[Environmental/Easy] Kera

Basically, everything that is animated and wasn't in the base game, is a CO

Wow, even despite its flaws that was a seriously beautiful level, very eerie and mysterious... I'd love to see more.

Again, thank you all for the great feedback.

I'm actually redoing the entire world, from scratch, and I'm going for a less linear aproach now, and a much larger world. In fact, that dark area  in the beginning is now probably as big as the entire game was before. It gets pretty confusing but I think I'll manage.

I'm just not sure if I should follow the same storyline, or try something a bit more mysterious, and less dialog. What do you guys think?

I think you'll probably get almost as many opinions as there are people on the forum 
I like the sense of mystery and exploration in levels with little or no dialogue, personally, but you should go with whatever sounds more interesting to play or fun to make for you. It's probably possible to make levels for other peoples' tastes but I don't imagine it'd be as much fun.

Here are my philosophies on lengthy dialogue.

• Start your story with action. The sooner a player can "play the game" the better. When people sit down to play a game they want to play, not read, not watch. On a side note this opening action is where familiarization with the basic controls takes place. If a tutorial is needed then the basics are laid out here.
• Then, hook the player. Before you start expounding on the story, spark the players interest. This will make them want to know what is going on, and they'll read some dialogue that might explain it with interest.
• Once the player is hooked, you can throw some dialogue at them, but the amount of dialogue they'll gladly read is proportional to their interest. Typically, the longer the game has been played the longer the dialogue can get.
• Finally, balance action with non-action. Build the intensity then let it settle down. In many games this takes the form of dangerous dungeons balanced against safe towns with lightly difficult spaces between. In story driven games, the most intense action (e.g. boss battle) is followed by the biggest story chunks. Now the story acts as a reward and a punctuation at the end of player accomplishments as well as much needed breaks in the action.

Last bit of advice, remember you're making a video game, not a book or movie. Think about what the differences are and emphasize the game.

All in all, I think you're doing it right. Start with action, check. Hook player before dialogue, check. Maintain balance, needs work, but it sounds like you're already heading towards a better balance with the extended opener. I'd say save the conversation with Marina until later.

Wow, egomassive, that's going to be a lot of help
I may even not have any cut-scenes at all, keep the dialog as it usually is, with the protagonist being silent, I think it adds to the mystery. I'm just not sure if I'll follow the same storyline, it made sense when I started doing this (which was kind of a long time ago) but now it seems kinda silly. My priority right now will be making larger, better looking areas, and eventually more CO's. I'm also trying better strategies for where I should place the power-ups. But the storytelling, I'm gonna save that for much later.

I'll be posting info on the new level here:
http://nifflas.lpchip.nl/index.php?topic=4721

I finally played this today, and it was awesome. I look forward to work you produce in the future very much.

Basically: what everyone said. What you have here so far is lovely (with some very, *very* minor flaws, negligible, really), esp. atmosphere and graphics - great, original style there. Looking forward to seeing more of this.