If you would like to ask for playtesters, use this thread.
Hello, if someone wants to test this little game about a duck mother with 5 treasures you can try here : https://rigachupe.itch.io/doodley
Please let me know if you tried commands that you think could work but didn't.
I have started playing Doodley the Duck and am enjoying it so far, but it is very frustrating. Here are some initial comments:
Great title, but I think you should include the title in the title screen.
The goal is to find your five ducklings but there are only four shown in the title screen. Any chance of adding another one?
Nice colour scheme.
Make sure all sentences end with a full stop. Avoid exclamation marks unless it really is an exclamation. Don't use multiple exclamation marks, e.g. "Danger danger!!!" could be "Danger! Danger!".
"anymore" should be "any more", i.e. two words.
You should override HELP, as the system help exceeds the six-word limit.
Consider overriding CREDITS, as well. The system credits can still be accessed using *CREDITS.
HUNT is a pretty obscure verb to use. I don't see ducks as hunters, but hunted. Perhaps give a hint to use it.
"doggo" should be synonym for "dog".
"pig" and "pork" should be synonyms for "piggy".
A "pig house" is normally called a "pig sty".
X HOLES: "hidding" should be "hiding".
If you CATCH CATERPILLAR when hands are full, it tells you your hands are full, then gets it anyway and drops it in the room. In this case, the response is inappropriate. You can then CATCH CATERPILLAR again and the same thing happens, but you only end up with one caterpillar, not two. Whereas, if you've got a caterpillar in your inventory, it says you've got one already.
Doesn't understand a lot of common verbs such as PRESS (synonym for PUSH), MOVE, SHOW, SMELL (particularly relevant in this game), THROW, TICKLE (because there is a feather) and so on.
"To risky, wait..." should be "Too risky, wait..."
If I understand this correctly, "*bush piips hungrilly*" should be "*bush peeps hungrily*" and "Very far piips" should be "Very far peeps".
"buggers" should be "boogers".
I get the impression that this is like 5 mini adventures and there is one duckling in each area. It seems like you need one type of food for eack duckling (I might be wrong about this), but there are no clues as to which food is required for which duckling, so it becomes a matter of trial and error. There also appears to be a number of red herrings, but I might be wrong about that too.
The hunger, thirst and sleep aspects are a real pain. The timing between getting hungry, thirsty etc. is far too short and you spend all your time just trying to stay alive with no spare time to look for the ducklings. Needless to say, I very quickly got fed up with this and played with this turned off. When I've solved it, I might come back and turn this back on again, but consider making the times more generous, remove it altogether or integrate it into the game. It's certainly not fair if you need to eat the food to stay alive when the same food is required for your ducklings.
Incidentally, I've only rescued Lui so far, but I have a hunch about at least three of the others.
Thank you for testing and the grammar corrections. The grammar is really a weak spot. :-).
Look closer at the screen. There are 4 ducklings, but you still find 5 treasures on it. It is not hidden in the screen, it is fully visible.
Added HELP command that shows hints in various places or situations. Try use it when you are really frustrated and can not progress. It is closer to a spoiler than a hint i quess.
MOVE, SHOW are used as verbs for buttons you think? Never seen it in that situation. Maybe i don't understand what you mean?
Each duckling has a specific trauma that must be solved by quessing the word. Food is required only on one duckling which you found. I can point out that the game tries to show some sort of love based solution to that kind of trauma for each duckling.
Thanks. That explains a lot.
Re SHOW, it can be used to show an object to another character to get their reaction. Just a suggestion.
Re MOVE, this can be used to try to move an object. It can be synonymous with PULL and PUSH, but these are normally treated differently, as you've done. If it's not needed, perhaps provide a suggestion such as "Try PUSH or PULL".
I worked out the 5th treasure in the title screen and have now got it. Very tricky. However, I'd suggest using ME, MYSELF and DOODLEY as synonyms for SELF.
I see that you've done an update, but you forgot to update the version. It's still 1.0.2.
I think you might have broken something. You can no longer go SOUTH from the horse stable. Can you check this? I can no longer get to piggy.
Thank you i make some changes as you suggested. I also tested the SOUTH direction from horse stable and it is working. Did you played from restored game state? Maybe something in the engine is not working good when there are changes in code i quess. But i did not change anything in location connections hmmm.
It could be that. I'll start again. I've now got 4 treasures. I'm stuck at the spider. I feel like I need to get the candy from the old female, as that's the only thing that's sweet. I can't dig manure, do anything with young female or the horse and the flies. I'm not sure if piggy is useful, but I wanted to give him the corn. I'll try that after I restart.
In the meantime, here's some more comments:
X NAIL: It holds dog's chain.
