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General discussionRelease: Californium(98 posts)(98 posts)
(98 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 17, 2016
Streets are uneven when you are down.



<span class="bold">Californium</span>, a surreal adventure in the unmapped intersection of realities, is available now DRM-free on GOG.com for Windows and Mac, with a 10% launch discount.

Creating different, plausible realities is what writers do, if they are any good. Elvin Green is not considered good by his editor, who no longer wants him as his client. He is not considered good by his wife either, as made abundantly clear in the goodbye letter she left behind. Elvin Green needs a different reality. And he will get a number of them bundled with weird, psychedelic images that wash over his mind, as he looks to make sense out of a meaningless existence.

1967 is not a good year for Elvin Green. But it has now become a very interesting one. As he explores the shifting realities that converge around him, he realises he can communicate with the colorful inhabitants and hop between worlds by touching objects which don't seem to belong. And unlike the bleak, dystopian imagery in which most of Philip K. Dick's work is typically represented in various media, the realities of Californium are bathed in a vibrant, intoxicating palette, representative of Elvin Green's indulgence in recreational chemicals. Will they prove to be the root of his plights or the catalyst to better understanding himself?



Get lost within the layered realities of <span class="bold">Californium</span> and find the piece of mind you're missing, DRM-free on GOG.com. The 10% launch discount will last until February 24, 10:59 AM GMT.
Posted February 17, 2016
it's only fair that tax funded content should be free for the people living there...
Anyway, I'll check it out for free first and if it's decent I might even buy it here.

But what's really bugging me is, that when looking at the arte site of the game (http://californium.arte.tv/de/#/) and clicking on download full game I get redirected to steam.
Arte isn't even mentioning anywhere on their site that you can also buy the game here on gog. They send everyone off to steam.

If I were gog, this would be a reason to not sell their game! It really makes me angry, because the only reason I ever found out about gog in the first place, was because I wanted to buy a game and the dev page gave me the choice to buy it drm free on gog or rent it on steam (lumino city). And that's how I came here.

With a site like artes, I wouldn't even have found out about gog and drm free games. (Yes I know it would've saved me a lot of money, but still :( The gog-fanboy in me screams: Shame on you arte!)
Posted February 17, 2016
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Konrad: This is true - since Arte is a public channel, folks from France and Germany can get the game for free. There are several pretty marked differences between the free and retail versions though.

The free version is:
— available in French & German only
— episodical, it'll be released piece by piece
— missing the save feature
— missing the OST bonus-content
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styggron: Hello Konrad,
You say the free version is missing the OST, but when I look at GoG's version it does not say it has an OST. Nothing lists as extras on the GoG version from what I can tell. Have I missed something ?

Also more generally,
I watched, albeit briefly, a few youtube plays and the game looks ok to me. I am worried it might be poor. There is only a single review here on GoG but the stars are high.

Is it really that bad ?

At the moment I have wishlisted it. Maybe wait till it goes down to $5 perhaps, I don't know. Just worried about the bad review at present. Not much info on it around really.

Anyone else bought it and played it ?
I played the first chapter. It's a puzzle game, with some weirdness. There is a narrator talking to you through televisions and gives you challenges to find anomalies.
Those anomalies are to be found and clicked, which can be tricky as some of them are only visible from a perspective or you can only click them in movement. The NPC you meet tell you a little about yourself and the situation you are in with soldiers fighting in Vietnam while you have nothing better to do than getting high.

It is OK, I couldn't solve the what I believe final riddle of the first chapter, there was no save and no option to save manually.
Post edited February 17, 2016 by disi
Posted February 17, 2016
high rated
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Konrad: This is true - since Arte is a public channel, folks from France and Germany can get the game for free. There are several pretty marked differences between the free and retail versions though.

The free version is:
— available in French & German only
— episodical, it'll be released piece by piece
— missing the save feature
— missing the OST bonus-content
Emm.. what OST bonus are you referring to? The game page doesn't list any extras, nor have I seen anyone post here that the game does indeed come with the OST.
Will it be added later, or is this an "oops"?


On a side note - the episodical release, and perhaps even the absence of the English language, may not be a big deal to the taxpayers that funded it, but to not offer a saving feature is giving them the short end of the stick. Why? Because they don't pay again to play them? At least the BBC produced games got it right - taxpayers get the exact same game, content and feature wise, as everyone else that has to pay for them after release.
Posted February 17, 2016
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mchack: But what's really bugging me is, that when looking at the arte site of the game (http://californium.arte.tv/de/#/) and clicking on download full game I get redirected to steam.
Arte isn't even mentioning anywhere on their site that you can also buy the game here on gog. They send everyone off to steam.
I agree that showing only the steam link in the page footer isn't nice.

However to download the FREE episodes, you need to enable JavaScript and hover over the episode 1 image to see the real download links (no steam there).
Attachments:
arte_californium.jpg (151 Kb)
Posted February 17, 2016
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goglin: I agree that showing only the steam link in the page footer isn't nice.

