Notgames Forum

Hi all!

I wanted to share a game with you, that I have been the director of for most of the last four years. Being primarily designed so long ago by naive students, it contains a lot of "interesting mistakes", especially of the type that I expect will annoy a community like ours. Like issues of gameplay and storytelling getting in each other's way. But there is also much I am proud of here, and a lot of things I am glad I've now tried.

(http://media.desura.com/cache/images/games/1/19/18844/thumb_940x3000/residuescreen4.1.png)

Residue is a 2D platforming and exploration game set in the remains of the Aral Sea. In each of the thirteen chapters you will play a specific character, furthering a quite dialogue-heavy story by means of each character's platform actions (jumping, climbing, swimming, throwing a grappling hook or directing a flashlight, among other things). No characters appear who are not playable at some point, and we've tried to live by the rule that NPCs always operate within the exact gameplay logic they would use when playable (although we did find the rule impossible to follow sometimes).

We've been adamant about making a story-driven action game with no enemies, no violence and no cut-scenes, instead looking for other ways to create both meaning and engagement. Our solutions are sometimes clever, sometimes embarrassing. I hope there's someone on the NotGames forums who is curious to play it and discuss it!

Residue will be released on Desura the coming Monday (May 5). There is already a demo there (http://www.desura.com/games/residue (http://www.desura.com/games/residue)), but just send me a PM and I'll send you the full game for free.

And, of course, tell your friends. ;) Here's our Greenlight page, complete with trailer:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92921269 (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92921269)

I would take a game full of "interesting mistakes" over one that has been polished into nothingness any day  ;). I'll try and find some time to play it when it's released.

So, I finally got around to playing this a bit and I thought it was good. I especially liked the playable intro sequence, that was really cool - I can't believe other games haven't done that.

I also thought that keeping it simple with the interactions, only having one interaction type per person, worked pretty well. It created variety whilst maintaining a low level of complexity.

The main issue I had was actually a technical one: the performance is really bad on my laptop - especially where the torch is involved. I don't think I'm going to be able progress any further since the low framerate I'm getting renders the game unplayable (especially in the jumping bits), which is a shame as I am quite interested to see where the story goes.

Hey, thanks for playing! Sorry I can't give you a performance patch - the game stands on a shaky foundation to say the least, both technically and artistically, and there is much that should have been done differently. That said - the flashlight sections are usually especially heavy on the rendering, and usually work better if you turn off v-sync and especially anti-aliasing. This can be done in the config.ini file. =)

Cool, if I re-install it I'll give that a try.