I've been playing this game all day, it really keeps me entertained and some minutes ago i noticed that some of the music in the game was made with morphwiz and bebot, am i right about this? Just wondering!
Hey David, thanks for making such a great game. First of all, yes, I am a lefty, but I don't think that has anything to do with my accidental-map-opening issue. Since the dawn of...well..the NES, the left thumb has been used to locate a d-pad at about the same spot of a gamepad that the map appears on the iphone. Since walking to your left without using the jetpack requires you to touch the left side of the screen, but not too high, this is pretty much the sweet-spot for walking left. Surely I can't be the only one to experience this?? Anyways, a simple remedy would be to have movable button mapping in the options. I will hope for this in an update, but if I do not get it, I will just have to try to train my brain to not touch that part of the screen to walk left, since I'd rather play through this frustrating little tidbit than to not play at all. The game really is that good imo.
I've been lost in this game for awhile-in a good, holy god an hour and a half has passed way. Everything is top notch and I'm glad to see that the devs are getting such great reviews. I saw a couple of people here mention this as an experience rather than a game and that initially steered me away. Now I understand the sentiment. That being said the actual game mechanics are also great and the overall feel is truly immersive. I initially agreed with people's impressions about the portraits-especially Amani's-being a bit Facebook like. That was based off screen shots and video on my part though. Now that I'm actually playing it, I feel the reverse. They actually give a humanizing feel to the game and I'm glad te devs went with this.
I'm also absolutely PRO these faces. Love them. They have character. I cannot imagine having an update where they have been altered, erased whatsoever. I'm quite shocked that it's such a huge point of discussion in here.
Gotta say, the game is awesome. Played through it in two sits, and that doesn't happen a lot (and I play on the pc and the ps3 pretty regularly). Amazing, amazing game. Off to buy the ost from bandcamp. Oh, and the faces are fine for me.
It's because modern Western society genuflects before the altar of political correctness. Anything that even remotely makes an allusion on the physique of "other" races, must be reprimanded. Personally, now I'll look at the character and think of the "AFLAC" duck.
Had a quick go last night and suddenly an hour or two flew by ! The graphics are superb. I was quick to moan about the controls but they work very well indeed. Getting further and further into the game, really love it. Reason 342342 (even more reasons !) why iOS gaming is so great, brilliant week of releases, huge variety of games. Going to leave a review for this now (suggest others do the same if you love it) As for the people, the astronaut graphic is great, but the girl just looks like some standard photo clipart from the web. Only a small niggle though, the game overall is brilliant
To David Tiger Thanks for making such a sweet game. I picked it up this week, sat down and started playing and immersed myself on an adventure in mars. I love the research log and finding out everything about a species by experimenting. I like the graphics style and the foreground. I don't mind the real pictures Amani is nice to look at. Great job on everything. I was wondering can I get the soundtrack anywhere?
Look, it doesn't sound to me like they're going anywhere, and the bottom line is the game is strong enough to bear them.
Brief impressions after a whole night playing it. I'll be completely honest....I was interested in the game since I read about it, having loved Spider and its peculiar storytelling...TILL I saw the first videos. They didn't clicked with me AT ALL...animations looked rigid, graphics not that good and repetitive. After reading 1,2,3....mentions of Sword&Sworcery-like experience I gave in. Boy I'm glad I did!!! I put on my headphones in a dark room and after what seemed to me like 5 minutes were 4 hours when my iPhone told me my battery was dying. What an AMAZING experience....it's a blend between Sword&Sworcery, Spielberg The Dig, a bit of Another World and Alien (the movie). Presentation is really top notch (both aural and visive)...it's really a pity it doesn't transpire from videos (at least for me...I love the animations in game...in the videos looked like crap)...I'm about, according to the in game counter, at 33 percent of exploration done...this game is EXPLORATION AND ATMOSPHERE AT ITS FINEST. The thing that stroke me was variety...watching videos I was expecting hours of staring at a red background...I couldn't be more wrong...every 5 miuntes something happens...dialogues/events/discoveries/new supercool graphics... I'm liking a lot they went for a realistic look too, if I may say something the only thing a bit out of place are not the portraits per se...but in particular Amani expressions that do not match the setting....she is way too smiley considering the situation, she seems to videochat with his boyfriend rather than supporting a space exploration....but it doesn't detract a bit from the whole incredible experience I had. Besides the experience, I find Mars more 'game' than Spider and S&S. Thanks TigerStyle, for the game and this headache... BTW....I STRONGLY hope you'll end the story in a bit more precise way than Spider...I lost HOURS on the spoiler thread after ending Spider...God knows how many could I spend with Mars after ending it. That planet is MASSIVE!!!!
The Dig. The Dig? The Dig?!?!? It's one of my favorite games ever. Thanks for mentioning it, I'm buying the game as I type
I got (as far as I can remember...it's been a while I didn't replay it) some of the very same emotions...probably just the setting and the sounds. It's not obviously a point&click adventure, but you probably already know it.
Theres already dozens of positive impressions on this thread so i just will add this: this is one of the best games i ever played The atmosphere, story, vegetation, presentation, controls, graphics, music, sounds, exploration, mistery... it has it all As for the videos, Amani looks like she was filmed with a webcam, edited her a bit and selected the best poses But its fine with me, dont change it.
Thanks EMTKING! You can stream the soundtrack for free or buy the whole thing (almost 2 hours of music, DRM-free) here: http://tigerstyle.bandcamp.com
Thanks this is great. I forgot to tell you I use the tweet from in game and then I receive a text message from a friend asking if they really had found a new life form in mars . Lmao funniest thing ever.
I hate games like this! Because they end! ARGHHHH! I almost don't want to play it more, just so I can think to myself "there's always more Waking Mars" to play if I get sad or bored. :-( Is there a high-score system? Like a New Game+ where you start out with all the pods (you have to maintain them yourself though!) and you go for the highest biomass score? Also...any tips for herding around floating seeds? :-D
Funny you should say that, because there WAS a NewGame+ feature (it was called exactly that) but it ended up getting cut because we never really nailed down the design and ran out of time to test it properly. Initially my thought there was that 5-star biomass thresholds would get increased during NewGame+, so you could populate levels with phyta or cycots to higher levels of biomass. It starts to mess with the fairness of the leaderboards though -- do we have a separate leaderboard just for NewGame+? Then I thought about giving you a full inventory after starting the NewGame+, but we ran into some difficulties with that implementation, and then we'd want to not take away your inventory after Chapter 1, and that was complicated. I would be happy to revisit all of this for an update though, and if you have ideas on how a NewGame+ should work, I'd love to hear them! Also, GameCenter leaderboards do exist. The Total Biomass one is the most clear one to target for extended play. My high biomass score for the world was something around 18000. Theoretically I believe you can do 20000+ but we haven't seen it yet!