X CHAIN: Not here.
GET CHAIN: Not here.
PULL CHAIN: Dog is now free! [Huh? How can I PULL a chain that I can't get and can't see?]
"dog chasses" should be "dog chases".
"Hui is scared strongly" should be "Hui is very scared".
On initial entry to manure pile, after dung beetle disappears, something's missing. It says, "CLOUDS, , MANURE", i.e. double comma (possibly related to the save game state as you suggested above?)
"anytime" should be "any time".
If you quack at roses after rescuing Lui, it still says "*Bush peeps hungrily*".
X THORNS: Pointy and dangerous.
GET THORNS: Not here. [Should say "Too pointy." or something similar.]
"Dui shakes from fears" should be "... fear".
HELP hasn't been overridden at farm.
Also, there's still a few sentences without a full stop at the end. Perhaps do a quick search of your print statements and check that they all have terminating punctuation.You were right about restarting. There is no longer a problem going south from the stable or a blank object at the manure pile. This means I was now able to get the dung beetle, but the spider did not want any of the three treats that I'd found. I needed that candy, but there was no way that the old female was going to give it to me. Then I discovered that you had a solution on the game page.
WARNING! Spoilers ahead.
SNATCH FEMALE. Give me a break. I wouldn't have guessed that in a million years! I don't even know what it means. Perhaps you meant STEAL CANDY or something like that. Also, SPANK DOLAN is pretty obscure. Are there any synonyms? SPANK is not a word we'd be likely to use in Australia. I think I tried HIT, SLAP, WHACK and a few others.
I really liked the concept behind this game, but the random events, the food/drink/sleep issue, the lack of in-game hints, the repetitive nature of some of the puzzles and the guess-the-verb issues really let it down. Despite that, I'm looking forward to your next game.
Anyway, a couple of final grammatical issues:
"Wof wof" should be "Woof woof".
"Here is he" (when Dolan appears) should be "Here he is".
I still think SNATCH, even with synonyms is a bit mean, as you only have one move to do it, so no time for experimenting. I still think you should STEAL candy.
Regarding SPANK, can you add SLAP and SMACK as synonyms, and maybe a few others like WHACK, SCOLD and so on. A thesaurus always comes in handly when looking for synonyms. Only use the common ones, though.
Maybe a hint will help? A new verb is needed. Read this carefully. Duck are natural hunters.
Try droping on ground something that lives in water. Corn is just too big. Caterpillars or other possible food is a scenery type object because the game allows to create it again and again after eating it. But you only can have each object one time in inventory. It is set so for the hunger system. So use that new verb to obtain an actual item object that you can eat or use somewhere else.
I didn't finish your game, but I don't regret the time I spent there. If you come up with a simpler version, without giving up your initial ambitions, I'll play it again and finish it, because it will be a damn good game. Maybe uncommon verbs should be synonymous with a more common verb, and I don't really like randomness in games.
But you're the one who knows.
4 days to go, so it's time to ask for some help with testing.
https://aturbidflow.itch.io/opposite-edge-of-slumber
Password: WakeUp
Notes:
1. English is not my native, so some extremely obvious actions may not be processed.
2. Game is not finished yet: after droping all treasures in the treasure room it ends. An end-game puzzle will be added in a couple of days.
3. The are couple of scripts over the Adventuron (even over the compiled game). The first one is adding a blurry effect. The second one is temporary for testing — it sends input statistics to my statistics api (it consist of the version of the game, a device fingerprint, current timestamp, a command and the room name).
Hi,
I briefly tried this, and have noticed a couple of technical issues.
Firstly is that if I come back to the game, I can't seem to type any commands. Not sure if this is because of the scripts you applied over the compiled adventuron game or not. UPDATE: It seems that the script seems to not focus on the command line text box when you reload a game, so when reloading, the text a player types goes nowhere. This may frustrate players to the point of quitting. I do recommend disabling your command logging API for this reason, and generally speaking, players would not expect that their inputs would be recorded, even if anonymised.
The second problem is that you seem to have configured the game to run inside the Itch window as an IFrame, which is not in accordance to the guide that should have been presented to you when you were submitting the game.
Please pay attention to sections 9E, 9F, 9G and make sure that you select that the game should start in full screen mode, and if on mobile, in portrait orientation.
https://itch.io/jam/cavejam/topic/543846/tutorial-uploading-your-adventuron-game...
The music is very atmospheric, and I'll try to figure out how to make some inroads into the game shortly.
Chris
Yes, but for "YOU HEAR A WHISPER", the sound is in the text.
Just to say this: I have the light!
