The main thing I'd mention is that it was a lot for me. I usually play games that are on the simple side. And this is anything but, there's lots of dialogue, lots of little things to remember, lots of UI to traverse, etc. These aren't negatives. But they're not really what I like to play, so I definitely zoned out a few times during gameplay. I was not good at it, to the point where I couldn't solve literally every puzzle I stumbled upon.
The thing that I see is that... The design seems brutal and not hand-holding at all. It just throws you out there and there's a bunch of items, documents, notes; 3 pages of things you can ask people about; lots of uncompleted boxes you can fill, etc. I just find like it's too easy to get stuck and have no idea how to progress. If you played Ace Attorney, I got filtered by the investigation portions because sometimes you had to click on a certain object or ask a person about a specific item before knowing to continue. And that's a game where you're solving a single specific thing and items you can click on are on 2D backgrounds. This seems 100 times worse, because you have a full 3D world to explore, there's so much more stuff you can interact with, so many more 'case pieces' that you need a filter to even reasonable search it, deductions you need to make and you can potentially be working on multiple cases at a time? That's what I'm thinking... But I don't know, maybe you've thought about this, maybe you have a hardcore audience who can tough it out. My brain's not big enough, I'm afraid.
Having said that, I did really like the idea that you're trying to implement. Like, the dialogue, all the systems, all the freedom you give the player. I think it's super ambitious and I'm very impressed by it. If you told me this was an old game made by a legit studio, I'd believe it.
The goal of the game is not to be simple but rather to be believable and to immerse the player in its world.
After you beat the signpost puzzle the game never again locks your progress behind having to solve anything. You actually went through the entire content progression without any issues which was more important as feedback. It's interesting you mentioned Obra Dinn since it works in the same way -- You can get through that entire game without solving a single death but then you lose the game at the end. I have watched people go through the entirety of Obra Dinn while only solving 10 fates so this is not new to me.
I've noticed that players have a tendency not to engage with the Case Notebook too much. I think that's on me and I will try to make it more engaging and compelling to solve things there, since that is the main gameplay focus, but at the same time different players play games in different ways and I have started to be more aware which types of players are my target audience and which types will never become complex puzzle fans no matter what I change.
I won't talk too much about the graphics and the sound design since you already know my opinion on that (I love it). I'll focus more on the differences from the DD55 demo.
It seems you've tutorialized the UI, which is fantastic, it really eases you into the flow of things. The woods section has been improved it seems - especially since now you don't show the map near the puzzle :P
I've managed to solve the causes of the electronics issues in the second location. Adding a second NPC is a godsent since you can now cross-reference their statements. Distracting the owner of the junkyard is a really, really nice touch, makes the place feel more "alive" and dynamic. Which is, once again, very welcome and great.
However, while I'm not sure I broke anything - I managed to jump over the stacked cars and got into the second area of the junkyard before it opened up. That route did not seem intentional. I don't think it counts as sequence breaking, but still. I'm the kinda guy who tries to hug walls and jump over everything, so you may want to prevent players like me from accessing stuff they aren't supposed to.
And secondly - the active area of the UI seems to be aligned a bit higher than the graphics would suggest. That gave me a bit of trouble because at first I wasn't able to read the bug lore - I clicked outside of the click area (on the text), did not see any change, and decided to proceed with exploration.
Anyway - love it, a very enjoyable game. Great progress, please keep it up!
Please significantly increase the movement speed and/or add a run button. I'm interested in this sort of game and I like what I see so far, but I went from mild annoyance at how slow it was to quitting in utter disbelief when the first puzzle required cinematically crawling back to reorient and check planks.
No Title Music. Also no Movement in the back of the Title SCreen, a bit of Wind Sway and Cloud Movement could really sell the Mood more. Terrain feels barren. Buttons are very big, feels more like its supposed to be on Handheld then on a Desktop, and Placement seems a bit odd. Not like its destroying useability or anything, but more like you'd be used to and expecting it to be bottom left or Center.
The Background Noise is ok, but could be more localized. It doesn't sound like the Birds are actually in the Hedges and Trees, but just kind of always behind me. I also can't walk through the lighter Bushes, and you need to place a few more of them inside the Hedge-Wall to mask the Hard cutoff I think. The fallen down Tree over the Path looks nice and blends in Well, compared to that. Consider making your surrounding Hedgewalls look more similar to that.
Tutorial Popups are bad. Dialogue is alright, but Dialogue Window feels a lot too big for the Text inside. Also having to click on the Next Button instead of anywhere is annoying, and you're lacking any kind of Character or Head movement during talking.
