really cool, i like the game
I knew something bad would happen to him at the end, but this is not what i expected, i expected...i don't know, because it didn't make sense he interacted with the future when he was dead at the time he would disappear or i don't know, meh yours was better xD love it
Also a question, is there a easter egg at the end?
Thank you very much SimonGhoul! Glad you liked it!
Yeah it's not the most unpredictable of stories but it worked as an exercise in storytelling using a new medium for me. :)
No easter egg sorry, just an endless looping audiotrack ;)
Simple and fun but too short.
Thank you MrFluffyPancake! Hopefully i can get something abit longer up sooner rather than later! :)
Smooth short story with nice LucasArt, which clearly as you mentioned will be expanded on into a full series in the future.
The majority of my review, however, will be on the time travel plot (I am a time travel analysis freak and play close attention to how time travel is executed in a plot) :
Without using some very complicated hybrid model which combines branching timelines and back to the future mutable histories, the ending suggests the man in black cannot be your future self (1)
I like the execution of the past Dave storing the shovel scene and how he react to future Dave trying to murder the captain. Such selves at different time periods actively interact with each other in the present is not a common theme explored in time travel short stories, especially when the selves don't trust each other.
My thoughts on what the timeline looks like
(1) Based on the man in black, Dave is supposed to be killed by the captain and the captain grab all the treasure. The man in black tries to stop that thus he travelled back to the past (Dave's present) in order to inform him about the captain's scheme and to change the outcome. Later on, as instructed by him, Dave murdered the captain a few minutes into the future and join the map together.
There should be no paradox as the present captain is still alive, thus present day Dave could have gone back to his native time and end up being killed by the captain followed shortly after by the captain being killed by an earlier time traveling Dave (because he is chronologically earlier, he is not a successor of the would be dead present Dave, thus his life won't be affected by his present self being killed, making the future scene with both Captain and Dave dead valid. Put it simply, the present Dave that kills the future captain, is before he then dies to give the scenery of the future panel
However as we saw in the ending, an interference is felt by the man in black and then he lost contact with Dave. Failed to hear the warnings of him not to go back to the present yet, Dave travelled back. It turns out for reasons unknown, this suggests the captain's death should not have happened and somehow the man in black's timeline in travelling back to the present depends on that event, that is, it depends on Dave being killed, is being undone.
This suggest the Man in Black could not have been Dave (unless in an earlier version of the timeline, that present Dave somehow escaped from the captain, snatched his map, find the treasure and get rich in the process to become the man in black we saw in this game, without the captain even being killed a few minutes into the future, or the man in black is Dave from another timeline (thus will mean that man in black has nothing to do with how the history changes in this timeline, but will be suceptible to being erased should anything gone wrong in this timeline (basically the hybrid model allured to in the beginning of the review)
We saw in the ending static a skeletal version of the captain reading the map and a skeleton next to past Dave in the future and past panels, suggesting the events in this whole game is somehow undoing itself when the captain is killed (the interference might be the man in black disappearing), thus the captain end up not being killed (Meanwhile as present Dave is travelling, he is temporally outside any timelines which is why he is not being overwritten and he still managed to keep the time travelling goggles and the memories of the events (although it is useless anyway as the disruption throughout the timeline fried the machine and it is no longer usable). The disruption also somehow blew up the mansion and the captain is then pointing his gun at Dave as the game ends in a cliffhanger.
Despite this seemly complete analysis, I felt like there's a lot of missing details. To be frank, I cannot think of any sensible way to explain why the history is completely messed up as soon present Dave kills the captain in the future, regardless of the identity of the man in black. Otherwise, the time travel is quite well executed as I believed future sequels of this series is going to be interesting
Wow! That's a really thourough analysis! I'm really flattered that you took the time for my silly little proto-game.
Regretfully all i can say right now about it is that things will be made clear in the future. Hopefully it won't disappoint!
Thank you for playing!
When the captain pulled out his gun and I walked past him, the game froze. Still very nice.
Thank you very much for pointing that out, i'll look into fixing that issue :)
Theres a slight problem checking the 2nd picture of the "vaguely homoerotic painting", the guy will get stuck if you tell him to watch the painting without moving him further beyond since the captain stands right there in the way and the game will therefore remain stuck. Still gotta check it out since I had to refresh the page, but interesting little game since I'm a fan of point n' click ones.
Hey there! Sorry for the late reply!
Thanks for pointing that out, i'll try to replicate it and see if i can't fix it in an upcoming update :)
Thanks for playing!