I am really enjoying this game. Very eerie feel. Love the glow around the text (custom script I believe), but probably not enough contrast between foreground and background in status bar, making it a bit hard to read. I also love that the colouring of the treasures match their descriptions. I haven't finished yet, but here's some feedback so far:
In first room, I didn't understand "Oversized to go through the door". I think you mean "Too big to go through the door".
"Nobody was here for ages" should be "Nobody has been here for ages".
"Water dribble from the tap" should be "Water dribbles from the tap".
In Australia, we call a faucet a tap. As you refer to it as a tap when you examine it, you should provide tap as a synonym for faucet.
When you GET WATER, it says "Not here", but when you DRINK WATER, you get poisoned. How can you get poisoned by something that's not there? Suggest changing first message to something like "Trickles through your fingers." or "No container."
Suggest "How to take the entire sewer?" should be "Want to take the entire sewer?" or "Can't take the entire sewer."
Re crowbar, "...scribbled" should be "...scribbled on it".
In Captain's cabin, it didn't understand BLOW DUST, WIPE DUST, CLEAN TABLE, WIPE TABLE, WASH TABLE, RUB TABLE, DUST TABLE and so on. "No power supplied" could be just "No power".
Consider overriding HELP, as system help is more than 6 words.
If you have one key, you should be able to EXAMINE KEY, USE KEY and so on, but when you have two or more keys, you get the messy disambiguation menu. You can EXAMINE VIOLET KEY, USE BLUE KEY and so on, but that requires three words, which is against the spirit of the jam rules. Consider allowing adjectives, such as EXAMINE VIOLET, USE BLUE and so on.
If you try to go north from northeast corner, it says to use employee key. If I say USE BLUE KEY (which should not require disambiguation, I get:
1. BLUE KEY 2. ORANGE KEY
1. BLUE KEY 2. ORANGE KEY
(note duplication), but I also had the violet key and it wasn't given as an option. This may be an Adventuron issue.
"You opened the pilots module" should be "You opened the pilot's module".
Could not EXAMINE anything on the control desk in pilot's module and did not understand things like PRESS BUTTONS, PUSH BUTTONS, FLIP SWITCHES, TURN SWITCHES, SWITCH SWITCHES, WATCH SCREENS, SIT CHAIR and so on.
The sentences that tell you you need a certain type of key should end with a full stop.
GUM should be synonym for PACK.
When you EXAMINE WINDOW in canteen, shouldn't "start" be "stars"?
"handheld computer" should be "hand-held computer".
SELECT NORTHEAST: "pilots module" should be "pilot's module".
When SELECTing directions in the smartlet, SELECT WEST ends in a full stop, but the others don't.
When entering CYAN in the smartlet, "manger's cabin" should be "manager's cabin".
Loved the gratuitous self promotion with SYSTEM. Yes, I checked it out! You are very talented.
More later if I find any further issues.For disambiguation for certain objects in relation to custom verbs, (a while back) I added a temporary disambiguation command.
As this command starts with "experimental_" it will be replaced with a better command in a later version, but this should theoretically dig you out of a hole at the moment. Please note that this command is "undocumented" and subject to change (as are all experimental_ attributes or commands). I won't remove it though without a better replacement (for example, there is no way to distinguish between people, animals and things right now).
It's not 100% guaranteed to work right now, but feel free to try it out. It should theoretically take into account any adjectives the player provides so that the shortlist is a shortlist with respect to the adjective. If there are two or more matches for the noun or adjective/noun for the subject that follows the verb, then a choices list will be provided, and the player can select one. I will probably improve this too in the future, so that the author can specify if the game can select any object if the noun/adjective is the same (e.g. treating 5 instances of coin interchangeably).
Usually better not to add a trailing : else {} at the bottom of this block, as Adventuron will naturally fall through to the natural "not here" message without one.
UPDATE: Documented this a bit better here.
: match "use key" {
: mask {
: experimental_disambiguate "carried"; // categories are carried, worn, unworn, beside, present
}
// Check against object id here "blue_key"
: if (s1() == "blue_key") {
// Do Blue key action
}
// Check against object id here "violet_key"
: else_if (s1() == "violet_key") {
// Do violet key action
}
// Continue for all keys
}I finished it! I liked what happened when the power was back on. I also liked the little end game. There's a lot of rich detail, but by the time I'd finished, I realised there was a lot of repetition, but there wasn't really that many puzzles. Incidentally, I was using version 0.1.18. Here then are some more comments:
When you USE BLUE at southwest corner, "managers' module" (possessive of plural managers) should be "manager's module" (possessive of single manager).
When you EXAMINE any of the keys, there is no full stop at the end of the sentence.
Can't EAT GUM or CHEW GUM.
EXAMINE PHOTO says six persons, but uses seven colours. Shouldn't it say seven persons, as there are seven keys belonging to seven people?