It's nice that you can click to skip textwriter, but you still have to wait a while afterwards.
Did we walk into the Forest and the Tree fell behind us? Then we could just climb out. Or did we drive, then where's the Car? (Apparently that's the Way forward, not backwards, disregard this then. But add why theres an invisible Wall blocking me)
The 'next Dialouge' Button is huge compared to the tiny 'more Information' one, which probably is more important.
Also I have to use the Button, and can't click on the Word itself?
You need sound effects, jumping, breaking/moving the Tree etc. Also Animations on that. A small Cutscene for moving the Tree probably, instead of it just disappearing.
No Dialogue Change after moving the Tree?
Your Water does not look like Water. no Movement, no Transparency, nothing.
Your Riversides also look empty, consider some Rocks, some washed up Branches, a bit of Beach somewhere maybe.
Why is David Teleporting?
Your Bird Soundscape does get repetitive after a while. Needs more Variation, and/or play not constantly.
Why are you preventing me from moving without solving the Riddle first?
The Text under the scratched Sign does not seem to display the actual Text that's supposed to be on the Sign. This needs fixing.
Also unless I missed something, the 2 Hole Piece you find could be on both Options, so it becomes a bit of Guesswork.
Do you really need that Scene-based Travel? Why not have me just walk into the Direction I want and move me into the new Area that Way?
Clicking on Strange Malfunctions causes a Lagspike.
If you try to enter a new Line in writing your own Node, your Control jumps back to the Title.
The Option to leave yourself Notes is very nice tho.
Don't limit me to accessing specific Pages in the Binder, let me just look through all of them.
That People teleport and open up Passageways after you looked at a specific Entry somewhere, or talked to someone feels super odd. Just have it happen after a Time, with visible Animations of them moving Boxes or walking over to somewhere or whatever. Same with Michael teleporting to the Walkie Talkie. Consider having him actually run there.
The little Paper edge to flip the Page looks nice, but was a Pain to find, I was assuming you forgot to put a Way to move back and forth between Pages for a while. Consider allowing Keyboard Shortcuts for that. As with pretty much everything, Menu-management could be improved by being allowed to utilize WASD/Tab/Enter/ESC etc. more leniantly(?).
When typing to long or wrong symbols into the Title of a Note, it breaks, so you write it into itself or something, causing a weird String result.
Solving the small Correspondence was pure Guesswork in the End. The Verb and the Junk was easy, as was the second Part of the Location, and the Character being informed.
The First Character had some Options to guess, while the detailed Location wasn't clear to me from the Image. Probably could use a better drawing to make sure its recognizeable.
Couldn't solve Who did it, there's 12 Options with 12 Choices, and no Clues, I'm not bruteforcing all of them to figure out the correct Order. Either I'm missing a Person somewhere, it's not supposed to be solveable yet, or the Order should not matter for who was Involved. If it is indeed solveable, I have no Idea how, but would like to, so I could see what's coming after.
There's no Junk-press or anything but the Junk is neatly cubed, how?
Environment could use some work, Clues could be better in some Places, and the UI where you spend most of your Time, writing Notes, flipping between Pages etc. could use better controlling I think, but overall enjoyable.
That really means a lot since the seed that started this idea 16 years ago was exactly Syberia. It feels unreal to hear someone compare my game to it. Also it's nice to see that people actually catch the fact that the game is a point-and-click game at its heart, just one that works differently.
Obra Dinn is more obvious. That was the game where it finally clicked and the idea turned into an actual vision.
Love the graphics, love the style, love the sound design, love the writing. Surprised by their ghost affiliation, but I'm on the love side still. Now to the bad and ugly.
The bush hiding key area to roadside discovery is gone, on the one hand this little puzzle did filter a lot of players, including me, but I was sad to see it gone. Removing puzzles to reach lowest common denominator seems like a slide to perfectly mediocre game. There must be a way to include your initial idea with a little twist rather than removing it altogether.
Small UI notes - Pin looks like sombrero ( Might have in-game explanation that I didn't catch ), Save button should have some sort of feedback (Close menu along with 'Game saved' toast). Consistent capitalization - junkyard worker was smol.
Field study section is great addition, along with the new puzzle it does let you dive into a new, bizarre world, not sure how you plan on revealing information inside of field study, single data-dump could be overwhelming and discourage player from riding, additionally new puzzle is closely tied to the field study. For now it's perfectly solvable and interesting, with data-dump it might change.
