Just finished this. What an outstanding game. You would be mad and doing your iPad a disservice by not owning it. This is iPad gaming as it should be. Worth every penny and a 5 star game.
Bought it. Played it. Love it! This game shines in every possible way. Except... one... Indeed. The music is beautiful and so are the general sound FX. But this is where you went wrong. Severe compression! Your beautiful music on the background that generates the general atmosphere for the game is hampered by horrific low quality (artifacts) due to the severe low bitrate. I played with headphones. It bothered me so much and killed the experience so badly, that I stopped playing it and quite frankly I am simply stunned. Dear developer. Could you please PLEASE give your own work a little more credit and sacrifice a bit of your app compactness with some higher audio quality? If it's only for the music? Seriously. I won't continue playing this and speaking of stunning: I am quite surprised one one else noticed this or at least mentioned this. And no, my headphones aren't super fancy pancy even. Not at all. I never gave this kind of feedback on any other app, so I am not nitpicking either. Personally, it really impacts the experience severely for me. Hope you can fix this quick! Shouldn't be that hard? Just re-encode the music on a (slightly) higher bitrate? Pretty please?
I think the reason nobody else mentioned the "low bitrate" of the background music is probably because most folks posting here don't happen to be so neurotic and hysterical that they would let something as insignificant as a "low bitrate" on an audio track ruin their enjoyment of one of the best games of the year. But I could be wrong about that. .
You are. I am not hysterical, just flabbergasted. My hearing is really good but not exceptional. It's a fact: the soundtrack -in the beginning of the game at least- sounds really thin due to the heavy compression on the audio. The compression scheme is system wide, but for the short audio effects this isn't really an issue. Not that nitpicky. But the music style is this long wave of continuous synth sound and quite detailed at that. The compression simply "shows" and I bet it could sound a lot richer, thus improving the overall experience and atmosphere. My opinion is that it does ruin the experience. It's like playing a bugged game but you don't let those bugs get to you because it's the best game of the year. One could also wait for the patch to experience the first time around to the FULLEST. Let's see what the developer has to say, shall we?
That is your opinion. Good for you the game is satisfying enough in it's current state. Like I already said: shall we see what the developer has to say on the matter? Your latest expression indicates that we will run in circles regarding the immersion phenomenon and it's importance as a coherent package quite quickly.
Frankly, I've been listening to a lot of M83 recently, and they tend to run synths with a similar slight distortion as part of the style -- perhaps that's why it sounds intentional to me (machines gone wrong, as it were, which fits with the overall theme). In your first post you asked why nobody else had mentioned the "low bitrate" issue. My answer is simply that it doesn't bother most folks the way it bothers you. It makes me sad that you are missing out on such a great game because of something that most folks would consider insignificant. I just spent my 30 minute commute completing a puzzle that at first brush stumped me. Combined with the overall atmosphere and the slowly unfolding and profoundly sad story, the experience transported me in ways that few games have managed.
The half hour I played so far was pretty cool -kind of a cross between a platformer and an adventure game where you are exploring and trying to reach places. Then I got stuck. I need some sleep, so I will try some more tomorrow.
As a developer, of course, I want everyone to be happy. Actually, that's a lie. With Inco, I want everyone to profoundly question every aspect of their lives and cry a lot, while simultaneous feel rage at the system and the way our lives are manipulated by things that are not even human... ...and jump on stuff. Death, decay and loss are huge themes in the game. I have added a lot of dust, pops, crackles, distortion and grime to the soundtrack in order to give the whole game a slight hint of decay. I mean, it clearly wasn't a depressing enough experience already. At the same time, I knew that some audiophiles might want a copy of the music, and hoped that having an album version available on Bandcamp would cater for anyone who wants a perfect, big-fat-file version of the music in its angst-ridden glory. It is 562 meg! http://denecarter.bandcamp.com/album/incoboto-the-soundtrack I do want everyone to be happy (within Incoboto's bounds) and if there's call from people to have their grime, decay and distortion minus a bit of aliasing, then I'm happy to comply in a future update. It will massively increase file-size, and that used to be a huge, huge deal for people. Mayhap it's not any more. I'm not even sure mayhap is a word. Anyway, I'm hugely touched there's a discussion about how we could push the quality of the Inco's *experience* to something even better, rather than seeing people argue over pricing ("Dis shud be 4 free"). That's - frankly - wonderful. Thanks so much. It's folks like you that allow me to do more stuff in the future and ensure The Corporation doesn't win.