In diary, "8/18 Willam turn the AI." should be "8/18 William turned the AI." I assume "AI" is artificial intelligence. Is that relevant to the game?
When reading diary, consider giving all messages in sequence, as that's how you would read it in real life, or use cycle (see sections 9.11.1-2 in tutorial). I must have read the bloody thing over 100 times to get all 18 messages.
When going north from northwest corner, it says "Need captain key". (Missing full stop at end of sentence.) If you then say USE RED KEY when you haven't got it or any other key, even if you have got it, it says "Door is already open", but door is NOT open. In my case, the west door was open, but I don't know if that's relevant.
"Activation successfull" should be "Activation successful".
Anyway, nice game. I hope you do some more.Now, onto the next game. Aren't game jams fun?
No need to answer comments. Just accept or reject as you see fit.
I took extensive notes and will write up a solution later. I wasn't aware of any AI and I didn't talk to anyone, as there was no one to talk to. Maybe I did something related to AI without being aware of it. Perhaps give me a hint as to where the AI was (location or object?) and I'll see how I worked around it. Is it an issue if I did it "incorrectly"?
I think I might have missed security. Smartlet tells me security is east of the north-east corner. When I transfer my map from little bits of paper to a big piece of paper, I can see that there is a pattern and I am possibly missing one room where security should be. Smartlet also tells me a security code and security key for security. The latter looks like a regular expression. I didn't use these. I opened the grille and found the orange key, but I don't think I used it anywhere. Should I have used it at the north-east corner? There was no exit indicated to the east.
Yeah, security module is hidden and locked with orange key. Thats the idea. In the original way a player should not find a security module just by inspecting the station. Probably security module should not be mentioned in the smartlet. But then it become not so logical. I have to think what I can do with this.
At first - just a HUGE thank you for such a detailed feedback. All messages and typos will be corrected. And I'm incredibly impressed that you found Easter eggs. Seriously, I'm REALLY impressed)
I'm not very good at creating gameplay, but I'm trying to tell a good story. That's why not so many puzzles. And I have very very little experience in gamedev.
About commands like "USE BLUE". As I remember from English lessons, "blue" is the adjective, and can't be used as noun. Maybe I'm wrong, will check it.
Station team is six people, seventh key is belong to the guest. The guest just is not on the photo, because no guest is not an employee.
About the diary. Another huge thanks, missed the "cycle" section in docs and got lot of pain implementing the diary.
Jams are fun, when you have time to make and play =) Really, huge thanks for every tip. Will work hard tomorrow to improve everything.
Interesting. I wasn't aware that I had found any Easter eggs, just normal stuff. Any hints as to what they were? I did get killed a few times, but was able to rollback. Thanks for including that.
You're right about adjectives, but this is a common technique that has been used since the old days of text adventures with two-word input. For example, if you have a gold key, a silver key and a brass key, you would use EXAMINE GOLD, GET SILVER and DROP BRASS. In Adventuron, if the noun is unique, you can define the adjective as a synonym in the vocabulary table. If the noun is not unique (as in the key example above), you can just use :match "get adjective" without having to define the adjective as an object. Alternatively, you can set all the adjectives as synonyms for the noun and in your tests, use something like this:
: match "get key" {
: if (original_noun1() == "gold") {
// Do something with gold key
}
: else_if (original_noun1() == "silver") {
// Do something with silver key
}
: else_if (original_noun1() == "bronze") {
// Do something with bronze key
}
: else {
: print "Which one?";
}
}If you want to be smart, there's actually more to it than this, but this is meant to give the general idea.
You can also try the new experimental disambiguation that Adventuron mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but I haven't tried that.
Thanks for pointing out the reason for six people in the photo. Of course, it makes sense once it's pointed out to you.
Finding the yellow note and using that clue to figure out the dogs name is the puzzle. The is no point in hiding the note, it dosent make the puzzle better, I will make it visible at start in the office. Thank you for the valuable feedback
the alternative solution is like an easter egg that only people who has heard the password joke below will find.
-I canged my password to INCORRECT so if I get it wrong the computer will tell me -Password is INCORRECT .
Thank you for clarifing that. I see the problem and I will see If I can make it more clear that you need to find out what the dogs name is and enter that as the password.
EDITED
OK so I made a few changes, let me now what you think. The note is still hidden but I made the text more clear that it was a password clue and not the actual password. I also renamed the BOWL to DOGBOWL so it is more obvious that it belongs to the dog. I also placed a picture of the dog in the MASTER BEDROOM. This way there are 2 ways to find out the name of the dog. And if you come across the name of the dog before finding the yellow note it is possible that you might guess that that is the password. (Because ppl often have bad passwords.)
