Good rules of thumb for success on NG:
1. Offer a full game, not a demo or an underdeveloped project.
2. Make it worthwhile and not time-wasting. For example, text should never appear letter by letter when it is lines of text, but can appear with transitions like fading in, et al.
3. If the art is just photos, we know you didn't try.
4. Consider a mute button, always.
5. Additional to note with text is the influence on "tutorials" if your game needs that much of a tutorial for a short point and click game, then you are doing something wrong. Most point & click games need one page to clarify any aspects of the interface that aren't immediately obvious. It's generally an intuitive thing for anyone who uses a point and click interface.
Author Comments
Something happened at the Laboratory. The communication has been cut off. No-one leaves the building and all signs of life inside disappeared. You have been sent inside to investigate the situation. Can you *save* the scientists?
This is a short adventure game based on an exploration of a deserted scientific research facility. You try to solve the mystery of vanished scientists, searching the rooms, inspecting found objects and finally making consequential decisions. Nothing really is what it seems to be. Including you…
Here's my 'DEMO' I know you can't actually 'do' anything in it, but I swear it is totally worth buying the game.. At the low low price of $4.50 why that is a steal no matter what your socks taste like.
That being said I agree with the points 'JeffreyDriver' made on the graphics as well. To further that point, you shouldn't mix hand drawn, pixelated real life, and clear real life. It all just looks bad when mashed together. Additionally, if you are going to have still images don't draw attention to things you can't interact with or even get a description off of. Moving from room to room is also not a consistent experience, here we have popups, there you click the edges, or no, wait, click the door in the mirror, oh crap.. click the top of the stairs to go back where you came from.. The irregular locations of pop-up text is also distracting.Consistency is a good thing.
All told a demo that you actually want people to like and play more of should contain enough actual gameplay to not just give a person a vague amount of interest but to hook that person. This doesn't do either. The story itself isn't compelling enough to make me care if I am 'missing out'.
So what flavor are my socks? Although it probably depends on if I have been wearing them or not I have no intentions of finding out. The same goes for this game.
Looks interesting, but the demo is far too short to get a real feel of it unless I'm missing something.
One thing which bothers me is the graphics as there's a mix of styles/pixel sizes. Some consistency would really improve it. Also, you can tell that you've pixellated real photos which kind of breaks the immersion. It would be great if you could draw your own. Maybe some 3D rendered scenes would look good.