Like writing up a preliminary design sketch for its sequel, which is tentatively subtitled Your Own Private Hell. Chris Ushko, the designer behind the hotly-anticipated Space Quest-fan game Incinerations, has looked over the design and given a few pointers.

Biggest change from the first game? This time, you play as your favorite reviewers. Several of them. (That poking-fun-at-fan-fiction shtick from the first game is kind of done now.)

Can’t tell you when anything concrete is going to happen — that all depends on so much, not least of which if I get a stable system going at home — but things are definitely brewing.

Also, if you want to show your love for the game and its in utero sequel, hop by our Facebook-page. It’s got a cute little custom url now (facebook.com/alifeworthlosing). If that’s too much trouble, just use the widget on the sidebar.

But all is better now. Site and downloads work again. Get crackin’. :)

So I have uploaded the game to a web server of my own, where hopefully it will remain forever and ever.

Head over to the Download-page to download the game

It’s still version 1.0, I’m afraid, so please excuse the (thankfully, few) bugs. And yes, the third fuse is at the hospital. ;)

Suffice it to say, a lot of technical problems (my computer’s fan is shot, and my backup is a few builds older than the one that went out as 1.0) and some bad planning (the hard drive on which the latest build is on is at a friend’s place, because we’re also using it to record an album) has put a temporary hold on my plans to get fixin’.

There will be a completely air-tight, bug-free v1.1 in the near future – and I’m planning on adding a few touch-ups to hopefully make up for the long wait. Yeah, I know, it’s killing you. The wait, that is.

Thanks, Sean and everyone at Blistered Thumbs!

In other news, people have graciously been submitting bug reports and suggestions for fixes. A few of them does break the game for some people (e.g. you can apparently walk right through the electric fence, and then get irrevocably stuck because you forgot the item that was supposed to get you through the fence).

So it’s time to put on the hard hat and dive into bug-fixing territory! Hopefully next week, time permitting, you’ll be able to play the new and improved v1.1 of A Life Worth Losing. If you so wish, that is.

Here’s the two parts of the Let’s Play, as hosted by Justin.tv (sorry for only providing links; I can’t get embed to work with WordPress):

» Watch LordKat’s Let’s Play A Life Worth Losing – Part 1

» Watch LordKat’s Let’s Play A Life Worth Losing – Part 2

Now, I take criticism fairly lightly on this, because enough people have massaged my ego about this game that I know I at least did something right in someone’s eyes. I agree with the complaints that the game looks crappy and that a year of development seems like a long time for something that, obviously, would never see a professional release.

That said, the game wasn’t really in development for a full year: it took me four or five months total to code the thing up from design to finished game, music and everything. And six to seven months of waiting around (in vain, as it turned out) for people to help out polishing up the shoddy graphics, and slowly watching the game rot away on my hard drive as development went to a complete standstill for half a year.

In hindsight, I should have gone with the “disk version” plan from day 1 – i.e. finish the game as fast as I could and release it, instead of waiting around for others to help me get it finished – but I chalk that up to naïvety.

But that’s why the game is what it is in its current state, and that’s why some of the obvious references are excluded while some really old ones and possibly tired ones, like the Nerd/Critic rivalry, is in there. It doesn’t excuse what some people called horribly bad scripting, but hey, I can own to that – can’t make everybody laugh.

There’s also a bit of trivia at the bottom of each section — just for funsies.

The hint forum is still up, and you can still tweet me for hints if you want. I didn’t put the walkthrough up to get away from a barrage of hint requests (it’s been pretty mild runnings, actually), so please don’t be shy — I’m still very interested in hearing from players.

Yes, that Angry Joe is leaving. I see that. That sucks. But go down one. The other one. Yes, that one.

» A Life Worth Losing gets plugged on Transmission Awesome!

Which is awesome all on its own. And sort of sounds like a really bad pornographic movie title, but I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole. Er, I mean … Ah, fuck it. No, I mean, screw it! No, I mean … oh.

But anyway, give it a listen!

Edit: I listened to it last night, and it seems like they want to do a TA Let’s Play of it. That sounds absolutely awesome. Can’t wait to listen to that, if it ever comes to pass.

So, people have already graciously played through the whole thing and have offered a bunch of helpful suggestions. And so far, only two bug reports — and no game breakers! — so I’m a bit chuffed about that.

That still means there’s a v1.1 on the way, but it won’t contain any mind-shattering new material. It’ll pretty much be bug fixes and a couple updates in the graphics department. Specifically:

• Bug: Spoony’s fuse boxes claim they’re repaired even when they’re not. Some people thought you only had to find and use two fuses, and having a broken victory message championing them on wasn’t helping things.
• Biggest fix: Making the third fuse a little clearer. It’s like friggin’ Waldo with this thing.
• Bug: In Kyle Justin’s shop, you can sometimes get boxed in by JewWario and LordKat and get trapped behind the drum kit. This is a simple fix, but that doesn’t help the one poor sod who had to start the game over from scratch because he couldn’t get out.
• Someone asked why there wasn’t a “fuse box count” when you were fixing Spoony’s fuses. And that’s a really good point. I just need to find out what Spoony’s font is called.

I was thinking of sweetening some of the puzzles on the space station, but then again … if people are having trouble with the anagram room, they can check the hints section or tweet me. And you can basically cheat your way through the shock room and the final room by saving and restoring, if you don’t feel like beating it intellectually. So I’m leaving them as is for now.

Incidentally, I’ll be writing a walkthrough for this website in Q&A form very soon.

Can’t tell you when v1.1 will appear yet, but in a week or so sounds about right. I’m not in any giant hurry, as there aren’t really any game-breaking faults (as far as I know) — v1.1 is more of a spit-and-polish release than anything, really.

I do wonder how many actually beat the shock room fair and square? In hindsight, the puzzle solution is really obtuse, and it’s easier to just hop along each square. In development, I toyed with the idea of disabling save/restore in the shock room so people would be forced to figure out the correct solution, but I decided not to be that evil.

That’s right: save for the last bits of music (17 tracks so far; need to do 4 more + the theme tune, which I’ll do tonight) … this thing is DONE!

And now, I can rest. Well, not quite. But soon. Veeeery soon.

That is, the disk version is done. Here’s what I’ve done to the game since I decided to finish this thing on my own (which was between Christmas and New Year’s 2010):

• Today: Photographed and coded interactive opening cinematic. Also fixed the last nagging loose ends, like the Settings screen.
• Yesterday: Wrote and scripted the ending (and an alternate bad ending). Fixed the GUI problems and made Spoony’s communicator part of the main GUI. Also wrote two more tunes for the game (one is currently 8 minutes 30 seconds! might wanna split that one up); that makes it 17 tracks total now.
• Between New Year’s and now: Did some sporadic bug fixing and made sure the events and puzzles worked the way they were supposed to. (This is the one bit that might come back to bite me in the ass, but hey, that’s what the Internet is for.)
• Between Christmas and New Year: Wrote 15 tracks of music in two days in a fit of inspiration. And mild drunkenness.

So, I’ll write the rest of the music tonight and tomorrow, and then this baby is ready to hit the asphalt! Face down, even! Without a helmet! Oh, I’m going to be so proud of my little girl. Let’s hope she don’t embarrass me and make me get out my harness again. Wait, what were we talking about?