I suspected as much (that the distortion was intentional). Besides M83 I am also reminded of Deastro and Youth Lagoon, which combine electronic sounds with a lo-fi aesthetic to produce (to my ears anyway) very compelling music. In any event, the whole thing fits together as a package for me. Thanks for a great game!
I'm only a short way in, but so far this is quite good. At first I wasn't sure about the control scheme, but once you get the idea to not lift up when jumping - you can jump while moving - it starts to feel a lot better.
There are so many ways to play this game. Let's count 'em. Without soft-joypad (or 'Pro mode' as I call it): - One hand on screen, sliding up to jump. - One hand on screen, tapping to jump. - Two hands on screen, tapping anywhere to jump - Two hands on screen, sliding either one to jump - Two hands on screen, one to move, one tapping anywhere to jump With on-screen joypads (or 'I hate you, Dene!' mode). These are 'ambidextrous', fading out the one you don't use, automatically. Finally, left and right-handed people can play this distressing game and feel the same suicidal urges with these lovely options: - Left-handed tap (one on pad, the other tap the screen to jump) - Left-handed slide (one on pad, the other tap the screen to jump) - Right-handed tap (one on pad, the other tap the screen to jump) - Right-handed slide (one on pad, the other tap the screen to jump) - Two-handed (use BOTH joypads and tap either one up to jump) - Two-handed (use BOTH joypads and slide either one up to jump) I'm pretty sure that sets a record. The only thing I didn't do was add a braille version.
I don't know how to post pics, plus I'm on an iPad so... http://twitter.com/ithinkimalion/status/175637727776223233/photo/1 Can someone help me either solve that machine or get the other star? I'm stuck on 24 stars and can't move on. :c EDIT: nvm, I got it!
@Dene: The file size is crucial, particularly once you start getting into triple figures. I would have had a much tougher decision purchasing the game had it been 100-200 mb, and almost certainly would not have picked it up had it been 300+.
Thanks for the heads up, Dene. I wasn't aware that -next to keeping the app size down- the sound of decay was intentional to the art style. Indeed forgot to mention that I also was missing anti aliasing lol. In that case I stepped into the game with the wrong idea of what the mood / theme should be. Nor did I figure the file size will be so much greater. Since the game is already so small, I didn't figure the sound track could be that big thus it shouldn't increase much if you would up it to just even 160kbits, but now that I learned the heavy compression to the audio is actually intentional by design, I indeed wouldn't want to see it changed. It's just highly unexpected since you are the first developer I know that uses heavy audio compression, lack of FSAA as a design choice for the game. Very original though! Artism and intention cannot be argued. That's something I would never meddle with and respect the design, so hereby I take my request back and will give it another go. And yes. People that would discuss the price of this amazing one man effort should be put to shame and perhaps apply for a job at The Corporation.
Has anyone managed to get joypad to work? I struggle getting my iPhone and iPad to pair via Bluetooth Edit. Lol, I thought it meant the joypad app would work With this! Sorry, ignore my stupidity, nothing to see here, move along please - The Corporation edit 2. wow. This game is great! Really great! You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly great it is! I mean you may think its a lot of fun playing waking mars, but that's just peanuts to this! On a serious note, the music is perfect. I love it. I'm so glad I have purchased this game, such a wonderful week for ios releases. Picked up the album. Thank-you.
5-Star ratings throughout on the (UK) app store, and deservedly so. Apple need to feature Incoboto on the front page of the app store to get the wider attention it deserves. Excellent game!
I got a chance to play quite a bit and, yes, this game is superb. Everyone with an iPad needs to buy this game. It's definitely getting my vote for GOTW.
Ugh I have been stuck on this for days! I really like this game but I can't get past this stupid part. I'm trying to get sun thing number 15. It's sitting above the discoball thing that I think you're supposed to have a glove for. I don't think I have a glove and I can't seem to figure out what to do but I'm sure it's right in front of my face. Nevermind. I think my game was bugged. I restarted and got it.
