I agree with you. But as far as I can tell, some people are pissed off with you, whatever you do. Using the wrong colour will enrage people into writing bad comments. I mean, some people hate you simply for making an Escape From the Room Game....

It's the fact of the internet, whatever you do, some people will say "You're a stupid idiot, why the hell are you bothering, why don't you crawl away and die somewhere?", particularly if you're doing something for free.

If you've clicked on the ads, you must have been clicking randomly with your brain disengaged. So the immersion is already gone. Again, I'm not defending ads. It's just, well, I can't think of any better way of doing this. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Generally, there is a bit of hypocrisy regarding adverts and flash games. Games are often stolen and placed on sites surrounded by advertising that benefits the site owner and not the game creator. Often they would shrink down the size of the game to make room for more adverts. This is accepted practise.

Writing a game that contains advertising, or worse still, agreeing to write an Advagame, which in my opinion is no worse than say having a job working for EA, has people screaming that advertising is evil. Which it is. But these are things that need to be done in order to survive. Or at least try to survive.

The ad with the popup didn't display the popup quickly at first, as the game style is one of exploration, I saw it was clickable and clicked it. Quite surprised to be taken to an off site link. Going back to the game the popup was now clear.

Ads are expected these days. Seeing one in the beginning is no biggie. But given the game type (immersive and exploration), pop up ads and continual ads along the bottom kind of blow the mood. It was hard to get immersed, and the constant wondering if I was finding a clue or being led to another site made me loose interest fairly quickly. And a popup in the middle of a game is just another thing to destroy any type of immersion.

These types of games are generally the ones I like, and as far as I played into I did enjoy. But ads are ads. I really didn't even pay attention to what they were. Most people mentally block them out. And especially when I felt I was duped into clicking one.

If you are having people complaining about the ads, take that as useful input and consider if some people are complaining directly to you, there are probably many, many more who won't bother and just leave without returning or sharing.

Sure, ads may be important, but at the cost of losing users? Certainly you can put ads wherever you want, but is it worth if you are driving away users annoyed?

Take it as constructive criticism. The continual ads and in-game ads are a distraction and will probably drive users away more often than not.

That could be a game in itself really. Being an indie game developer yourself, you should be able to understand that ads are necessary. At the very most, the meager pennies they generate do cover at least the bandwidth and server costs.

If you did look at the ads, you'd find that they link to other indie games and comic sites which I would have gladly linked for free. I also thought it amusing for the ads to be contained in drawers and such, seeing how the game is apparently horror-themed in all her seriousness, but it seems players are more preoccupied in complaining about how offended they are that adverts exist than giving any actual constructive criticism about the game herself and/or art, music, presentation, gameplay or considered the amount of work and research (there are a hell lot of references all horror-related in the game) the artist and developer have put in so that they can release an absolutely free game for you to play and hopefully enjoy and discard if you want to when you're done with it.

By the way, the ads are not pay-per-click so it doesn't even matter how many times anyone clicks on them. They were put there ultimately for banner sharing between other indie game sites and indie comic sites equally. We are not at all rolling in our millions although we wish this were true. Thus far, all our games are for free so I don't think it unreasonable to put the ads where we want them to. :)

Oh! One more thing, there are pop ups in the game when your mouse hovers over the ads to warn you that they are pop ups. This should then be up to you to click on them or not. :)

Just seems like a vehicle for ads. Even in game, elements you click on may be an ad that opens a new window. I was more interested in avoiding ads than trying to figure out the game.