot.
If it works, I’m in favor!
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