However to download the FREE episodes, you need to enable JavaScript and hover over the episode 1 image to see the real download links (no steam there).
yes, thanks :) Though I did realize that. And it's good for everyone that talks german or french, but for the others only the steam link :( that's what I was on about...
Posted February 17, 2016
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styggron: How did you get a refund in store credit ? I thought GoG only refunds if you can't get it to work not if you don't like it. I have one title in my library I really regret but I didn't think I could get a refund on it.
I asked nicely. It probably helps that I asked 30 minutes after I purchased it and I have a gigantic GOG library yet I've -never- asked for a refund before for any reason (even when games don't work) as long as I can remember buying on GOG.
Posted February 17, 2016
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bigsilverhotdog: Impulse purchased this, and hugely regret it. Horrible, horrible game. Review should be posted soon. Awful, awful, AWFUL "game".
I just read your review. Thanks for going the extra (painful) mile to share your impressions.
Posted February 18, 2016
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bigsilverhotdog: Mini review is up. GOG gave me store credit which is fine and (thankfully) removed the game from my inventory. Let us never speak of it again.

For the record I loved the hell out of Jazzpunk.
Thanks for the warning! Jazzpunk is in the top 3 of most beloved modern PC (in my case running Linux) games I have bought the last three years. Another one on my list is Kentucky Road 0. The other one is Avernum: Escape for the Pit (thechnically an old game, but very much refreshed). It has an amazing story and provides for hours upon hours of solid gameplay.
Post edited February 18, 2016 by jorlin
Posted February 18, 2016
deleted
Posted February 18, 2016
Just a reminder, GOG, Dangan Ronpa is out tomorrow. If you want a "surreal adventure," that's one that's also actually good.
Posted February 18, 2016
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Maighstir: It does run in Wine (a plain bottle via PlayOnLinux, no extra installs), but I only tried the free version off Arte's site (in which "English" is grayed-out and cannot be selected, so you get French and German as options for audio and subtitles), and with my work machine's Intel graphics, the menu was very slow (of course, my monitor uses 2560x1440 by default and it looked like the game used that too, so it might very well run better in lower resolutions), I didn't try starting a new game.
Which Wine version do you use? The Arte version of the game does not start for me under Wine 1.8. It seems to crash, at least that's what the file output_log.txt tells me:

d3d11: failed to create 2D texture id=13 w=4 h=4 mips=1 d3dfmt=29 [8876086c]
Crash!!!
Posted February 18, 2016
avatar
Maighstir: It does run in Wine (a plain bottle via PlayOnLinux, no extra installs), but I only tried the free version off Arte's site (in which "English" is grayed-out and cannot be selected, so you get French and German as options for audio and subtitles), and with my work machine's Intel graphics, the menu was very slow (of course, my monitor uses 2560x1440 by default and it looked like the game used that too, so it might very well run better in lower resolutions), I didn't try starting a new game.
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eiii: Which Wine version do you use? The Arte version of the game does not start for me under Wine 1.8. It seems to crash, at least that's what the file output_log.txt tells me:

d3d11: failed to create 2D texture id=13 w=4 h=4 mips=1 d3dfmt=29 [8876086c]
Crash!!!
"System", which --checking now-- means 1.9.3 (I'm on Arch, and that's what's in the repo at the moment).
Post edited February 18, 2016 by Maighstir
Posted February 18, 2016
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styggron: How did you get a refund in store credit ? I thought GoG only refunds if you can't get it to work not if you don't like it. I have one title in my library I really regret but I didn't think I could get a refund on it.
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bigsilverhotdog: I asked nicely. It probably helps that I asked 30 minutes after I purchased it and I have a gigantic GOG library yet I've -never- asked for a refund before for any reason (even when games don't work) as long as I can remember buying on GOG.
I never knew I could ask so I never asked for a refund for Westport Independant. The only GoG game I would like a refund for. Too late to ask now, it's been weeks :( :( :( :(
avatar
Konrad: This is true - since Arte is a public channel, folks from France and Germany can get the game for free. There are several pretty marked differences between the free and retail versions though.

The free version is:
— available in French & German only
— episodical, it'll be released piece by piece
— missing the save feature
— missing the OST bonus-content
avatar
HypersomniacLive: Emm.. what OST bonus are you referring to? The game page doesn't list any extras, nor have I seen anyone post here that the game does indeed come with the OST.
Will it be added later, or is this an "oops"?

On a side note - the episodical release, and perhaps even the absence of the English language, may not be a big deal to the taxpayers that funded it, but to not offer a saving feature is giving them the short end of the stick. Why? Because they don't pay again to play them? At least the BBC produced games got it right - taxpayers get the exact same game, content and feature wise, as everyone else that has to pay for them after release.
Exactly what I also asked on the previous page. No extras appear to list on GoG
Post edited February 18, 2016 by styggron
Posted February 18, 2016
Wait, shouldn't it be free for european users?
Why this price here?
Posted February 18, 2016
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PaterAlf: It might be interesting that the single episodes can be downloaded for free from Arte's website:

http://californium.arte.tv/de/#/episodes
avatar
Konrad: This is true - since Arte is a public channel, folks from France and Germany can get the game for free. There are several pretty marked differences between the free and retail versions though.

The free version is:
— available in French & German only
— episodical, it'll be released piece by piece
— missing the save feature
— missing the OST bonus-content
avatar
DanielRuf: Wait, shouldn't it be free for european users?
Why this price here?
Explained here.
Post edited February 18, 2016 by omega64
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionRelease: Californium(98 posts)(98 posts)
(98 posts)