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AG Community Playthrough #41: Kathy Rain

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Total Posts: 506

Joined 2014-08-01

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I finished on the 2nd, and the truth is that there is not much to say, it is very short and also very simple regarding the activities and things to do. Now I am on day 3 and the intrigue grows back considerably. There are more things to do and places to visit, fortunately I know what I have to do, that is to say the game allows me to know what I should do so I do not feel lost wandering around, that’s very good. Also there are very interesting characters on this day that for the moment I have no idea who they are and what they do there ... for example: “the bald man dressed in red” ????

2/5 at the quiz for me as well…wow… Frown

     

” I remember. Somebody died. It was me.”
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Joined 2008-01-09

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I’ve spent only about 15 minutes in Day 2 and haven’t accomplished much so far.  I hope to get back into it soon.
Also, I missed 1 & 4 of the trivia questions. 

     

Carpe chocolate.

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Joined 2013-08-23

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Hi folks, Joel here. It’s an honor that you’ve decided to play my game! Smile I’ll try to address your questions as best as I can.

First, a disclaimer: I’d be happy to talk about the development process, various trivia and what inspired different aspects of the game etc, but I’ll refrain from commenting on some aspects of the plot that are more open to interpretation.

To be honest, I’m not sure I understand the objection to the game being set in USA. I mean if the dev wants to set the game there then what difference does his own nationality make? I’m not American myself, but clearly a version of American society sits comfortably in the consciousness of just about anyone from just about any country (or at least more so than most other societies) so it is at least something we can all understand isn’t it?

You nailed it. It’s odd to me that anyone would care about my nationality in this context, or somehow suggest that I have an obligation to set the game in my home country or any other particular place because of it. I chose the US partly due to influences from other creative works and my own familiarity with the setting, and partly for accessibility reasons.

That being said, there are certainly some Swedish easter eggs in the game, like the Dala horse in the hall Smile If you examine some of the family photos you’ll also find out that Kathy’s great grandfather, Erik Regn was Swedish, making her a descendant of Swedish immigrants.

One thing I don’t know is whether there were any dubbed versions of the game for the European market. Is there a French version? Italian? Spanish? German? I would imagine that the cost of voice acting all the dialog in languages other than the one it was written for would be an expensive proposition.

Indeed, translations and dubs of a 40,000+ word game aren’t cheap. My publisher and I made a joint decision to invest in the areas where we could expect a return on investment, which ended up being French and German subtitles, in addition of the English voices and text.

I know this has been the style of late, but I find the extreme pixelation a real turn off. This is 2016 product, not 1994 product. Don’t know whether this was a conscious design choice or a budget choice, but I don’t like it. Am hoping the story will overcome initial misgivings.

Yeah, I see how it can rub people the wrong way, especially post indie boom, but I personally love the look of it, it gives me the retro feels, and it’s cheap Smile I do regret making the game in 4:3 though, it was cool in theory to go full retro, but it messes with modern monitors and smartphones a tad much.

The next game I’m working on, Whispers of a Machine will be in 16:9, 640x360.

Regarding all the posters and such, I honestly didn’t specify all of them exactly. I gave the artist a few examples that I wanted in there, like Pulp Fiction and the Thing, and told him to put up some more random 90s posters. We didn’t have an exact year for the game at that point, so Titanic slipped through and was later retconned with the “Eileen was an extra” thing.

Here’s a larger version of the dorm room, where the posters can be seen more clearly:

I’m not fully convinced that the one on the right of Titanic is Paris je t’aime, although I can see the resemblance. To me, it looks like a heart shaped tree with falling leaves on the right.

Death Proof from ‘06 can’t really be explained though, no idea how that happened. In retrospect, I should’ve followed up on all of the posters to make sure they fit in ‘95, but c’est la vie. I think I’ll just introduce a time travelling poster subplot in Kathy Rain 2 instead Wink

I don’t mind the resolution but the voice overs are only so so, despite being directed by Dave Gilbert, who is normally excellent. The sheriff’s voice stood out for me as being obviously poorly recorded.