I've managed to jump into the area you didn't want player to jump, the one initially warded off with boxes, space near the car on the left of junkyard from entrance perspective. On-hover portraits are a great addition, if you ever add difficulty setting, removing them on hard difficulty, and going back to text description could be a great idea.
The pictogram puzzle, logical, solvable, great. It does raise the question, why does Mike feel the need to communicate with his worker using pictograms? I need an explanation even if it's an absurd one, maybe the worker has egyptian background and Mike believed it'd be appropriate to give him tasks with pictograms.
Thank you muchly. The streamlining of the introductory puzzle was necessary since it was never the intention to needlessly obstruct players. It acts as a soft tutorial and I think it's much more important to teach the players to explore, rather than teach them to look for obtuse secrets. Hidden pathways might be better used for extra secrets to reward curiosity, not so much to bottleneck progress in the tutorial area of the game.
Field studies are supposed to be unlocked entry by entry in the full game (when each one becomes a theoretical factor). They are never dumped all at once and there's not that many total.
The reason for the picture note is that Mike B is illiterate. So to make communication more efficient for when they might not be in the same place, they came up with a symbol system and started leaving each other notes in this code. It's never stated outright, just implied, but it might be mentioned eventually if it becomes relevant to the investigation.
Could be interesting, but generally not my type of game. A run button would totally make this more bearable tho, or at least have the character move a bit faster in general.
I didn’t want to spend too long on one game so I quit out a bit early but I was quite engrossed. Two nitpicks: A little one is the funky moon logic of having to try and enter the office in order for the junior worker to move. A bigger one (in that I don’t know how you’d fix it given the genre) is how you can just “know” that you’ve solved a puzzle, especially considering you can just brute force some of the combinations.
Game runs alright on Linux with Proton 7, though movement feels choppy, probably a framerate mismatch or something as I’m running on a 144 Hz monitor.
Haven’t played something like this in quite a while. If I didn’t have to mix waging, devving, and socializing, I could see myself getting lost in a game like this for days.
Comments
Hi, I played it! Here's a stream:
The main thing I'd mention is that it was a lot for me. I usually play games that are on the simple side. And this is anything but, there's lots of dialogue, lots of little things to remember, lots of UI to traverse, etc. These aren't negatives. But they're not really what I like to play, so I definitely zoned out a few times during gameplay. I was not good at it, to the point where I couldn't solve literally every puzzle I stumbled upon.
The thing that I see is that... The design seems brutal and not hand-holding at all. It just throws you out there and there's a bunch of items, documents, notes; 3 pages of things you can ask people about; lots of uncompleted boxes you can fill, etc. I just find like it's too easy to get stuck and have no idea how to progress. If you played Ace Attorney, I got filtered by the investigation portions because sometimes you had to click on a certain object or ask a person about a specific item before knowing to continue. And that's a game where you're solving a single specific thing and items you can click on are on 2D backgrounds. This seems 100 times worse, because you have a full 3D world to explore, there's so much more stuff you can interact with, so many more 'case pieces' that you need a filter to even reasonable search it, deductions you need to make and you can potentially be working on multiple cases at a time? That's what I'm thinking... But I don't know, maybe you've thought about this, maybe you have a hardcore audience who can tough it out. My brain's not big enough, I'm afraid.
Having said that, I did really like the idea that you're trying to implement. Like, the dialogue, all the systems, all the freedom you give the player. I think it's super ambitious and I'm very impressed by it. If you told me this was an old game made by a legit studio, I'd believe it.
Thank you for taking the time to play.
The goal of the game is not to be simple but rather to be believable and to immerse the player in its world.
After you beat the signpost puzzle the game never again locks your progress behind having to solve anything. You actually went through the entire content progression without any issues which was more important as feedback. It's interesting you mentioned Obra Dinn since it works in the same way -- You can get through that entire game without solving a single death but then you lose the game at the end. I have watched people go through the entirety of Obra Dinn while only solving 10 fates so this is not new to me.
I've noticed that players have a tendency not to engage with the Case Notebook too much. I think that's on me and I will try to make it more engaging and compelling to solve things there, since that is the main gameplay focus, but at the same time different players play games in different ways and I have started to be more aware which types of players are my target audience and which types will never become complex puzzle fans no matter what I change.
Good luck on releasing Little Locked Rooms.
I won't talk too much about the graphics and the sound design since you already know my opinion on that (I love it). I'll focus more on the differences from the DD55 demo.
