EL405: A near finish product with a real title!

After lots of blood, sweat, and tears I finally came up with a title for my Project 1 Flash game... and therefore, I finished the game. Actually, alot of work went into this game--most of my time was spent trying to get the scoring mechanics to work so that people couldn't cheat.

Scoring isn't really the point behind my game. And really, neither is actual gameplay. What's important is the story, the message, and hopefully the humor. I'm dubbing it "a listening adventure" because that's really what you do. I know we were in a classroom environment today when people first tried it; it was noisy, there were alot of distractions, and the speakers on those onyx-IBMs are paltry at best, so I understand that people had a short attention span with my game. Basically, the game is a long-winded noir narrative. You click something and listen to McTeag draw conclusions about a man's character. And then you click on something else... and listen some more. It doesn't sound like the most fun game on the planet, but I wasn't really aiming for that.

I was trying to find something that balanced exposition and narrative with some sort of exploration. Had I more time, the game would actually have animation and interactivity. Then again, had I more time, I would read more books. So my recommendation for you, if you happen to play my game, is to let McTeag talk. Let him get it out of his system. Because if you click on more than one thing at a time, he'll use his uncanny ability to say two things at once. It's really amazing, but really shouldn't be tried. Because I was unable to have one sound playing block out another, it's very possible to go through and click everything, which sounds something like a cluster grenade.

The other issue I encountered was the sound of the final clue, before the game advances you to the ending screen. You see, you have to find 11 clues in order to complete your assignment. But once you click that 11th clue, I have ActionScript that realizes the score equals 11 and it takes you to the final frame... while the sound continues to play. I need to make Flash realize a sound is playing, and then have it advance to the final screen only after the sound is finished. Something to work on for next time.

I'm very happy, however, with the finished product of my game. It's not as polished as most Flash games on the market, but it's very close. It's education to a certain extent, but really isn't for children. It's a hardboiled detective game that just so happens to touch on Catholic Social Teaching. That's a sentence I don't get to write very often.

So enjoy the game!

[Note: the game itself, after being compressed, is about 2.1MB. A little larger than expected, but I'm not surprised given that there is almost 10 minutes of audio throughout the game. The game itself also runs at 800x600... which will be really large if you are running anything smaller than that resolution.]