Nice
Very nice game. Took me about 15 minutes to finish. The puzzles were kind of annoying though. Also it seemed very similar to the beginning of mass effect 1.
A nice cheat is to going to an area where an enemy responds and just keep killing it.
Overall I loved it. Keep it up!
Good, but could use improvements
Overall, the game was fantastic! I actually wish it could have been a bit longer. I love the artwork. I was fine with how the battle system worked, but I was playing more for the story. The sounds, music, and voice acting fit perfectly and was very well done.
There are a few things that I think could be improved upon. Biggest thing (in my opinion) is some sort of save or continue option. I ended up having to start this over several times because of not having this option... unless there is one and I'm just too dumb to find it...
Another is the GUI, I know it's already been brought up, but it really did stick out. It wasn't horrible, but it didn't really... match? I guess would be the right word. Also the bottom panel felt like it was a lot taller than it needed to be. It would have been nice to be able to minimize it when it wasn't in use.. which was most of the time.
Navigation. The arrows ended up being rather annoying, especially as the game progressed.. at least if you wanted to go back and forth with leveling and buying supplies like I did. If I click at the bottom of the screen.. I should be able to go down/back.. if I click on a doorway, I should be able to go through it. They also stuck out quite a bit and, in my opinion, took away from the feeling you were trying to give the game. With all the doorways and passages you have, it would have been easier (and nicer to look at) for the entire doorway to to be able to be selected and to have it highlight or an arrow appear when you rolled over it.
Now, even though the artwork was great, it didn't always look it's best. Most of it, at least the characters, had a rough, gritty.. unfinished look to them. I personally don't feel it took away from, or distracted from game play, but it was noticeable.
Again, overall, it was fantastic and I'm certainly looking forward to more of your work.
Best Game Ever
This is the best game ever
Mass Effect with a Personal Touch
First and foremost, love the art. Then again, you're a great artist - it's to be expected. You've designed each and every aspect of this game with brilliant style, original views and never-ceasing commitment (except that one enemy, last frog-dude, who looks like he was half-arsedly sketched, but who cares about that guy). The music was great, voice-acting top-notch (despite the phoned-in sounds) and the universe screamed of a gritty Mass-Effect (closest I can get to). It's an overall great game, but, of course, it does have a dope-load of flaws. For a first game, not nearly enough, but still - alot of them, enough to sell on Ebay.
The most pressing, annoying aspect of this game was the GUI. The thing which you stare at for 99% of the game, has to be the worst part of it. Graphics wise, it's a complete eyesore, subtracting greatly from the otherwise brilliant art and putting a nice big splotch on that game's record. You'll need to learn how to go ahead and create a proper GUI, graphics and placement wise - it wasn't only horrendous, it was way too big, too plain, and the lines used too damn big. I'll give this tutorial - it's a head start, not much and actually created with web design in mind, but it has the basics for producing a "pretty" GUI.
http://animation.about.com/od/flashan imationtutorials/ss/flashlesson22.htm
While we're on the subject of graphics, the second most horrible artistic decision in this game - the artifacting. Given that Jpegs are usually the cause of this, I'm going to give you this hint - use pngs. Disfargeg file size, because half the time I felt like yelling at the screen "What the hell is wrong with you? Never, ever, ever use Jpegs for professional quality, ever!" The risk of artifacting (that is, the file type screwing with the colours, mostly around the lines, and it's not pretty, it's not artistic, it's horrible quality and simply isn't cool. So use pngs (Gifs work too, long as you don't attempt to resize them outside of Photoshop or the like) because that just wasn't cool.
On a side note, just starting up the game again (I already played through it once) all the characters disappear on a second run-through after beating the game. Little bug/glitch, you might want to consider finding out the cause for, but not exactly pressing -game has fairly low replay value unless you're just going through for the pretty art (eh, heheh, yeah...).
Now, the universe is great. I'm seeing hints of galaxy-wide corruption, gritty tales of woe and a multitude of racism and cultural issues, all in a sci-fi tale full of toys and wonder for the geeks around here. There's no real problem here, but you might want to consider placing objects, things that have no real use in the game itself, that speak of the characters and people in this game having lives outside of the narrative while giving information on the universe that you have created. Comic books, newspapers, television broadcasts and advertising, all tidbits of the world.
On the above subject, the animation in this game needs work. Everything from movie clips (the best animation in the game was the smoke trail that the Riptide left docking the planet - yeah, not cool) to battles, all were lacking that component of flash animations and games. Seeing as you're new to this, and this is - I couldn't really be more surprised - your first game, but not your first flash, you're going to have to work on this. You may want to consider sacrificing quality for the animations, sorry. The few animations you did having stood out liek a sore thumb - as with most of the stuff that you did in flash itself.
Also, easy-peasy grinding to the point that I managed to one-shot the boss. Yeah... Took about half an hour.
Anyway, none of the above is a deal breaker. Just pointing out some issues that need addressing, and I really love this game to the point where it's all vote 5 and favourite from here. You're a great artist, author too, the plot is great and frankly I want to see more. Got some real material here, and I can't wait for Episode 2.
lame characters and lots of flaws
This game has some potential but it has lots of flaws.
My graetest concern is the look and voices of the characters. They are too manga-like, they look really bad, and when they started to talk I wished they weren't voice-acted at all! (The trader was especially annoying, when I met him I wanted to shoot his dumb face!)
The other big flaw was the battle and upgade system: the battles are boring, there is nothing animated, so basically you just press a button from time to time and watch some numbers change. That's not fun, it would be better if ther weren't battles at all. I'm not a fan of random encounters anyway. And the upgradeing aof your weapon and armor is just stupid: you find something and its value just gets added to my stats, it doesn't replace the old gun/armour, it merges with it. Wtf?
The graphics - if we don't count the characters in - is decent, the story too, and I liked the puzzles also. However, at the begining I had absolutly no idea wht to do becouse there was no intro wich would have told me some background story. I just start in a room, try to move around, adn after every step I stumble into anther fucker... errm I mean crew member, who stops me with another nonsense. Alright they actually tell some background story but in a really annoying way! It's very annoying when sombady always stops you for a chat!
It's also great that they tell me that there will be an exploring party and than I have to go alone. But if I have to go alone at least don't give the option to talk with the crew! I got stuck on the planet (before entering the caves), so I tried to talk with them, hopeing they will help, but no, they didn't tell anything useful, just told me to hurry up!
In the caves it's very annoyeing that the trader is at the very begining, altrough you needed him by the and at most!
The final boss is very unfair, it has huge damage and huge health, it's almost impossible. I could only defet it becouse of a bug: I levelled up during the battle, and I tried to distribute the new stat points during the battle, and somehow I ended up with infinite distributable stat points so I raised my dodge to an insane value, so I became virtually invulnerable.
Awwww, don't be jealous, someday you'll be able to make games too if you study real hard! And try your very best!