Official Praise Thread

[Fiskbit]

vonduus: If you don't mind my asking, what did you try in the demo? I'm really curious about this; it would be helpful to find out more about how people are playing the demo given how much different content is in it.

Thanks!

[vonduus]

Hi Lars

I did the tutorial, and then I tried adventure mode. I wasn't able to solve the first puzzle right away, so I quit, and tried a quick game.  I couldn't solve that either. Or probably I could, if I gave it a little thought, but as I wrote earlier, this isn't really my kind of game, I want blood and gore to make strategic decisions on a grand scale  , so I just quit after ten minutes and fired up under aiwar instead.

I used to be very much into abstract logical puzzles, I played a lot of Tetris on my son's Gameboy. A bit too much, actually. But I believe I can recognize a good puzzle game, when I see one, and there is no doubt in my mind that Tidalis is one of them. The graphics are very, very cool, the music is extraordinarily cool, and I guess the storyline is cool too, I must admit that I didn't pay attention, because I knew the game was a logical (or rather geometrical) puzzle, so the story was irrelevant to me, as I just wanted to see how it played. And it plays very well, the interface is brillant in its simplicity, only problem is,  the whole thing reminds me of Tetris (on the tactical level), and Mahjong/Shanghai (on the operational level), both of them games that I have played so intensively that I am now quite fed up with the whole puzzle genre. But this says more about me than it says about Tidalis. That's why I mentioned my granddaughter, she is 11 years old, she does not know Tetris (afaik) and she just loves puzzles. So I'll buy the game as a birthday present for her some time in october. (I do what I can to introduce the kids I know to quality software). And I am pretty sure her mother will play it, too. My son is like me: too much Tetris

[Fiskbit]

That's really informative; thanks a ton for the feedback. The Tetris burnout you mentioned is pretty interesting; hadn't heard that before, but it's certainly reasonable.

Out of curiosity, did you only try adventure and quick game, or did you also try some of the puzzles? I couldn't quite figure that out from your post. The former two are all based on having blocks fall from the top, while the latter is based on clearing a collection of blocks and plays very differently. One of the things we were discussing when getting the demo together was how to get players to the different kinds of content, since the game has so much variety in the gameplay where different variations appeal to different people. I'm not sure if this is something we've been totally successful in doing, but it's hard to gauge.

[vonduus]

Well, it didn't get through to me, I only played adventure and quick. I thought that what I played was the puzzles. But as I said, I didn't really pay attention much.

It is getting very late in this part of the world, so I'll give the game another try tomorrow. But perhaps you should emphasize some more that there are several play modes. Like, if I try to quit, put up a screen saying something like: Do you know that you can also play the game in x-mode, y-mode and z-mode? If the game had said to me: Do you know, that you can play Tidalis with a friend in co-op mode? - then I would surely have checked this out before quitting.

[Fiskbit]

Awesome, that's great. We'll definitely have some more discussion on how to make this clear to users. This game differs pretty heavily from most puzzle games by having such a wide variety of features and play styles (it's a bit like AI War in that regard ). The modes can be polarizing. A lot of my friends exclusively like the puzzle mode, where they can sit and think and experiment with a set of blocks to try to clear them all in one move without any time pressure or randomization getting in their way. The more standard falling-block segments like in the adventure mode don't appeal to them much at all. Meanwhile, a lot of other people just like the falling block segments; the puzzle modes can get way too intricate and complicated for many. With Zen mode, the game can also play a bit more like a search game of the sort that Bejeweled is, which works well for the casual crowd.

Anyway, thanks! Hopefully we can make the demo more informative.

[Deme]

I really like the volcano song, I played it for 2 hours straight 
also I am a cat

[x4000]

I really like the volcano song, I played it for 2 hours straight 
also I am a cat

I think that has to be my favorite, too. But I'm not a cat.

[x4000]

Pretty great user review that came up in my Google Alerts the other day: http://divingbell.aimoo.com/category/Tidalis-Beta-out-now-1-335513.html

[rubikscube]

We have been waiting for this day for a long time and surprised that no one said much yet

I was really amazed about the GIGANTIC PICTURE IN THE steam's "news" department, that was AWESOME

[x4000]

News posts are coming!  I'm just running a bit behind, there's a lot going on.  But we're really excited to have this finally releasing!

[Thud13]

Is this the first review?

http://www.gamersdailynews.com/article-2510-Tidalis-Review-PC-Mac.html


9.0 guys.... X, congrats on a very successful and quality game company

[x4000]

Indeed, looks to be the first of many for the finished game.  Very exciting!  Thanks again for the well wishes and congrats, everybody here is really excited about the release.

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Has just been released on steam, and I have purchased it. Finally! Thanks guys for making it happen at steam.

[x4000]

You bet!  And thanks so much for your support!

[RCIX]

I just took a look at it on steam, and however good it looked when i started this thread, it looks 10 times better than that now! One small note: the very end of the first trailer video, maybe it's just me, but it seems a little cheesy