(Also I'm glad you liked the TELETEXT inspired title art I made :-)
Thank you for spotting the CD bug. It has now been fixed.
Regarding the toothpicks. Both the toothpicks and the other object you need gives a clue about appetizers when you examine them.
This puzzle might be local but if you picture google "toothpick appetizers" you will see what I envisioned.
Best regards!
Michael
It's weird, I think it's from the game. In 2, only the CASE CD is put down but it doesn't appear in the item list. In 3, a LOOK makes it appear.
1 --------------------------------------
MASTER BEDROOM
MIRROR, DRAWER, PARENTS BED, PICTURE
? I
HANDBALL, CD CASE, MUSIC CD
?
2 --------------------------------------
MASTER BEDROOM
MIRROR, DRAWER, PARENTS BED, PICTURE
? DROP ALL
FIRST I NEED SOMETHING SHINY.
DOESN'T WORK.
?
3 ---------------------------------------
MASTER BEDROOM
MIRROR, DRAWER, PARENTS BED, PICTURE, CD CASE.
? L
?
4 ---------------------------------------
MASTER BEDROOM
MIRROR, DRAWER, PARENTS BED, PICTURE, CD CASE.
? I
HANDBALL, MUSIC CD.
?
drop all will be matched by adventuron, then all droppable items you hold will be submitted as individual commands (each consuming one tick). Having a custom handler shouldn't affect the item in a get all any differently to dropping it individually. There was a bug where in this area which coincidentally was fixed (hopefully) yesterday in beta 28.
Please retry with the recent version.
Thank you, I finished the game!
I really like your game but there are a few things that screw it up a little bit.
For example:
>x BOOMBOX
THERE'S NO CD INSIDE
>INSERT CD
DOESN'T WORK
Does it make no sense to put a cd in a boombox? Do I have to be punished with a DOESN'T WORK for that!
You have pop colors and I like that very much. It gives energy and joy.
This is a great little game. I really enjoyed it. My test comments are mainly related to cosmetic issues and commands I tried that didn't work. I was using version 1.0.9. It looks like you have already fixed most of the issues raised by others.
Can you add the title to the title screen? (Personally, I don't like the title screen, as it might give people the wrong impression about what to expect in the game.)
Consider overriding CREDITS with something prettier. This is not restricted to six words. You can still see the system credits with *CREDITS.
Also consider overriding HELP, as the default system response is more than six words. The type of help provided with the system help can be provided on your itch.io page if you haven't done it already.
In master bedroom, "parents bed" should be "parents' bed" (assuming two parents).
You're missing a few full stops at the end of sentences.
The response to EXAMINE MIRROR should have the exclamation mark AFTER the closing double quote.
Avoid excessive use of exclamation marks. Only use these if it really is an exclamation.
When you OPEN DRAWER, "BALLONS" should be "BALLOONS".
Exclamation mark (or preferably full stop) should not be part of the rainbow colour scheme after OPEN DRAWER, PUNCH PAPER and COOK BURGERS.
There's a bed, but SLEEP is not understood and you can't SIT BED or LIE BED or MAKE BED.
"multi colored" should be "multi-colored", as it's a compound adjective.
When you EXAMINE COMPUTER a second time, you find the yellow note again. Use has_not_created "yellow_note" to ensure that the response is different after finding the note.
Music CD and CD case is troublesome. I wanted to put the CD in the case. I tried INSERT/PUT/PLACE/REPLACE/COMBINE/ATTCH/JOIN CD, all to no avail. (This was before I knew there was somewhere else to put the CD.)
"APPETISERS" should be a synonym for "APPETIZERS" for those of us that speak English rather than American.
I feel that "DOGFOOD" and "DOGBOWL" should be "DOG FOOD" and "DOG BOWL" respectively, i.e. two words. You've got "FOOD" as a synonym for "DOGFOOD", but you don't have "BOWL" as a synonym for "DOGBOWL".
Put full stop after "It's freezing ouside" and "Garden door is frozen", so that you have two sentences in each of those responses.
You should be able to INSERT CD into boombox rather than (or in addition to) START BOOMBOX, as the latter doesn't really make sense without a CD inserted. It would be better if you do INSERT CD and START BOOMBOX as two separate commands. If you EXAMINE BOOMBOX, it already gives you a hint about what you need to do. If you EXAMINE CD after inserting CD, but before starting it, it can tell you "CD inserted." If you START BOOMBOX without inserting the CD, it should say, "No CD."
It didn't understand POUR BEVERAGES in the messy garage or MELT ICE, MELT DOOR, UNFREEZE DOOR, HEAT DOOR, USE BEVERAGES, HIT DOOR, KICK DOOR, BREAK DOOR, KNOCK DOOR, TAP DOOR, SMASH DOOR. (This was before I discovered how to open the door.)
