This is cool. I played Flowers in the Mist; not sure if that was the only story. Clearly there's a lot left to implement, both in terms of polish and gameplay, so I'll try and skip the obvious comments. (I got a bit of a laugh out of the mouse hover sounds in the combat bc they sounded like BFXR 8-bit sounds).
In this (https://i.imgur.com/u3yJsjz.png) situation, I think the second comma shouldn't be used. As in, I think it should be "A curious, glowing flower" or "an urchin's small, dirt-covered hands." But I could be wrong, so I would go with whatever you've seen in novels.
In the battles (https://i.imgur.com/50HqBGd.png), I couldn't figure out what the [C1] was supposed to mean. It seemed like I got locked into repeating the same actions every turn. Also, the feedback button blocks the battle dialogue.
More broadly, I think the biggest thing missing right now is the timing at which information is delivered. For example, when you do a job, the order of events is "Click the button -> hear the 'success' sound of coins in your pocket -> eyes dart over to your stats to confirm that you gained money -> read the lore on the screen to figure out wtf you just did".
Ideally, the order would be different, right? Click the button, read the text, see some juice (particles/audio), and finally see the number increase in your char sheet.
So, in a general sense, I would probably work on slowing down the text and having it appear sentence-by-sentence, or having it read out like a VN. Of course it's worth including a read delay setting as well, because some people will want it to scroll faster. But I thought the reading effect in the beginning was cool, while the in-game walls of text needed to be slowed down to sync with the events. I always felt like the gameplay events occurred first, and I was playing catch-up by reading the text to understand what I just did.
Anyway, I'm not into horror per se, but I enjoy story games, so I hope you keep this up.
I agree with pretty much all of that and, yeah, the game's pretty lacking in documentation (and core features) at the moment.
"[C1]" is placeholder for saying that an Action will be on Cooldown for 1 Round (C2 for 2 Rounds, etc). While on Cooldown, Actions can still be used but they cost a bunch more than they normally do. The v010 combat system doesn't properly show that because it sort of just 'ignores' Actions that are overbudget from being on Cooldown. If you're playing as the Emeritus (Professor), Combat is pretty straightforward at the moment. Your starting Actions are all fairly weak but very reliable. Actions work a bit like Pokemon Moves in that you can swap them out, train them, buy and sell them from particular vendors, and customize them (e.g. raising damage caps or changing what Attribute an Action is based on) but are ultimately restrained by your Action Budget in combat. (Note: This is the plan; unfortunately I haven't quite implemented that side of the Character Sheet just yet)
I'm happy to disclose that the upcoming patch will have speed controls for the text writing elements in the settings menu so you can make them as fast or as slow as you prefer. (I also cleaned up a bunch of Prototype stuff such as the button sounds for Combat, which now use the same crunchy/physical-button-y sounds the rest of the game uses)
Agreed on timing, I need to polish all that up before too long.
Hope you'll enjoy this upcoming patch (v015 "Dungeons and Depressions") where I hope to have made a bunch of that more clear and will have introduced the sequel Mystery to Flowers in the Mist as well as the Dungeon type of Mystery. My fingers are crossed that it'll be hitting tomorrow. Please feel free to leave more feedback if you want when I do. And thank you again!
- Send anonymous feedback being placed on actual important text is annoying.
- Banished all gods, couldn't proceed.
- Worked when I just banished 3.
- I really hate the way the text scrolls. Please have a text scrolling speed option with Instant as an option.
Ultimately I'm not really down for this. It's a struggle to pitch these sort of games to me to begin with and the text scrolling hugely detracted from the experience as I read MUCH faster than the text scrolls. I didn't have a good time playing it but I'm not sure I'm the target audience either. Either way, keep up the progress!
I think I banished all gods multiple times, the game then didn´t let me proceed. I also took a bath and it said "there´s a drought, no water" and then I took one again and it said "you draw a full tub". I think events like this should persist. Some events also repeated which was kinda off. Anyway, the game is eery and has good writing, I like it. I also grew some antlers before I got killed by something (one of the gods perhaps?) I like it when weird stuff happens in games.
Ah, yeah, it shouldn't let you banish all the Gods! There's no check when you're re-enkindling to skip the god selection phase at the moment so unfortunately stuff like that can happen presently. The upcoming patch oughta fix that though. Event repetition is an unfortunate reality for some Locations, especially the Residential District, for the time being since I put almost a whole month into getting Dungeons prepped for being put in the game rather than expanding the roster of events. You may want to check it out again when the patch drops for that! (should be later today)
Thanks for the awesome feedback. Everything y'all write goes straight into my notepad for 'things to fix' and 'things to consider'.