Yeah, something clearly went wrong when the sheriff was recorded. We did what we could with post processing, but the sound quality is still not perfect. For the most part I think the voices sound okay, but there are a few exceptions. As a fun piece of trivia, Mike Pollock (who plays Sheriff Boyks) voiced the Sonic villain, Dr. Eggman back in the day.

I need to click on object, and then again on “use” icon until the cursor become the object itself so I can use it somewhere on screen - why not the tried and true concept of just clicking or dragging an object (and use the right click for inventory menu). I like the “think about” option, I think (see what I did there?!) of it as an equivalent to a right-click in a typical smart cursor game, for an additional inspection.

I see your point. I wanted to have touchscreens in mind from the get go, so I opted for a single mouse button. Due to that, a verbcoin seeemed like a natural choice. I believed that drag and drop would be confusing in conjunction with the verbcoin, but for the mobile versions we did go down that route, and it ended up actually working fine.

     
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Joined 2012-02-16

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Thanks for dropping by, Joel!

Krusbert - 02 February 2017 04:30 PM

The next game I’m working on, Whispers of a Machine will be in 16:9, 640x360.

This looks quite promising. Thanks for sharing!

Krusbert - 02 February 2017 04:30 PM

I think I’ll just introduce a time travelling poster subplot in Kathy Rain 2 instead Wink

I hope that becomes a thing.

Regarding the setting, did you have a particular locale in mind when designing the game? The map-screen vista and some of the accents suggest the Southern Midwest. Kathy and Eileen’s university (KCU) and the mention of KC in Charles Wade’s hospital record suggest Kansas City so that narrows it down to Kansas or Missouri. Is that close to your intention or am I reading too much into it?

My quiz score was a miserable 0.5/5 and only because I remembered the name of Kathy’s grand-dad as sounding particularly Swedish. And here I thought I was paying attention

     
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Total Posts: 51

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TerminusEst - 02 February 2017 05:41 PM

Regarding the setting, did you have a particular locale in mind when designing the game? The map-screen vista and some of the accents suggest the Southern Midwest. Kathy and Eileen’s university (KCU) and the mention of KC in Charles Wade’s hospital record suggest Kansas City so that narrows it down to Kansas or Missouri. Is that close to your intention or am I reading too much into it?

The suggestion in your spoiler tag was indeed along the lines of my original intention, but the reason I never clearly spelled it out was to preserve the option of changing it it in a potential sequel. Relying on real life locations can be somewhat limiting, and I may end up opting for a made up city in a made up state, depending on what kind of environments I’d like to explore in Kathy’s next adventure. Smile

     
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Joined 2008-01-09

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Welcome, Joel!  I’m glad to see you here and to learn that you have further plans for Ms. Rain.  I’m enjoying the game very much so far and am anxious to see where it all leads.

I’ve made some progress with Day 2.  It took me a while to figure out what to do with the computer, mainly because I didn’t write everything down and the hacker wouldn’t repeat them.  I managed to enhance the photo and now I’m trying to figure out how to upload the audio files.  Back to the dorm room I go!

     

Carpe chocolate.

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Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

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I have not submitted any answers to the quiz, but I would guess I am 1/5. As I posted in my finishing Day 1 post, I was pissed that the THREE conversations that prevented me from completing the day were irrelevant to the game. I just didn’t complete a dialog tree that provided no new information.

And while I have about three legal pad pages of notes, none relate to things I believe are inconsequential. I hope I am not wrong when I didn’t write down the name of the cat.

Have not yet started Day 2. Hope to do so Saturday.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

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I also welcome Joel, And thank you TE for making this happen.