It didn't understand DRINK BEVERAGES. Perhaps add a response like "Too hot." (when warm) or "Save for party guests." when cold.
"Hot air fix door swings open" doesn't make sense. Perhaps it should be "Hot air works. Door swings open."
MICROWAVE should be synonym for OVEN.
Can't CLOSE OVEN/BAG/CABINET/FRIDGE even though you can open them.
Can't INSERT/PUT/PLACE/USE/THRUST/JAB/STAB FORK in socket in garage. (I thought I would either get electrocuted or cause a short circuit to melt the ice.)
Can't INSERT/COOK/WARM/HEAT MEATBALLS/BURGERS in kitchen.
When you drop the final treasure, the response flashes up and disappears before you get a chance to read it. Put a press_any_key statement after the print statement so that you get a chance to read it.
As I said earlier, I love the game. It just needs a little bit of tidying up to make it really professional. Now, onto the next game.Very minor issues to report. The game is very light hearted and fun.
I know you have both solved the paper punch puzzle, but for anyone else that's reading this and perhaps doesn't know how a paper punch works, the larger models usually have a little draw in the bottom of the punch that collects all the paper. You have to empty this occasionally or it gets full. Think about that.
Salutations. I've gone and submitted my game "Text Adventure Collector" already, but if anyone is interested in helping to playtest, bug-hunt, or generally provide feedback on whether I've made the puzzles too... I dunno, bloody infuriating? Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated. Link to the GameJam Entry page is Here, which also contains hints for the curious adventurer. Thanks in Advance!
Sorry if this sounds a bit like negative feedback, but I wanted to give you my honest opinion of that game. I'm not a judge, and I won't be swaying any judges opinion myself, and my opinions are only my own. It may be that other people disagree with the points made here. I'm sure there are many well thought out puzzles here, but after 15 minutes I don't think I've solved anything. I did find the ZURK treasure somewhere, but I forgot what I did to be honest, and when I restarted the game, I can't seem to locate it again.
Some inputs that I think should be supported. Sorry I haven't tried more of the game. I guess I'm a bit stuck.
<AT TOWN SQUARE>
> LIFT COVER
NOT UNDERSTOOD
> REMOVE COVER
NEED CROWBAR (maybe too direct a clue)
<AT CAVE ENTRANCE>
> CLIMB FENCE
NOT UNDERSTOOD.
That's it for now. I'll try to make some progress a little later, but certainly, I think you could do with evaluating of the map layout, redundant objects, and maybe add in an easy to solve puzzle in the first two locations to deliver a fun puzzle box for the players.
First, genuinely, thanks for the feedback, I wouldn't have asked if I thought I didn't need it.
I take the point about the excess "scenery" objects maybe being distracting. There's a puzzle or two later on where the act of looking in the right circumstance is what triggers progress, so I wanted to put some scenery around to prime the player a bit, but it may have had the demotivating effect of making it unrewarding that early on. I'll need to re-examine that.
The 2-words/6-words thing as well, I was trying to keep things as minimal as possible, where longer responses were more to emphasize significant objects/events, but this maybe just ends up coming off as undirected or indecisive on my part.
What's actually worrying me is I hadn't even considered climbing the fence as an option, or how much it inadvertantly gates off progress so early on. The solution I have there presently is to "Search" the fence for a hole to enter the cave through, but nothing really prompts that as a verb now I think about it. There had been a prior reason for it involving nearby wirecutters, but I'd scrapped that puzzle without realizing it makes the fence a sort of meaningless frustration now. I may end up scrapping the fence entirely now it serves no point.
I think the fence serves a purpose as a barrier, and that you need to remove barriers to progress on with the game, but personally, I would not have thought to use the word SEARCH for the fence. I would reward the player with a "HOLE" scenery object and a : success beep if they examine the fence. That's enough. Then examining the hole would give a message like "CAN'T EXPAND WITH YOUR BARE HANDS.". That lets the player know that they need a tool.
I think that EXAMINE should be the command that rewards players for inspection, except in the case of TALK (which is very natural to type when confronted with another character). Having two such commands for inanimate objects just forces the player to brute force EXAMINE and SEARCH for every object in the game. If every examine relates to a joke, a clue, or some progess, EXAMINE is fun. If it's just plain old messages, then it is slightly demotivating, even without duplicating efforts with having to type SEARCH too.
I tend to think of a restricted set of verbs (a bit like SCUMM) when it comes to designing the games. Yes, you certainly want to use particular verbs when it comes to particular actions, but try to keep it simple, and also try to anticipate all VERBS that relate to object NOUNs.
