rofl

Holy shit, weren't people waiting for this for like 4 years?

What is the price of the full version?

Hi.
I'll give the demo version a try and share my thoughts afterwards.
Do I remember wrong, or could we preorder the game long time ago?

I purchased this game years ago. In the mean time, we had no news, no replies, basically we felt like being scamed. So, I am not dowloading the game. It comes late.

Okay, so my findings so far:

1. First attempt to install the game hung. Second attempt worked. Maybe fix the install process, as it's not clean. I remember this issue in Airik the Cleric as well. More on Airik later.
2. I see Airik assets in the Edge of Winter directory. Freaking tons of them. Which is fine, I guess, but it looks sloppy. Also, all the assets appear to just be sorta hanging out there, so a person can just listen to the .ogg files if they want to.
3. I've triggered two random crashes. The first by trying to load a game when I had no game to load, the second by wandering westward in the courtyard.
4. Movement happens as fast as you can spam the arrow keys. Why exactly do I need to run if I can literally hammer arrow buttons?
5. This whole "move a step, scan, move a step, scan" business was old when Airik was young. Like 2012 or so. It wasn't good then, and it's not good now. Having items make some sort of detectable sound would be really, really nice, even if that sound was subtle. I'm totally okay with having to scan for traps, that part's fine. But having to scan just to find everything, up to and including doors and chests? Yeah, kind of not buying it.

Verdict: not interested in purchase. I may flail around with the demo some more, but right now the stability is questionable, the gameplay is off, and even the quality of the voice acting, while not terrible, is mediocre. This feels very slapped together, and I'm afraid that if I'm going to even consider dropping twenty bucks on this, it needs to be much, much more stable and polished.
And that speaks nothing at all of the fact that you've pulled a runner in the past. I lost fifteen bucks from you folks already (no, I can't prove it, it was from like 2015 and I don't have the paypal records anymore, so I'm not gonna chase it). But I'm by far not the only one. I appreciate that you're moving in the right direction, and everyone's got to start somewhere so I'm not writing this project off entirely. But for now...just, no thanks. If you polish the game, prove that you're actually honouring customer request the way you ought to have been doing for the past 6-7 years and the like, then I'll reconsider.
I hate to come in here and be negative, and I do think this game has some potential. But really, from a game-design perspective, I'm not sure how much you've actually learned from Airik here. I remember that game sort of being fun, until you learned where everything was and how to deal with it. Running around in the dungeon reminded me very much of the Airik mechanics, minus Scout crowing "double-jump gaaaap" every other time I scan. lol I think even a lot of the sound assets are the same, which makes sense if they're custom (though I know your mouse-hunting music is not custom at all, as I've heard it on YouTube).
Keep improving, and do spruce up what you've got here, and maybe you can gain back some goodwill.

I remember someone posted somewhere awhile back stating that his game is now on itch.io? And now on Google Drive? Ba.

@10
you spent the money on the game and now you're not going to download it? forgive me that's a bit backward. you must have a load of money to just throw around if you can do that!

I got the game installed successfully, pretty painless process. Then it started, and if I want to navigate up and down in the menus I have to press tab every time I want to press another key or it doesn't do anything, so like, tab, down arrow, wait for the menu item to finish talking, tab, down arrow, tab down arrow until I get to the item I want then tab, enter. This is already a really bad first impression and I haven't even started playing. Also, the main menu voice is recorded on an iPhone microphone, and I do have to say the postproduction sounds a little better than the one for grif, which had a lot more noise removal artifacts than this one does. Still sounds pretty unprofessional though. Imho I would have shifted those high budget actors that were touted to the main menu so they could have made the first impression better. I do like the main menu music though.
Edit: on further perusal of the game assets. Well, I'm just going to say check out maingame.txt. I think you'll be surprised.
Spoiler warning: the maingame.txt file doesn't have anything about the registration system in it from what I can see.
Edit 2: it looks like the .txt files are actually necessary to running the game. I renamed one and everything stopped working. As in the .exe loaded, but no sounds ever played. There is probably some sort of error that displays, but even with OCR I couldn't find it. I did find a reference to playing the demo end sound in another source code file included with the game called conf_game.txt, but reading around the source code it doesn't seem to actually stop you from playing the game after the sound plays, meaning that I don't think the demo even works correctly. Apparently it happens aftert you climb far enough up a rope, though I of course haven't played that far.
In short, there's no real reason to give this guy any money.

Edit 3: here is some code I found from chronolog.txt which is another file of source code.
$DemoEnd
SetPlayerEnabled False
Wait 1.2
PlaySound "dialogue\demoend" Repeatable
Wait 5
WaitForPlayerMaybe 28 XB_B
StopLastSound
PlaySound "soundfx\sfx_confirm"
FadeMusic 1
OpenURL "https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?c … UKKRBPVEYS"
Edit 4: if you actually click on that URL link you are taken to a payPal page. Makes sense right? Only until you realize that it's to purchase Airic the Cleric for $13 ...
Yeah, no thanks.

@19, I agree. Does anyone else here find it suspicious that ever since people started talking about this company's shady business practices, he has gone quiet?

I'm not sure if I'm part of the blame for starting that dogpile or not, since I did say something about that. The only reason I did was because I'm seeing this pattern a lot where dev does something, and it isn't received well/something bad happens, rumors get spread etc. and dev doesn't seem at all interested in clearing the air or defending anything. They just carry on as though everything is positive. I know there are a lot of things which aren't worth responding to or getting involved in, but this avoidance thing is sort of leading to a trust issue because I never know whether valid criticism is actually going to be heard/seen.

This topic is literally less than fourteen hours old. It is way, way too soon to start howling that the dev isn't going to address problems here.
His prior track record is a problem. I'll grant you that. But you're here either because you're trying to at least give him a fair shake, or you're here to spit on him. If you're in the former camp, then fourteen hours is way too soon to just assume that the dev isn't going to address anything. If you're in the latter camp - and Musicalman, you definitely aren't - then you need to be quiet and not piss on something just because it's been bad in the past. The people who came here purely to spit on this dude's efforts are the reason why it can be nigh on impossible to gain back previously lost favour.

IMO, the appropriate thing to do is to continue flagging legitimate issues while exercising a high degree of caution. I will change my tune if the dev is more receptive to feedback this time. Maybe he will be, maybe he won't be. Fourteen hours is not enough of a window of opportunity. It's not even close. Now, if we're still here in several days' time, and the dev has made more promising/promotional posts, then we'll know it's the same old pattern. But I, for one, am here because I want to see what happens. I don't have much faith, but what little I've got left, I'm willing to extend a bit, to see what happens. I hope most of the rest of you can say likewise. And if you can't, kindly stay back and don't make this thread any more needlessly negative.

Clarification, in case it's needed: expressing concern isn't negative, and explaining bugs/weird behaviours/asset issues (as Key did earlier) is not negative. That's sharp, but it's honest, and I would never ask folks to hold back on that front, especially since I so rarely do myself. lol