On the way to Makatea

[lecarlitos]

Hello lagooners,

Voici un petit jeu. Il est en anglais. J'espère que cette petite histoire vous plaira.

Here is a small game. It's in english. Hope you will like the story.

https://rapidshare.com/files/2974366529/OnTheWayToMakatea.EN.v1.00.setup.exe

Je bosse sur un site internet pour vous donner à l'avenir des liens mieux que rapidshare ou autre.
No advertising, please
Est-ce que vous voulez que j'y ajoute un walkthrough ou voulez-vous vous debrouiller seul?

I am working on a website in order to give you better link than rapidshare.
Do you want a walkthrough on it?

[cheatman]

what a joke downloaded played for 2 minutes got shot then you have to click a link to pay $10 for game could have mentioned that to save me the wasted time

[fleet]

Comments deleted by original poster as they are no longer relevant.

[cheatman]

sorry for my earlier post this game is ok i mis read it makatea 2 you pay for

[kessie8yl]

Makatea shows lots of promise but I've found myself getting frustrated to the point of giving up.

Firstly the objectives within the game are not clear and for all the conversations it is possible to have with people, they tend to be very much the same and never changing. We have to persuade the guy with the boat to take us of the island and he wants us to find his missing girlfriend first - So far, so good.

Presumably there are a number of sub-goals to be achieved before finding the girl and getting the ride home but what they are seems to be a state secret. For example: Some of the characters name the same guy as being pretty close to this girl but he, like everyone else, denies knowing her well. The natural reaction would be to say "Don't give me that - everyone knows she was your favourite" or something like that, but the game doesn't allow it. Going back to speaking to the other people also doesn't allow you to ask them why they think he'd lie about it. I'm getting the impression the game must be played in a certain sequence but there are none of the usual verbal clues to indicate which thing needs to be done next so that you can move on to all those other things you've found that don't quite add up (the mysterious beads under the bed that you can't pick up, even after you've found what seems to be the necklace they came from, are just one example).

Locations seem only to be available at certain times - but you'd have to keep checking the clock to find out what the time is. Time-dependant incidents are always a contentious issue with gamers - but if you must include them you should at least make the player aware of the passage of time by including things like changes in the graphics to show the onset of evening, etc, or at least have an onscreen clock.

The dock keeps appearing as a location but attempting to go there gives an (untranslated) message that it's closed. I'm guessing you can't go there until you've reunited the captain with his girlfriend but, in that case, why show that exit before then?

I can't find anything else to do and the characters aren't providing any clues - The only location left to explore is the mountain but that just gets me killed.

The only "end of day" message I've seen implies that I have missed something but I don't know if that means that I am seeing that message because I really have missed something or if that is the only message there is for the "end of day". I am beginning to get the horrible suspicion there are goals in this game which must be obtained by a certain "Day" and for me that was the final straw that made me want to stop playing altogether.

No doubt there will be brighter (or luckier) people than me who will rave about this game - like I said, it shows great promise. To me the whole thing feels like a programming exercise where things have been included simply because the author wanted to see how a certain feature works. Nothing wrong with that - it needs to be done. I'd just rather it was presented as such and not as a "new game".

Quite a few of the captions haven't been translated. The English in some of the translations leaves a little to be desired too (referring to a person as "It" is not going to win you many friends). The colours and placement of text is on the haphazard side, to say the least. Surely the use of filled text boxes would resolve that issue easily enough?

I would like to be able to say that I am looking forward to the author's next attempt but it seems he (or she) has gone straight into charging for all the games following Makatea and this one hasn't given me the incentive to gamble on paying for more of the same.