AQUARIA IS OUT!

I don’t honestly see where the “jealousy” argument is coming from – you’re jealous of someone because they spent two years working on a single project? Ok, I can see being jealous of Derek’s artistic ability, but there isn’t a lot of point being jealous of that since not much can be done about it until someone invents the DNA resequencer from Red Dwarf..

After playing for a bit longer tonight I’m still enjoying it but I’m starting to feel a bit mixed up. I can’t tell whether the game wants to be a Knytt-style explorer or a shoot’em’up. It’s hard to relax and explore when half the ocean appears to be trying to murder you. :)

Absolutely beautiful. I’ve been playing the demo and I’ll have to buy this.

Praadur, I agree, but it feels weird when the whole map is as vicious as the cool dark shadowy bit at the end of The Machine. I mean, poor Naija can get mugged by an octopus just outside her own house!

And I have a distinct feeling that the cut scenes about the energy race who only wanted to destroy, are a hint that just blowing up too much marine life will result in a bad/amoral ending..

@ ulix: I suppose the replay value is there. I beat the demo and I’m interested as to where the game goes from there.

Maybe the problem is the fact that I just got off from beating La-Mulana. I want a game to be a lot more fast-paced. But, Aquaria has a smoother difficulty curve. It starts off slow, but it gets much better. I might buy it.

I understand how much effort went into the game, and I will GLADLY support the game developers. I just wish 30 bucks was the price for a boxed version, with some kind of special features. A downloadable version could have been $20 or so. But, my complaints are strictly personal.

actually, i feel like it distorts the image … The config screen says that it only supports 4:3 right now, so i assume they will eventually get that wide screen ratio going. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

It’s 5 degrees celsius outside, and I’ve been stood for an hour in the wind waiting for my damn bus to arrive to take me to university. I’ve also given up, come back home, put on the kettle and loaded up aquaria.

Aquaria; the plus side to shitty mornings!

Has anyone any ideas about the options for Nodes? I notice that the file data.000 is a zlib file but it seems that it has been beheaded of its index to prevent it being opened with WinZip, meaning that it isn’t possible to just look at the built-in lua libraries to find the names of function and node calls. The template has some but they aren’t necessarily representative. Or are BB planning to release these later?

Demo’s great, Only thing thats keeping me from plunking down my 30$ it is some kind of pin comment system (where you can pin a comment on places) I’m not into mindless exploring and I already seen some points that could be marked.. Ya seems trival, but ya.. mew

does it work on a mac? or will a mac (demo)version be available?

my mother would probably love this game but she uses a macbook.

Not sure if the Wii’s controls would provide an easy way of controlling, but yeah, I’d definitely think it would be awesome to see this title on other platforms. Xbox live, Playstation 3, Wii … why not? I guess it’s up to the developers though and I have no idea how feasible any of those platform conversions would be.

From playing the demo:

+ Graphics, beatifully drawn
+ Polished, very professional presentation for an indie game
+ Atmosphere, interesting narrative, coherent whole
+ Controls and core mechanics with the whole singing and stuff
++ Indie game with soul
++ Music

– Ugly unnatural voice, clashes with the nice pictures and atmosphere
— Extremely boring level design, I just dont have the patience for this kind of stuff… This really kills an otherwise very impressive effort

Yes, I’m starting to lose this now…

Cathedral boss. I read that I had to feed him poison. Makes sense. However, I can only feed him poison when he’s in one specific one out of three eating animations – no apparent reason why. Oh, and if I don’t feel like playing through that boss encounter again tonight.. then, well, that’s just tough because that’s where I am in the game. Whatever happened to that fun Aquaria game I used to have?

Bitterly disappointed to find out that there are only 3 song “spells” and the rest are alternate forms, which are just outright better invoked via the number keys on the keyboard.

It’s still not a bad game, but it’s nowhere near as good as it could have been. It could really use an XP system, so that all the exploratory killing has a reward instead of just being a nuisance..

I love it, but one thing that does annoy me:

The spiritual “Something in my soul is telling me to find out where I come from, and find out why I exist blah blah blah” cliché nonsense…reaaaally bugs me, unless it’s used in Final Fantasy. Then it’s allowed.