Ben There Dan That!
 

Hi everyone!
Adventuregamers recently posted a news item about my freeware title, 'Ben There Dan That!', here:

http://www.adventuregamers.com/newsitem.php?id=1703

and I was wondering if anyone has had a look at it. I'd love to get some feedback from adventuring experts!

Cheers,

Ben

I thought it was great! Easily one of the funniest underground adventures out there. Also, combining random things gave a specific funny line more often than I expected (instead of a default doesn't-work line). And I was pleasantly surprised a few times when I thought I'd ended up in a dead end but then found out what to do, though I need to think about how good a thing that is.
Some downsides:
- you sorely need to allow keyboard shortcuts instead of right-click cycling, though that's probably a limitation of AGS. AGS sorely needs to allow keyboard shortcuts instead of right-click cycling.
- Yin is the dark one, Yang is the light one.
- I never got into the "castle" or got Cecil (whoever that may be) to get to work. I normally like a nice red herring but these are agonizing even after you finish the game.
- The dialog was occasionally far too long, so that I found myself skipping it. Some of the dramatic pauses were too long too.

Nope, its the game, not AGS. Remember that platformers like "Art of Theft" were made with AGS... it has very few limitations.

Hm, ok. Then why does every AGS adventure I've ever played suffer from this problem? I hope it's not some misguided sense of nostalgia.

Because Game authors are too lazy to add the code to do it!

A Tale of Two Kingdoms has the shortcuts, for example.

Thanks for the feedback, and sorry for the Josh Roberts-esque delay in response!

Firstly, an updated version is here:

www.zombie-cow.com/btdt

with keyboard shortcuts and a few other small enhancements/fixes. We never really bothered with it because we personally don't use them, but as the game grew popular and this point was raised surprisingly regularly, Dan coded it in.

Re. the yin/yang dark/light: they're from alternate dimensions, where it's the other way round. (Sci-fi is great for explaining away mistakes!)

I suppose the castle could feel like a loose end. It's basically there for exposition, but I like the dialogue with the king, and I don't think it's necessarily bad design for things being there just for fun or cementing the game universe, like say the guests at the yeti party in Sam And Max Hit The Road.
Cecil is the T-Rex. He may never get to work, but he certainly learns his lesson for being a lazy games programmer!

I had no idea my response time was an official unit of measurement.

The 'Josh Roberts Delay' is more like a phenomenon than a unit, where the longer you have to wait, the more satisfying the end product is... ;)

I didn't finish it and it was a while back, but I really did like it and it was funny. So while I don't have much to say, it was good!

I played BTDT for about 3 mins and automatically knew i didnt like it. at least its only 13mb

Thanks dairyfarmer! There's a hint-through here if you fancy giving it another try: http://www.zombie-cow.com/?page_id=107

Sorry to hear you didn't like it, Ste. How did you know after 3 minutes?

Thanks to everyone who voted for us in the Aggies!

http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,981/p,14

For anyone who doesn't regularly browse the 'Adventure' board, our sequel to Ben There, Dan That! has been released, and has a thread here! It's £3/$5ish, so it can't hold hands with its predecessor on the 'Amateur' board!

If this prompts anyone to have a go on BTDT, then I'm glad to hear any feedback in this thread!

Cheers!

Oooh, what's that Steve Ince is playing..?

;)