I don't agree with the idea of more features. This game is like tetris. You have a startpoint and some boundaries (rules). That's everything and nothing changes while you play. Or do you wish (when playing tetris), that the higher you get, the more features you should obtain? Positive Things like bombs, lives or earthquake which creates automaticly a gab for the damn "I" block? Negative things like enemies, or misshaped blocks which don't align (think of a triangle)? Or the other way around... imagine tetris starts just with the "o" block, nothing more. The further you play, the more different tiles you obtain, like "I" or "T" or even "Z"!!!11
I like this game because it works just as tetris. Everything which is possible can you do from the start on. No cheap tricks to keep the player motivated because the basic gamedesign lacks in depth or fun.

About the push personality. I disagree here too. You have a startscreen which tells you everything you have to know. The rest is imagination. Maybe you have a booklet which tells a story (or a small comic book like yar's revenge). The yellow robot works perfect ingame. It's easily recognizable and the nodes works perfect for what they are. I especially like the "height-marks". They come from time to time and between them the background it's dark. In my head this creates a very interesting, creepy hole.
Of course, you could make a perfect spiderman game out of this engine. The background would be a skyscraper. The nodes were enemies in windows (when you come to close to them, they use their knive and stab you, so look out!). You (spiderman) shoot your spider web against them and try to reach the roof, where your beloved girl waits (kidnapped from a villain). The highscore is the time you have to rescue her... and the best, you don't even have to make big changes in the engine... whee, new license-game! (which would make more fun than the real ones, tho) - sorry about the ranting.

JJ Naas>
I hope I don't make the impression of being ignorant and close-minded . I see what you mean. Your idea about imitating others and then interpreting their reaction is really the way life works. I read an article a week or so ago (can't find it again, so no source, sorry) where they proofed, that imitation is a real important factor to get accepted and successful in the society. One test in england was, that they had waiters and one group tried to imitate the guest (repeating everything they said, imitating their gesture...) whereas the others didn't try to match the guest. The result was, that the imitating waiters got about 60% more tip than the others. Other experiments with apes showed, that they are able to imitate other fellows. That's important to learn and get accepted in their community. It looks like this natural behavior is one factor of a functional society. Loosing this ability may result in a "you're ignorant" impression.

I don't try to imitate my surroundings, at least not intentional. I try to being aware, don't judging my surroundings but accepting. Not good or bad, nor right or false, just being. So when somebody asks me, if I like something, sometimes I don't answer or I ask the a counter-question. Other times I say I don't know or I don't mind. Thus my fellows call me sometimes "ignorant". But being liberated from (or currently: trying to) such thoughts or behavior can that be called ignorant? I mean, I don't mind. But wouldn't be their behavior (from their point of view) called ignorant?

Helm>
I know that you don't have (or like) to judge if I put love into my work or not. But I believe when you see something artificial (meaning created by humans) there perhaps you can see something sub-concious. A force or tension which surpasses logic. That's what I meant lacks my comic and I thought this can be read out of your critique. I'm sorry if I interpreted your critique wrong. But of course I know what you said (literally) and I try to adress what you critiqued next time!

About the feeling-stuff. I think I see what you mean. But maybe I'm unclear to myself what I mean with feelings. Above I wrote something about not judging or trying to be just aware of your surroundings. Of course, when the time comes, I have to make decisions. Now, how do I "judge" how to act? My whole life I tried to surpass feelings through using logic (being pragmatic). Over the years I really put the judging-tool "feelings" into a drawer and just used logic to determine what to do. Now, years later, I can't easily tell if I like something or not. I use logics to determine if it makes sense (and therefore I "like" it) or not.
Now, more time passed and more thoughts be thought. I found out, that logic which I used was something artificial. It's human made and therefore limited. Limited by the system we created our self, limited by language and limited by passed on experiences. I wanted to get rid of it, being liberated from it and being free... to create true art (not that lifeless stuff). At the same time I found out about eastern believes like buddhism and taoism. I saw parallels in thoughts and the "way".

Now trying to adapt this new approach to my old way it's not easy. I'm easily distracted, often don't know what to do. All I know is that I want to create art which other people inspires to create art and those inspire other people again to do so and so on. That's where I'm aiming at.
I'm not sure if I'm at the right track. I don't know if I can accomplish that. I'm not even sure if that's a good thing or not. But a further step is done by going through my mind and posting this. If you (all of you) d'like to answer something I really appreciate it. But if you think I'm just confused just ignore me. If it's too off-topic please move or delete it.

walk on...

Do you want comic art critique for these?

If you'd like to take the time, I'd love to hear some crits and would be very thankful. Critique are always welcome as I'd like to learn as much as I can. Even when I can't or won't address them in this piece, I will learn something for the future. Feel free to critique everything you'd like to!

A few month ago, I was in a 1-year school of art where I attended a comic course. The goal was to make a whole story and afterwards produce at least three finished pages. It started as a story inspired by Winsor McCay. You see a boy sleeping in his bed. Later a goblin from a movie/fantasy-poster comes alive and leaves it's flat existence to take the boy into adventures. This journey begins with that the legs of the bed grows (by saw them off!?!) and the bed's breaking through the roof, where other goblins comes and transform it into a car. But then the troubles just begins...
I think the most interesting was I learned was how you could handle time. First my whole story was told in three pages. The viewpoint was always constant and the elapsed time from panel to panel was rather big. My teacher challenged my to put more personality and character into the story by using more dynamic perspectives and character close-ups. Since I didn't do any reseaches the characters and environment are pretty uninspired boring and sometimes even wrong. But the new approach had lead to a different speed. Now on three pages I could only display how the goblin comes out of his poster, whereas in the other style I told a whole story i three pages! Very interesting for me. But to be honest, I like the old approach (McCay's) for this kind of story more, because it's more about the adventure itself and not about the character feelings (which I had no idea how to express).

About the technique. First I wanted to do it completely digital, but my digital line quality is completely for the arse, thus I wanted to draw it analog and then color it digitaly (Studio Ghibli style). But two weeks before deadline (when I just had scribbles and not even begun final penciling) my Laptop died so I went for a classic black&white approach. I think it's very interesting how you could descripe volumes just with two values and I thought back then I did a fairly good job. But seeing it now I have the feeling it could be pushed much more... and the lineweight is just ugly thin.

Nevertheless a good experience.