It seems you've tutorialized the UI, which is fantastic, it really eases you into the flow of things. The woods section has been improved it seems - especially since now you don't show the map near the puzzle :P
I've managed to solve the causes of the electronics issues in the second location. Adding a second NPC is a godsent since you can now cross-reference their statements. Distracting the owner of the junkyard is a really, really nice touch, makes the place feel more "alive" and dynamic. Which is, once again, very welcome and great.
However, while I'm not sure I broke anything - I managed to jump over the stacked cars and got into the second area of the junkyard before it opened up. That route did not seem intentional. I don't think it counts as sequence breaking, but still. I'm the kinda guy who tries to hug walls and jump over everything, so you may want to prevent players like me from accessing stuff they aren't supposed to.
And secondly - the active area of the UI seems to be aligned a bit higher than the graphics would suggest. That gave me a bit of trouble because at first I wasn't able to read the bug lore - I clicked outside of the click area (on the text), did not see any change, and decided to proceed with exploration.
Anyway - love it, a very enjoyable game. Great progress, please keep it up!
Please significantly increase the movement speed and/or add a run button. I'm interested in this sort of game and I like what I see so far, but I went from mild annoyance at how slow it was to quitting in utter disbelief when the first puzzle required cinematically crawling back to reorient and check planks.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2137409608
Played roughly 1.5h.
No Title Music. Also no Movement in the back of the Title SCreen, a bit of Wind Sway and Cloud Movement could really sell the Mood more. Terrain feels barren. Buttons are very big, feels more like its supposed to be on Handheld then on a Desktop, and Placement seems a bit odd. Not like its destroying useability or anything, but more like you'd be used to and expecting it to be bottom left or Center.
The Background Noise is ok, but could be more localized. It doesn't sound like the Birds are actually in the Hedges and Trees, but just kind of always behind me. I also can't walk through the lighter Bushes, and you need to place a few more of them inside the Hedge-Wall to mask the Hard cutoff I think. The fallen down Tree over the Path looks nice and blends in Well, compared to that. Consider making your surrounding Hedgewalls look more similar to that.
Tutorial Popups are bad. Dialogue is alright, but Dialogue Window feels a lot too big for the Text inside. Also having to click on the Next Button instead of anywhere is annoying, and you're lacking any kind of Character or Head movement during talking.
It's nice that you can click to skip textwriter, but you still have to wait a while afterwards.
Did we walk into the Forest and the Tree fell behind us? Then we could just climb out. Or did we drive, then where's the Car? (Apparently that's the Way forward, not backwards, disregard this then. But add why theres an invisible Wall blocking me)
The 'next Dialouge' Button is huge compared to the tiny 'more Information' one, which probably is more important.
Also I have to use the Button, and can't click on the Word itself?
You need sound effects, jumping, breaking/moving the Tree etc. Also Animations on that. A small Cutscene for moving the Tree probably, instead of it just disappearing.
No Dialogue Change after moving the Tree?
Your Water does not look like Water. no Movement, no Transparency, nothing.
Your Riversides also look empty, consider some Rocks, some washed up Branches, a bit of Beach somewhere maybe.
Why is David Teleporting?
Your Bird Soundscape does get repetitive after a while. Needs more Variation, and/or play not constantly.
Why are you preventing me from moving without solving the Riddle first?
The Text under the scratched Sign does not seem to display the actual Text that's supposed to be on the Sign. This needs fixing.
Also unless I missed something, the 2 Hole Piece you find could be on both Options, so it becomes a bit of Guesswork.
Do you really need that Scene-based Travel? Why not have me just walk into the Direction I want and move me into the new Area that Way?
Clicking on Strange Malfunctions causes a Lagspike.
If you try to enter a new Line in writing your own Node, your Control jumps back to the Title.
The Option to leave yourself Notes is very nice tho.
Don't limit me to accessing specific Pages in the Binder, let me just look through all of them.
That People teleport and open up Passageways after you looked at a specific Entry somewhere, or talked to someone feels super odd. Just have it happen after a Time, with visible Animations of them moving Boxes or walking over to somewhere or whatever. Same with Michael teleporting to the Walkie Talkie. Consider having him actually run there.
The little Paper edge to flip the Page looks nice, but was a Pain to find, I was assuming you forgot to put a Way to move back and forth between Pages for a while. Consider allowing Keyboard Shortcuts for that. As with pretty much everything, Menu-management could be improved by being allowed to utilize WASD/Tab/Enter/ESC etc. more leniantly(?).
When typing to long or wrong symbols into the Title of a Note, it breaks, so you write it into itself or something, causing a weird String result.
