The Magic Circle

[Ninety-Three]

It is one of our disappointments that we were not able to support that and had to cheat with her in that case.  We tried to handle it by making Maze far away (outside target range) and unreachable (no places nearby for waypoints), but I am sure some enterprising player could find a way to get close.  Wanted to save you the trouble of trying, because you are correct, you cannot hijack Maze (although I really wish we had been able to allow it).

 

Thanks for the warning. It's a real shame, because that would be an interesting puzzle to solve. You could lay out a bunch of carry-able rocks and plug in Flying and Hive Mind to build a bridge up pretty far. From there you can set a railgun pet atop the bridge, then give the bridge repulsor and make it hate the railgunner so the gunner gets thrown even further. I don't remember how far out Maze was, but I have to imagine that would do it. That's the kind of stuff I would've loved to pull off in this game, with interactions between multiple abilities.

[rujuro]

Some of the tester logs should require that kind of extra ability combination.  But we saw enough people bang their heads against the basic obstacles that we didn't want to require it just to progress.

[Ninety-Three]

Some of the tester logs should require that kind of extra ability combination.  But we saw enough people bang their heads against the basic obstacles that we didn't want to require it just to progress.

 

All the ones I found were trivial with my trusty flying rock, but I did miss a bunch. My real difficulty wasn't getting to them, but finding them in the first place. I think I gave up at 50% after a while running around the map and flying past all the obvious places.

[rujuro]

There are hints to many of the locations that can only be seen while you are ghosted, in case you feel like finding more.

[namman siggins]

It's interesting, everyone latches on to different things, you are the exact opposite of a lot of players, who just want more editing and couldn't care less about our story and concept.  To us  it is all of a piece, but that is certainly the risk of making something that is trying to be so many things.  Some people will only be into a portion of what you made.

 

Glad you are enjoying it though, always great to hear!

True and it's like that with everything in life.

 

I think--and this is going to be rambling mess--that if the overall picture holds together and each piece--even if you don' like all the pieces--works in cohesion, then a person should be able to get past those pieces they don't like and take it as a whole.

 

I'm stating common sense here. w/e

 

What I'm trying to say is, I thoroughly enjoyed the game especially the SS2 aesthetics.

Also, I'm really into narrative, concepts, themes, place and characters. I think that may come from being a reader, radio listener especially of fiction and non-fiction docs and film nerd. I'm in that camp of "losing gameplay" or "shifting gameplay" for the narrative.

[Ninety-Three]

So after beating the game, I pressed the New Game button and, uh...

 

 

 

It's impossible to tell with this game, is this some kind of New Game+ graphics pack, or did I actually break it?

[rujuro]

Hmm, that is usually what we see when there is an incompatibility with shaders and a graphics card or a DirectX failure.  It worked ok for you the first time with the same Video card? Could I find out what video card you have?

 

I have personally seen that when forcing the game to run in DX11 mode.  Any chance you upgraded to Windows10 since your first playthrough?  Maybe you need to reinstall DX9c, or force it to run in compatibility mode?  Let me know if you are able to solve it, that is a really odd problem.

[Ninety-Three]

Hmm, that is usually what we see when there is an incompatibility with shaders and a graphics card or a DirectX failure.  It worked ok for you the first time with the same Video card? Could I find out what video card you have?

 

I have personally seen that when forcing the game to run in DX11 mode.  Any chance you upgraded to Windows10 since your first playthrough?  Maybe you need to reinstall DX9c, or force it to run in compatibility mode?  Let me know if you are able to solve it, that is a really odd problem.

Same computer, same drivers, same install, same everything, worked fine when I played two weeks ago. ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series.

[rujuro]

Wow, that is really weird.  I can't think of anything that would have changed. Some people have reported issues with the Radeon HD series of cards, and have had some luck forcing it into OpenGL mode.  But I can't think of anything that would have made it get worse.  We do have an open ticket with Unity on the Radeon issue. Will let you know if we solve it.  Can't figure out how it could have gone from working to not working though.

[Ninety-Three]

My graphics issue magically went away (???) and I played some more of the game. In my previous playthrough I had explored the open world segment, assuming it would be full of puzzles and critical parts, but I ended up finding a bunch of areas that could be solved with the simple application of one part. This time I set out with a different goal: Beat the open world as quickly as possible. It was awfully short, but it captured the kind of interesting challenges I had hoped to get from the game. Unlike my previous plug and play use of abilities, it had enough complexity and thought put into it that it felt like my solution instead of just the solution (or one of the four solutions). Also I correctly guessed at how to perform some probably-unintended-but-kind-of-intuitive exploity bullshit, and that's always rewarding.

 

My solution:

• Get a howler.
• Go into the dark cave to get fireproof from the rock.
• Make a fireproof howler and have it kill the flamers to get fire attack.
• Get a turtle-thing.
• Make a fire-breathing turtle, sic it on the sentinel to get float.
• Make a floating turtle and carry it to the Sky Bastard Viewing Area. Float-flying can be achieved by standing on the turtle, pressing jump, immediately picking up the turtle, then putting the turtle down at the apex of your jump, increasing its altitude by your jump height. You also gain a bit of horizontal distance. Float-fly very high, then jump and land on the Sky Bastard platform.
• Make a grounded fire-breathing turtle and howler, sic them on the Whirlybirds, then the Sky Bastard.
• Win!

[mikemariano]

I beat this game tonight.  It was a lot of fun, and the way it expanded on its premise after I thought it would end was really interesting.

 

I liked that the game went from making fun of "lazy devs" to then focusing on entitled gamers, then putting the player on the spot as well.  It really approaches something like The Larry Sanders Show or The Player in terms of creating a funhouse version of the entertainment business.  It can serve as a time capsule for how video game development sees itself and its history from today's perspective.

 

I enjoyed when the crowd left once Gilder started yelling at the player—and stopped paying attention to them!  These entitled gamers!

 

I was more impressed with the mysterious voice running through my level than I thought I'd be.  And then to see a twist on that later as Coda does a "Lets Play" of the same level!  Hearing two different evaluations—and slightly different ways of playing—of the same level was really fun.