Fasmo 2: Fasmo Goes West

[gonzo29]

some of you may remember "Fasmo", my first game which I released around 2 years ago.  Well, it was slow in coming, but I've finally finished the sequel.

In this game, you once again take control of Fasmo, the sentient stick bug from outer space.  He's accidentally teleported himself into the wild west, and must contend with ferocious bandits, and scheming policemen.

It's a fairly short game,  Hope you enjoy.

http://mysite.verizon.net/eajohn/FGW.zip

[Ghost]

Sounds intriguing. D'loading now, will edit this later 

Edit:
Okay, I'm through.

Fun game, but a bit on the short side. The offbeat humour and the setting work for me, and the backgrounds were quite nice, though of mixed quality. Nice idea, all the way. There is something about an alien walking almost unnoticed through wild west scenery. Also, music was well chosen.

Some things- just my oppinion and *not* intended to sound discouraging or harsh:
* You made several small animations for your alien stick bug, but I really missed a walk animation here. I mean, that's what I did most in the game. Walking.
* I was disappointed that far too many actions only gave me... silence. This could've been easily avoided by writing at least a generic "unhandled event" message. (Even a thousand "I can't!" responses are better than an empty click that tells me, whoops, there should be an unhandled event...")

+ "Hotspot16" at Major's house
+ Inventory window overlaps with speech text

Apart from that, not too bad! Thanks for sharing.

[bicilotti]

Playing it now. I love the way the hourglass gets filled

[Dualnames]

Sounds intriguing. D'loading now, will edit this later 

Edit:
Okay, I'm through.

Fun game, but a bit on the short side. The offbeat humour and the setting work for me, and the backgrounds were quite nice, though of mixed quality. There is something about an alien walking almost unnoticed through wild west scenery. Also, music was well chosen.

Some things- just my oppinion and *not* intended to sound discouraging or harsh:
* You made several small animations for your alien stick bug, but I really missed a walk animation here. I mean, that's what I did most in the game. Walking.
* I was disappointed that far too many actions only gave me... silence. This could've been easily avoided by writing at least a generic "unhandled event" message.


Apart from that, not too bad! Thanks for sharing.

I'll agree with Ghost. Though your game isn;t bad at all..

[bicilotti]

Good ideas, very good mountains backgrounds (they reminded me of some wax-pastel artwork. How did you draw them?) and solid music but overall rushed (see Ghost's and Dual's posts).

Liked the two minigames (the Nim was challenging, I had to mess with google a bit before I found a way to beat it) and the overall humor of the story.

Take all the time you need and let ideas/drawing/sprites/whatever "rest" for a while before releasing and we'll see a rocking chapter 3!

[gonzo29]

The backgrounds were mostly made using the airbrush tool in Gimp.  I tried several times to make decent looking walking animations for the main character but they were never very convincing (one ended up being used as the dance thing he does in the intro).

I fixed the bugs you folks mentioned, and uploaded the new version.  Thanks for the help.

here are the source images for fasmo if anyone feels like helping me out and making a walking animation for him 

[Ghost]

The backgrounds were mostly made using the airbrush tool in Gimp. 

I would've sworn they are actual felt-pen drawings, scanned in. I like them, they are charming and fit the overall style.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

So, you've included a mathematical game that gets the player either to try his luck again and again to no avail, to rely on previous knowledge of how to win the game, or to search for the reasoning in the internet and get utterly dumbfounded by the amount of mathematics into solving this one single puzzle, have you?

Congratulations, you've just lost a player, not to mention the ones who haven't said anything. You should have stuck with Fasmo 1, that one at least had fun puzzles.

[gonzo29]

 :'(

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=20836.0

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Gonzo, that's different. Yours is the actual game. People who want to play it know what they're getting into, so to speak. In here it's only a damned obstacle which prevents further progression using a certain kind of logic and thinking that hasn't been used before, won't be used again and some people just don't WANT to use because it's no longer being fun.