Comments
It's World of Horror, but a bit different!
Too buggy and WIP to get proper feedback on in my opinion, but looks nice and has good writing and music.
I recognize that font!
This is cool. I played Flowers in the Mist; not sure if that was the only story. Clearly there's a lot left to implement, both in terms of polish and gameplay, so I'll try and skip the obvious comments. (I got a bit of a laugh out of the mouse hover sounds in the combat bc they sounded like BFXR 8-bit sounds).
More broadly, I think the biggest thing missing right now is the timing at which information is delivered. For example, when you do a job, the order of events is "Click the button -> hear the 'success' sound of coins in your pocket -> eyes dart over to your stats to confirm that you gained money -> read the lore on the screen to figure out wtf you just did".
Ideally, the order would be different, right? Click the button, read the text, see some juice (particles/audio), and finally see the number increase in your char sheet.
So, in a general sense, I would probably work on slowing down the text and having it appear sentence-by-sentence, or having it read out like a VN. Of course it's worth including a read delay setting as well, because some people will want it to scroll faster. But I thought the reading effect in the beginning was cool, while the in-game walls of text needed to be slowed down to sync with the events. I always felt like the gameplay events occurred first, and I was playing catch-up by reading the text to understand what I just did.
Anyway, I'm not into horror per se, but I enjoy story games, so I hope you keep this up.
Woah! What detailed feedback. Thank you so much!!
I agree with pretty much all of that and, yeah, the game's pretty lacking in documentation (and core features) at the moment.
"[C1]" is placeholder for saying that an Action will be on Cooldown for 1 Round (C2 for 2 Rounds, etc). While on Cooldown, Actions can still be used but they cost a bunch more than they normally do. The v010 combat system doesn't properly show that because it sort of just 'ignores' Actions that are overbudget from being on Cooldown. If you're playing as the Emeritus (Professor), Combat is pretty straightforward at the moment. Your starting Actions are all fairly weak but very reliable. Actions work a bit like Pokemon Moves in that you can swap them out, train them, buy and sell them from particular vendors, and customize them (e.g. raising damage caps or changing what Attribute an Action is based on) but are ultimately restrained by your Action Budget in combat. (Note: This is the plan; unfortunately I haven't quite implemented that side of the Character Sheet just yet)
I'm happy to disclose that the upcoming patch will have speed controls for the text writing elements in the settings menu so you can make them as fast or as slow as you prefer. (I also cleaned up a bunch of Prototype stuff such as the button sounds for Combat, which now use the same crunchy/physical-button-y sounds the rest of the game uses)
Agreed on timing, I need to polish all that up before too long.
Hope you'll enjoy this upcoming patch (v015 "Dungeons and Depressions") where I hope to have made a bunch of that more clear and will have introduced the sequel Mystery to Flowers in the Mist as well as the Dungeon type of Mystery. My fingers are crossed that it'll be hitting tomorrow. Please feel free to leave more feedback if you want when I do. And thank you again!
Time to play this!
- Main menu doesn't work?
- Restarting made the main menu work again.
- Send anonymous feedback being placed on actual important text is annoying.
- Banished all gods, couldn't proceed.
- Worked when I just banished 3.
- I really hate the way the text scrolls. Please have a text scrolling speed option with Instant as an option.
Ultimately I'm not really down for this. It's a struggle to pitch these sort of games to me to begin with and the text scrolling hugely detracted from the experience as I read MUCH faster than the text scrolls. I didn't have a good time playing it but I'm not sure I'm the target audience either. Either way, keep up the progress!
I think I banished all gods multiple times, the game then didn´t let me proceed. I also took a bath and it said "there´s a drought, no water" and then I took one again and it said "you draw a full tub". I think events like this should persist. Some events also repeated which was kinda off. Anyway, the game is eery and has good writing, I like it. I also grew some antlers before I got killed by something (one of the gods perhaps?) I like it when weird stuff happens in games.
Ah, yeah, it shouldn't let you banish all the Gods! There's no check when you're re-enkindling to skip the god selection phase at the moment so unfortunately stuff like that can happen presently. The upcoming patch oughta fix that though. Event repetition is an unfortunate reality for some Locations, especially the Residential District, for the time being since I put almost a whole month into getting Dungeons prepped for being put in the game rather than expanding the roster of events. You may want to check it out again when the patch drops for that! (should be later today)
Thanks for the awesome feedback. Everything y'all write goes straight into my notepad for 'things to fix' and 'things to consider'.