I'm playing the game now and will send a test report in due course, but I need a clue on one thing. Examining the hot tub says, "Something underwater?" I've tried things like ENTER/GO/PUSH/PULL/MOVE/EMPTY/SWIM/DIVE/USE/TIP/TURN TUB and BATHE/WASH/CLEAN/CLEANSE/WIPE ME and GET WATER and LOOK/SEARCH/FEEL/TOUCH UNDERWATER. So is there anything underwater or not? If there is, can you perhaps give me a hint? It may well be that I need something I haven't discovered yet, but I found this one a bit frustrating, so thought I'd ask straight away. I'm not sure if it's a red herring or guess-the-verb issue or my own stupidity. It's most likely the latter.
Boy, this is one mean game. I think I need some hints. I have:
How do I get rid of the queue in the post office?
Where do I use the loaded crossbow?
How do I get the Textventure Toolkit?
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In the meantime, here are some test comments on what I've found so far. I was using version 0.0.6:
You can pretty up your itch.io game page to make it more appealing to potential players. Perhaps see mine as an example of what you can do. As a minimum, I'd suggest adding some background story, game playing instructions and an embed image behind the 'Run game' button. The embed image needs to be 640 x 360 pixels.
Make sure all sentences in responses end with a full stop.
USE SINK: Water summoned. (Huh? What happened here? No water appeared.)
X SINK: Fully functional
WASH SINK: Doesn't work. (So does it work or not?)
You don't seem to be able to do anything with the bed: GO/ENTER/SIT/LIE/MAKE/PUSH/PULL/MOVE BED or SLEEP.
EXAMINE LANTERN gives different response when carried and when in room.
At north road, trees is synonym for woods (fair enough), but it doesn't understand CLIMB TREES.
UNDO CHAIN: "REWIND" is expected as a single word. (This is clearly a system response of more than 6 words, so might be better to override it when provided with a noun.)
Should override system HELP command, as this is more than 6 words.
Consider overriding system CREDITS command to provide something prettier. You can still get the system one with *CREDITS.
If you move from a dark area to another dark area with the lantern off, it says, "Can't. Dark.", then repeats it.
"Mumbles, distractedly" should be "Mumbles distractedly" (no comma).
You can't wear the bath robe.
When I was carrying 5 items and tried DROP ALL at the hot tub, three items were dropped, two responded "Can't do." and screen wasn't refreshed. This should have worked. I could then drop the non-dropped items independently. Similar thing happened with GET ALL.
Couldn't ENTER/GO/PUSH/PULL/MOVE/EMPTY/SWIM/DIVE/USE/TIP/TURN TUB or BATHE/WASH/CLEAN/CLEANSE/WIPE ME or GET WATER or LOOK/SEARCH/FEEL/TOUCH UNDERWATER. So how do I see what's underwater? I did solve this later, but these were the sort of things I was trying at the time.
When in wizard's hut, there's an extra object the same as the room description. That's not necessary.
Can't UNLOCK, LOCK or CLOSE the door in the wizard's hut. Rather than "Not understood." or "Doesn't work.", CLOSE DOOR should say "Already closed.", LOCK DOOR should say "Already locked." and UNLOCK DOOR should say "Need key." (or similar).
When you give hintbook to the appropriate person, response says he takes off, but he's still there.
CLIMB LADDER doesn't work. This should be equivalent to UP or DOWN, as appropriate.
COVER, PAINT and COLOUR should be synonyms for the COLOR verb, especially the first one (considering that the response says "... Orb covered...") and the last one to cater for non-Americans.
Is it really necessary to have a sign in orb storage that tells you what you already know from the room description? Perhaps if the room description was "Deep cave" or something like that, it would be okay.
Shouldn't the cave entrance, cave interior and orb storage be dark, as they would be darker than the dark forest where the lantern is needed?
LIFT, RAISE, PRISE, PRIZE and LEVER should be synonyms for PRY.
You can't DRINK WATER in locations where there's water.
"Bolt cutters" is two words as an object, but "boltcutters" (one word) when you use them.
Landed spacecraft in room desription, but crashed spaceship as object. Which is it? Room description doesn't change when spaceship/spacecraft is gone, so this would be better as "open field" or something similar.
Examining mail slot in fish room says "junkmail" (one word), but related object is "junk mail" (two words).
There are some puzzles where doing something in one location causes a change in another location without any hint that something has changed. I spent endless hours wandering backwards and forwards to see if anything had changed, using trial and error and repeating the same commands over and over again. This becomes very boring very quickly and will put players off. It certainly put me off. I've come to a dead end and can't progress until I get some hints. The hints you supplied somewhere weren't very useful.I hope these comments help you to improve the game, as it has potential and most of the puzzles are actually quite good.