[gonzo29]

I suppose that's a legitimate opinion to have.  I thought the line game was fun the first time I encountered it.  It's really not impossible to solve if you just sit down with a pencil and paper and think about it for a while (I think it took me like an hour and a half when I figured it out).  Admittedly the puzzles in this game are really not that hard (with the exception of the math puzzle).  But I've seen similar logic puzzles in adventure games before, so I didn't think it would be deviating too far from the canon.

Though like I said, I can understand your frustration in expecting a game with strong adventure elements punctuated by clever but easily solved math puzzles, but getting a game weak in adventure but with a complicated math puzzle thrown in.

I was considering giving the player the option to skip that part by begging the man running the game to just give fasmo the guns regardless, but I realized there wouldn't be much left to game if I did that.  So it remains.

[Ghost]

The minute you add abstract, "out of game logic" puzzles to an adventure game, you'll split your audience. I came across the puzzle and solved it because I knew about it. But why my little stick insect should actually come into a situation where such a puzzle occured- well, I found it a bit forced. I think that is why games like Myst still are under attack by hardcore, old-school adventure game players: All the nice graphics, all the great atmosphere, all the suspense, and then you walk around writing down numbers and pulling levers.

It's a tough choice. As Rui said, it's actually a "sin" to make the player resort to out-of-game-knowledge, but more than a few designers slip on this.

You say you were about to give us a "skip" button. That would have been a great idea. You could have provided players who actually played and solved the game some little bonus, like a small animation or a cool dialogue. So well, now you know 

Though a bit outdated, I'd like to link to a great essay, called "The Craft of Adventure". It was originally written for interactive fiction, but many rules can be applied to graphic adventures as well.

[bicilotti]

I don't know... I did not find that puzzle to be obscene! Think of it: the world of Fasmo is a bit surreal (so I'm not surprised to find an oddly dressed man that offers you to play a Nim game) and the whole thing is far more better than wandering aimlessly in a a fantasy world pulling levers and noting down numbers (That's puzzling for me!)

The only drawback of using Nim is that the game is quite unforgiving (a.k.a. you cannot make a single wrong move or you're losing) and it is not visually stimulating (in so many words... lines), but I stress again, I found it to be an enjoyable interlude!

P.S.: enlighting read Ghost!

[Dualnames]

Ghost you really know how to make a game.. Geez i should hire you..Well, pointed out.

[Ghost]

I don't know... I did not find that puzzle to be obscene! Think of it: the world of Fasmo is a bit surreal (so I'm not surprised to find an oddly dressed man that offers you to play a Nim game) and the whole thing is far more better than wandering aimlessly in a a fantasy world pulling levers and noting down numbers (That's puzzling for me!)

I think the point here is expectation. When I start a game and see a seriously-looking cowboy facing a black hat, expectation arises. I anticipate dramatic showdowns, chases, a beautiful lady in a ridiculous dress, alcohol, raspy voices, sunset rides.
When I started this game, where an alien bug drops into a colourful wild west scenario, I somehow expected, well, seeing the wild west presented from an aliens point of view- cliché reversed, or something like that, because that is the point of parody. I did expect a showdown too, laser gun against colt.
The Nim puzzle was out of place because a) it is a logical number puzzle, and I cannot imagine a pack of wild west boozers enjoying it, or being interested in such a thing enough to offer it to wandering stick bugs and b) it is out of historical context. I'm a bit hazy on the details but I do not think Nim was know back in those days.

In one of the numerous interviews about MI2 there was mention of "game world consistency" which I try to stick to, and it has so far served me well: If you wish to build a coherent world, you must consider the building materials. Medivial villagers living close to the forest will build their huts out of wood, dress in animal skins and eat berries, fruit and game. When addind "anachronisms" into such a world, you would go and make them, say, build modern machinery out of the materials at hand, maybe a drink vendor built out of wood that squeezes berries into a small cup. I helps to think "cargo cult".

A busker or a charlatan with a trek wagon full of odd little trinkets and geegaws could have been made the source of a more logical, focused puzzle for example, and the character itself would have glued that puzzle to the game's world. Or an anient tribe chief could have a steam bath installed in his teepee, and with his superior skills Fasmo could've fixed it in a small pipe-mania sequence. I think such things would have been received a bit kinder.