I hope Joel plans to stay around for the remainder of the playthrough. I’m sure we will be asking many more questions.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Total Posts: 555

Joined 2004-02-11

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Wow, I’ve been checking the site regularly to see when this would pop up, and haven’t seen it until now.  Sometimes a topic being stickied actually makes it harder to spot for me, because it doesn’t look like a new post.

I don’t have time to join the discussion tonight, but I will in the coming days.

     
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Total Posts: 359

Joined 2012-02-16

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I am done with days 2 and 3. The game is going by far more quickly than I’d like. This is a ton of game for one Joel but I can’t help but wish that KR had been made back in the Golden Era of AGs in, say, 1995. A few stray observations at this time:

The puzzles of day 2 were fun. The whole sequence was very redolent of mid-1990s PC geekery. The audio-editing puzzle was very reminiscent of a similar one in GK2.

I am enjoying the slow reveal of Kathy’s backstory and feelings about her family.

Similarly, I like that the characters, both living and dead, are not one-dimensional good/evil cardboard cutouts. I enjoyed hearing Beau’s denunciation of Joseph Rain’s self-righteousness… It stood in stark contrast with how most others felt about old Joe.

At the beginning of Day 4 (right before the game gives control back to the player after the end of Day 3), did anyone else notice the Red Man peering into Grandma Rain’s house? Creepy!

Favorite puzzle: all of Day 2. Least favorite: I did not enjoy picking that flower up Naughty  Angry

     
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Joined 2007-01-04

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Ok, I finished days 2 and 3. Thanks Joel for joining us! I just love your game - it does look great on my iPad!

Plays like a dream too - also, for indie games I understand the need for low res graphics, you just don’t have the budget for HD quality graphics.

However - some of my favorite adventure games I’ve bought have been low res graphics games and I don’t mind at all one bit.

Thanks for putting this out on the iPad - it will be among my favorites on the system! It has made a few “best of” lists.

Heart

     

I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

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Total Posts: 5569

Joined 2008-01-09

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I finished Day 2.  I liked the clues Kathy gave for the sound editing puzzle.  I had gotten it within the ballpark when Kathy tweaked it for me.  I’m wondering if this was based on a certain amount of unsuccessful attempts or how close I finally got.  I also liked the results from trying to edit the third recording. Gasp

I’m really liking the game so far, and the pixels don’t bother me in the least.  I like the banter between Kathy and Eileen, especially the teasing over their middle names and their Scrabble challenge.

     

Carpe chocolate.

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Total Posts: 506

Joined 2014-08-01

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I finished day 3, I thought I was going too fast but now I see that I’m not the only one who has finished it. Well…. what can I say? Let’s see hmmm:

* When we visited the motorcyclists’ bar I was surprised by Kathy’s reaction when she talked about her father, a wound that is still open much more than I anticipated.

* The revelation at the end of day 3 where we found out that the priest was involved in the theft of the paintings it left me anxious to start the 4th day as soon as possible and go and confront the priest, what will he say about it? Hmmm speculations for now.
 
* In the last dream/ nightmare where we see the red man with the boy we saw in the cemetery (Kathy’s son?) they were in the house of that girl who supposedly committed suicide?

TerminusEst - 03 February 2017 12:18 AM

At the beginning of Day 4 (right before the game gives control back to the player after the end of Day 3), did anyone else notice the Red Man peering into Grandma Rain’s house? Creepy!

 

Really? Wow ... I did not notice that.

     

” I remember. Somebody died. It was me.”
~

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Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

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Things have been a bit hectic in these parts. Have not started Day 2/3. Hope to get through both tomorrow even if I have to close a door and devote myself to it. (Which may piss off my dearly beloved if she has other projects planned for me.)

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Total Posts: 5569

Joined 2008-01-09

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I just finished Day 3 and am very anxious to continue.  The mystery has been unfolding nicely.  I liked the head of the Black Hats but was happy to use the tazer on that groping jerk.  I’m starting to think that something is off with the priest.  I suspect he knows more than he’s letting on.

     

Carpe chocolate.

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