Thank you for the feedback. Quite close to the end, here. I'll put the remaining solutions at the end of this, general hints and comments first.
First, you don't get rid of the queue. There is always a queue. It's the post office. Just accept that, and do what must be done.
Second, You're hunting Wompus. Clues are in the Adventurer's Guild.
Third, I mentioned in the hints I put on the GameJam page that one of the treasures is required as a solution to get another, and the Toolkit is the prize in question.
I'll expand the vocabulary with your suggestions as there were some responses created that were missed given the inputs. "Sleep Bed" and "Use Bed" would have triggered a response, for instance, where Lay and Lie and Enter, etc., did not.
Thanks for catching the "Can't. Dark." duplication, I've spotted my mistake and will address that in the final update, among other fixes.
I'm very new to Adventuron, and unaware of how to override system HELP and CREDITS commands. Is there a guide to doing so?
Step-by-step puzzle solutions, to decode with rot13.
Va gur cbfg bssvpr, RAGRE DHRHR, gura whfg jnvg n srj gheaf. Bapr vg'f lbhe ghea, TVIR FYVC gb gur pyrex gb trg n cnpxntr. Bcravat vg jvyy tvir lbh Gernfher 8, "JvfuTrggre."
Tbvat onpx gb gur Tnzr Fubc, jvgu JvfuTrggre va vairagbel, naq nf gur pyrex'f pbzzragf unq vzcyvrq, JVFU GBBYXVG.
Svanyyl, Jbzchf Uhagvat. Nf gur cyndhr orfvqr gur gebcul urnq va gur Nqiraghere'f Thvyq fubhyq gryy lbh, gur Jbzchf yvirf va gur sberfg, srnef yvtug, naq fgvaxf. Fb, lbh ragre gur Qnex Sberfg (nal ebbz bs vg jvyy qb), RKGVATHVFU YNAGREA fb vg trgf qnex, naq FZRYY NERN hagvy lbh qrgrpg Jbzchf Zhfx. Ng juvpu cbvag, SVER PEBFFOBJ.
Many thanks for the response.
SLEEP/USE BED mentions "Thirst un-quenched!" How is that relevant to sleeping? You can't quench your thirst anywhere anyway, as you can't DRINK anything anywhere.
Your plain English clues were no help whatsover, as they only told me what I already knew. So I used the coded hints.
Oh my god! ENTER QUEUE? I wouldn't have guessed that in a million years. ENTER is a standard verb that Adventuron uses to enter another location, as you've done when entering the hole in the fence and the wizard's hut. I tried entering things in a few other locations (like the bed and the tub) and only got a standard Adventuron error response. I would never think to enter a queue. I tried JOIN/STAND/FOLLOW QUEUE, PUSH IN and various other things that I've since forgotten. Anyway, once I knew that I had to enter the queue, getting the parcel and the treasure in the game shoppe was really obvious and didn't need your clues.
Regarding the wompus, I knew that I had to hunt it (as in the old computer game 'Hunt the Wumpus'), but had no idea where to find it. I had read the plaque and the fancy words. As you use fancy words to describe numerous things in the game, I never stopped to think that it was actually important or meaningful in this particular instance. I didn't even know what photophobic meant, until I just looked it up. I had sort of assumed the opposite of photogenic, i.e. doesn't like it's photo being taken. :-) I had turned the lantern off in the forest to test which rooms were dark, but didn't get any messages at the time. I had tried SMELL and SMELL <OBJECT> on a few occasions and always got a "Doesn't work." response, so just assumed SMELL wasn't supported. But SMELL AREA? 'AREA' isn't even used anywhere in the game. Why would I think to smell that, especially when it's dark and I can't see anything and most commands are greeted by "Can't. Dark."? I had previously worked out how to FIRE CROSSBOW, but it took awhile because I was running around trying to SHOOT <OBJECT>, always to no avail. And why would I be able to shoot something in the dark? That's an extraordinary skill!
Regarding WOMPUS HUNT, HUNT is not understood (as a noun). You have to use WOMPUS, which is an adjective. These should be synonymous.
Anyway, after this guess-the-verb nightmare, I have now collected all 10 treasures and finished the game. Thanks for the hints. I would never have finished it otherwise.
Apologies for the late reply, but I wanted to thank you for the frank and comprehensive commentary, and let you know I've tried to make the vocabulary more generally versatile to avoid the, as you say, guess-the-verb nightmare, and make explanations/descriptions/hints/etc. more clear to the player, as well as other ease-of-use and aesthetic updates. Version 0.1.0 is now live. Thanks again.