jfrisby

Did Neil Ross retire? I'd be okay with a sound alike, or someone different :P

Well, this is sad more than anything.. Josh did a really great job of repairing the image of Replay for awhile with his updates and by hiding Paul, I didn't know that he'd left Replay (but that explains Paul being off-the-leash). I can only imagine that LSL:R sales are poor to middling, and that's something all adventure game designers are probably going to have to face. Not that surprising Paul is imploding, given that he's probably alone, surrounded by bills and hate, and he's that sort of asshole. Looking forward to hearing stories from Josh in 5-10 years -- and many thanks to the fellow Replay forum folks for the good times, it was fun while it lasted :D

I didn't really think the swiping was particularly tablet-friendly seeming, but more of a way to expand the old point & click mechanics - so I didn't really mind that stuff after awhile, besides the hotspots being too precise. I definitely wouldn't like to see it decay into piles of sliding-tile puzzles, or drag-and-connect-the-wires type stuff, but wouldn't mind having to qualify my hand icon usage with a direction. Not a big fan of the hotspot labels (or would like to turn them off - for that old school difficulty), but like the "animated cursors if there's something to do / a response of any kind" idea.... that at least requires some forethought. Active pixel indicators on icons/inventory-items would be nice, or maybe just make that stuff much more forgiving.

Having the same trouble - can't tell whether I'm missing something (maybe with the clamp on the workbench?), just not getting the sequence right, or missing with the hotspots (on either the inventory item, or the socket).

Yeah, I didn't mean to say bad things about Deponia or Curse (although I've been complaining about the visual style change from MI2 for over a decade)... Deponia does sort of all melt together. It really seems like a Sam & Max (Devil's Playhouse) style "film grain" filter over the screen would give it that slightly faded rougher, comic/SQ4 vibe.. I usually hate that kind of thing, but it seems like it could be done well.. hmmmmmmmm

I'm loving how things are looking, though it has taken awhile to adjust to the new high-res thing... I guess the thing I'd like to see is some nice darker areas :) -- I guess that's what we haven't necessarily seen in the new style. I definitely think it's looking nicer (to me) than other more cartooney-styled games, like Deponia, or Curse of Monkey Island.

I still check the news, but yeah -- summer.... and four very intense adventure-game related months at the start of the year. The sources for Spaceventure news are a little diffuse too, with the forum, svbacker site, and Andromedan Post.. Substantial news on the dev process could go into a Kickstarter update, to ping all the backers, and remind them of the various sites and pushing the paypal campaign.

Codemasters owns and is the one licensing out the rights to Leisure Suit Larry, so that situation wouldn't change with this. Well, there's likely methods of getting attention on an issue if a number of actual shareholders are involved in an effort -- I'm sort of surprised the WoW/Diablo folks haven't gone this way through the years... If they do end up going public with that 61% stake, it'd be encouraging to see these Kickstarter energies directed at actually "investing" in something [pending a rather lot of research].

Seems like almost anyone new controlling that 61% stake in Activision could bring a reassessment of the IP, or policies concerning them. But it's probably unlikely that anyone other than another Vivendi-like super-conglomerate is going to jump at the $many-billions pricetag. It probably wouldn't hurt if a few hundred people bought stock and wrote a group letter, though -- I don't know whether gamers have attempted campaigns of that kind before.

I think one of the only things the Tex paypal page has going for it is the white background -- I think there was a study done at some point implying that lighter backgrounds generally inspired more trust & purchases from web consumers. Who knows if that means anything, but it might look more organized by default.

Oh, and definitely get some kind of real-time $ total counter on screen somewhere.... so we can continue to enjoy the game-ification of spending all our money, Kickstarter style.

I like all the stretch goals, and can see why they come at the costs/levels that they're at --- but I do worry it's a bit ambitious to try to structure the campaign for these new goals in the same way as the Kickstarter.... I'm just not sure the momentum works the same way to get there. I think it'd be wise to bolster the visibility of things like the $150 level chat access (and maybe define what that is), and any other tier items that are "watch the process now" type things -- that may push a little urgency into the "why now" question for some people. Other than that... my first thought was that it might work better to have two larger, bulkier, stretch goals -- maybe 600k & 700k that combine all the stuff into two. Since EGA mode & female protagonist seem to be the easier to sell people on, it might drive momentum to put one of them a little lower (600k). Those are rather intimidating numbers to get to either way, especially with the lower profile that this 2nd round campaign will get (even if we have 6 months/a year to raise it). Would they allow another Kickstarter for additional game content? If you did something like confirm Felicia Day for the female character and launched a supplemental campaign in 8 months for it, it would probably go smoothly. Or, you could just do all the stuff in the stretch goals, since it will make the game even more awesome, marketable and memorable... and put the eggs in the "future sales" basket (if there's any way you can afford to do it -- I guess that's probably not a real option.. oh well).

I remember not knowing to get the green slime in SQ4 -- so that got me stuck for quite awhile. Think I restarted -- was there a way to revisit the sewers to prevent that? Pretty sure on my first playthru, that I didn't know I'd missed the slime until after the mall.

I think probably one more? To wrap it up? That's just a guess.

Awesome!