Well i certainly had a lot of fun last weekend, The theme was so-so, obviously created many similar games (i believe someone posted a list of all the games who’s names started with “island”, but i digress). I personally really liked the theme, if only because if it had been something else i would have never created the game i did. Now if you’ll bear with me, i’d like to share my thoughts about the voting:

It always seems like we get these generic themes (caverns, exploration, islands) and not many people are ever overly happy with them… so how do they win? Here’s my oppinion; other themes such as “continuous motion” are more personal; more likely to get a direct YES or NO. Themes like “islands” are much more open to lots of different genres and mechanics. When you’re going through the list of themes, you’re likely to be “continuous motion? what am i going to do with that? NO, PAG? awesome! YES, Islands? hmm… meh NONE”. and since it doesnt really have that much going against it since it’s so open, it’s mostly going to get a few YESs and mostly NONEs. Other themes will get lower because they already allow the voter to think about their game, most likely resulting in a lack of ideas for a game and a NO.

Now that that’s over with, how about i respond to some comments on my game?

It would be cool to have a speed adjuster that would allow me to speed up night and day even faster. asides for that I can’t think of anything else to add. Well made game fun to be able to collect power-ups and build your own world.

I understand that you’re wishing that days were longer and nights shorter, unfortunately an adjuster would make things much too easy and imbalance everything!

Fun game, i never understood how the underlying system for when you got what tool/weapon tought. The day/night cycle could be a bit shorter aswell. Really liked the intro!

I’ll make sure to shorten the cycles when i mess around with the game some more, as that’s two people now who comment on it, i never really had time for an actual description of how you get items.

Very interesting idea but somehow it was very hard for me to get into it. I didn’t understand when I earned a new tool (do you need to gather different tiles?)

Also, I have no idea how to fight back actually. I didn’t get the sword and don’t know what to collect for that. A bit more details in the intro would’ve helped a lot.

Yes, each item has different requirements for tiles, another thing on the to-do list: explain items more. Holding SHIFT brings out your sword, there’s a description of each item by mousing over them saying s0, but i realize i never told anyone that 😛

A clever little game with cute graphics and an amusing intro. Unfortunately, whenever nighttime rolled around and the screen got dark, performance for me dropped precipitously and the CPU spiked, which basically meant that when night approached I had to find a safe spot to stand and not move at all until morning. Which somewhat diminished my enjoyment, but overall it was still a good game. Rather difficult, but eventually you get the hang of it.

Yeah, hopefully i’ll be able to do some optimization of the darkness tiles when i go over the game again, i noticed it lagged quite a bit while programming it but due to the time constraint was forced to leave it be if i wanted to actually have an ending to the game.

I liked collecting different materials and making things.

When I got to a pirate lair, I killed everyone and nothing happened – I didn’t know what to do from there.

Also, when I got the sword I didn’t know how to use it. I assumed I had to click on the pirates. It was only later that I noticed the tooltip that said to use shift.

Apart from that, I thought this was great. Especially the little lantern.

Yes! somebody commented on the lantern 😀 once you’ve cleared the pirate cave you’re supposed to go to another island and clear the pirate cave there too. Sorry i didn’t put that in the instructions <_<

It was hard for me to figure out how to play at first. A tutorial would be great.

Hopefully I’ll be able to input an actual tutorial of sorts, the intro explanations were all i could do within the 48 hours!

So yeah! as you may have noticed, i’ve commented on an updated version of the game. i’m basically taking away everything except graphics and the engine, new story, stuffs, stuffs, and more stuffs that i can’t think of right now. but it should be fun!