Solving the small Correspondence was pure Guesswork in the End. The Verb and the Junk was easy, as was the second Part of the Location, and the Character being informed.
The First Character had some Options to guess, while the detailed Location wasn't clear to me from the Image. Probably could use a better drawing to make sure its recognizeable.
Couldn't solve Who did it, there's 12 Options with 12 Choices, and no Clues, I'm not bruteforcing all of them to figure out the correct Order. Either I'm missing a Person somewhere, it's not supposed to be solveable yet, or the Order should not matter for who was Involved. If it is indeed solveable, I have no Idea how, but would like to, so I could see what's coming after.
There's no Junk-press or anything but the Junk is neatly cubed, how?
Environment could use some work, Clues could be better in some Places, and the UI where you spend most of your Time, writing Notes, flipping between Pages etc. could use better controlling I think, but overall enjoyable.
Thank you as always for the detailed and extensive analysis.
saw it streamed.
artistically, you have done a great job. the models and textures are solid, and the notebook is just fucking fancy
the gameplay itself is interesting, it reminds me of syberia, obra dinn and other similar games. not really my genre, but i'll keep an eye on it
That really means a lot since the seed that started this idea 16 years ago was exactly Syberia. It feels unreal to hear someone compare my game to it. Also it's nice to see that people actually catch the fact that the game is a point-and-click game at its heart, just one that works differently.
Obra Dinn is more obvious. That was the game where it finally clicked and the idea turned into an actual vision.
Love the graphics, love the style, love the sound design, love the writing. Surprised by their ghost affiliation, but I'm on the love side still. Now to the bad and ugly.
The bush hiding key area to roadside discovery is gone, on the one hand this little puzzle did filter a lot of players, including me, but I was sad to see it gone. Removing puzzles to reach lowest common denominator seems like a slide to perfectly mediocre game. There must be a way to include your initial idea with a little twist rather than removing it altogether.
Small UI notes - Pin looks like sombrero ( Might have in-game explanation that I didn't catch ), Save button should have some sort of feedback (Close menu along with 'Game saved' toast). Consistent capitalization - junkyard worker was smol.
Field study section is great addition, along with the new puzzle it does let you dive into a new, bizarre world, not sure how you plan on revealing information inside of field study, single data-dump could be overwhelming and discourage player from riding, additionally new puzzle is closely tied to the field study. For now it's perfectly solvable and interesting, with data-dump it might change.
I've managed to jump into the area you didn't want player to jump, the one initially warded off with boxes, space near the car on the left of junkyard from entrance perspective. On-hover portraits are a great addition, if you ever add difficulty setting, removing them on hard difficulty, and going back to text description could be a great idea.
The pictogram puzzle, logical, solvable, great. It does raise the question, why does Mike feel the need to communicate with his worker using pictograms? I need an explanation even if it's an absurd one, maybe the worker has egyptian background and Mike believed it'd be appropriate to give him tasks with pictograms.
Great game, don't stop working on it.
Thank you muchly. The streamlining of the introductory puzzle was necessary since it was never the intention to needlessly obstruct players. It acts as a soft tutorial and I think it's much more important to teach the players to explore, rather than teach them to look for obtuse secrets. Hidden pathways might be better used for extra secrets to reward curiosity, not so much to bottleneck progress in the tutorial area of the game.
Field studies are supposed to be unlocked entry by entry in the full game (when each one becomes a theoretical factor). They are never dumped all at once and there's not that many total.
The reason for the picture note is that Mike B is illiterate. So to make communication more efficient for when they might not be in the same place, they came up with a symbol system and started leaving each other notes in this code. It's never stated outright, just implied, but it might be mentioned eventually if it becomes relevant to the investigation.
Noted all the other stuff and thank you again!
Could be interesting, but generally not my type of game. A run button would totally make this more bearable tho, or at least have the character move a bit faster in general.
I didn’t want to spend too long on one game so I quit out a bit early but I was quite engrossed. Two nitpicks: A little one is the funky moon logic of having to try and enter the office in order for the junior worker to move. A bigger one (in that I don’t know how you’d fix it given the genre) is how you can just “know” that you’ve solved a puzzle, especially considering you can just brute force some of the combinations.
Game runs alright on Linux with Proton 7, though movement feels choppy, probably a framerate mismatch or something as I’m running on a 144 Hz monitor.
Haven’t played something like this in quite a while. If I didn’t have to mix waging, devving, and socializing, I could see myself getting lost in a game like this for days.