Yeah. The way I see it, there are three options.

1) There is lots more to Diver Down that I somehow missed
2) A sequel to Diver Down gets made
3) GRENIDEER DIES

It's awesome, and the ending is really good, but it's like..."buh?"

I was really surprised, actually. I mean, calling a spade a spade here, the art is horrid (except for the cels which only last you till the end of Act 1), the music is mostly bad and/or inappropriate, the system is uninspired, and Act I is a hellish maze of moronic RPG cliches and fetch quests. But the plot is SO GOOD.

Initially, I got to about halfway through Act 1, after doing the unbelievably moronic and horrible sequence of events necessary to talk to that one guy you need to talk to, and said "screw this." Hahn and Grue pestered me to play further, though, and I did, and somehow it was awesome and I love it. ;_;

Not sure if grenideer is free, so I'll just reply a little bit ^_^;;

As Gren mentioned in his log (all three of us had a 'farewell' log), the team became occupied with other things within the last one-two years of production. Metro's the fine artist here, but he had alot of other assignments in real life ^_^;; I do believe that his art cels for the end of Act 1 makes up for it :)

I did most of the menu portraits save for Drek & Garret, as well as some speech portraits, but I barely managed to finish up on time ^_^;; If metro and I did, we'd definitely progress into a revamp of the tileart, Unforunately, we didn't have the time, and Gren didn't want us to go through the tedious process of waiting for the tiles to be done. Anyway, he'd already worked on it for 5 years :D

Like Gren said; "Diver Down isn't like every other indie-rpg you've played ". Even I can attest that the battles were hard as balls. :) DD's plot goodness is fully to the credit of gren's brilliance, though.

Apologies about the graphics, and hopefully you enjoyed its good points greater than its bad.

Is this going to be an offer he cannot refuse?

Unless Gren goes pro, which he should be, and his Diver Down becomes a full fledged game developed under a professional company; I don't think Gren will ever create another indie-rpg again ^_^;;

See the JustRPG interview : http://www.just-rpg.com/default.asp?pid=907

JustRPG: Now that you've finished Diver Down, what are your plans for the future?

Grenideer: No more indie rpgs in the works, if that's what you mean :) . As cliche as it sounds, I'm going to try my hand at going pro. I'm about to graduate with a gaming degree and I hope to find a good company to work for.

Lucky I remembered the URL gren e-mailed me last yearv.. ^_^;;


http://www.fullsail.com/

a buddy of mine took classes at digipen (nintendo) over in redmond, and he didn't learn anything he thought was useful. fullsail on the other hand looks like its got stuff to offer. but what do i know?

fullsail? kick ass! I plan on going there after highschool, aka: 2 years. make sure to find out what he thinks of the school and if he knows anything about how the 3d animation kiddies like it!

I just got Malcom. His primary purpose seems to be to die. A lot.

Sorry to post so late but I've been out of town (at GDC among other things) for the past 12 days. So let me see if I can catch up to y'all (sorry, I was in Austin too).

1) Thanks for the compliment (?) Gayo. The game, especially Act 1, does have its downsides. I learned as I created, so there are some stupid things that have to be done in the beginning. Also, because of the long development cycle, things that were cooler 3-4 years ago aren't as cool today. I've never seen anyone complain about the music before; in fact, in most of the reviews it has been a major strong point of the experience. Still, all the explanation from the dev side, while it might make sense, means nothing to the person playing the game. That's the price of free :). I'm glad you liked the plot. It's definitely the single greatest point to take away from the game, and the reason it was made. No more Diver Down until I secure the movie rights, though.

2) Based on all the feedback I've gotten, for every one person that dislikes the battles, there are two that love them. They were meant to be very challenging like some rpgs were back in the day. Skies of Arcadia was a great game, but I never died in a non-boss fight ONCE. Never died in Wind Waker either. That sucks.

3) I take full credit for the shitty art. Arias and Metro both pumped out some good work.

4) Clamps is awesome.

5) I've heard mixed reviews of Animation Grads from Full Sail. Some have gotten jobs though. Like many things, you get out what you put in. But personally I only know about the gaming degree, which is getting better all the time.

6) Thank you so much, Hahn! Phantasy Star 1 was the single biggest influence on Diver Down, and one of my favorite rpgs to date.

7) Malcolm's good at dying? No, no, no. When you get Jea, you'll truly see what a character that is meant to die will act like :). That dungeon IS too hard to do without leveling up and going back to town a couple of times.


Finally, Gayo, I am positive you have not found all the secrets in the game. I wanted to put a lot more in that could be accomplished on your own time in the later acts, but ended up cutting them out. If you think there are unresolved plot points feel free to email me and I'll explain them to you. I never got into discussions about specific plot elements with players yet and I think it would be interesting.

Well, the battles were uninspired, but they were very solid, and most of them were winnable with a bit of pain, at least once you got other party members. The last boss fight was great, in particular. I definitely had some parts where I just reloaded if I ran into 5 enemies at once, though. The worst part about the battle system, in my mind, was the escape chance. It wasn't ever a whole lot easier to run from weak enemies, so there were some fights where I suspect you could actually win by running every round, just from outclassed enemies fumbling themselves to death.

I found it easier to keep Jea alive than Malcolm. Malcolm basically defended for four or five turns, used Arrow Storm, and defended for four or five more turns. But partly it's because Jea was useful enough to motivate me to get her decent gear.