http://cepheid.itch.io/void-talk
Puzzle balance, suggestions for good ways to learn Python / do more customization in Ren'py
I played it!! I really liked the idea you had in your thread about an AI designed for space travel therapy and then.... well I loved where you took the concept, it will definitely make for an interesting full game!
A few things I noticed: the font was pretty hard to read at times. My eyes aren't the best, so it took some squinting and rereading to get what was being said, especially when the font showed up broken in certain words. Maybe there's a similar font you can use that won't show up jagged and deformed in your game?
Also, I completely forgot what was in Gema's file promptly after I read it. I... ended up kind of guessing the right answers and then going back whenever I got an answer wrong haha... I remember you were planning on a way to access files, once that's in it'd help with my terrible memory a lot.
Thank you! I'm glad you liked where I took the concept. I've had a lot of fun coming up with different ways to mess around with it based on the premise. The full game will hopefully have a lot of twists and turns and complexities.
I definitely noticed that the game really messed with the kerning and stuff sometimes that made the game less readable but I ran out of time to mess with it. I'll keep searching around until I can find something easier to read!
And same with the file. I realized that this way it would end up being a bit of a memory game. I'm gonna keep messing around with menus and hopefully find a way to make the files re-accessible.
Thanks so much for the feedback! It's really helpful to know where to focus on fixing things.
I really enjoyed this! It's an effective demo: the player gets a good solid sample of gameplay, then uncovers something about the game world that makes them want to learn the whole story.
SPOILER WARNING below here (just in case anyone reading this hasn't played it yet!)
It took me a little while to understand how the "press suspicious statements" puzzle mechanic worked, since Gema's self-introduction has two lines marked with a ! and the player has the option to press her on each of them. It made me think there would be a one-to-one correlation of ! marks to suspicious statements, but then more ! marks showed up on lines in the "Ask about ___" branches and didn't add any new options to the list of statements to press her on. After getting that the marks are general indicators that something is suspicious, I realized that they essentially tell the player "here's some evidence you might want," which diminishes my enjoyment of the puzzles. The contradiction-finding puzzles in the Phoenix Wright games made the player really look through all the text to find something relevant, so identifying the right piece of information was really satisfying. I know a lot of people find that frustrating, though. Maybe consider having a hint setting that can be turned on to show the ! marks and turned off to hide them?
I liked that when I tried to call Gema on her lie about being a medical officer before I'd asked her about her family, I didn't have the option to point out that she didn't go to medical school, only to say that she looked too counter-culture to be a doctor. It wasn't my first playthrough, so I knew she was lying, but this playthrough's SAM didn't have a good reason to suspect that, just a very flimsy reason. (Gema's response to that option is great, by the way.) That made it feel like I couldn't just pick from the choices at random until I got the right one, something I'm ashamed to admit I did occasionally in Phoenix Wright. This isn't consistently the case, though: at the point where the player can guess Gema's occupation, the roboticist option appears even in a playthrough where Gema hasn't talked about her interest in robots.
Incidentally, I did like the lack of consistency between the sets of options. What I mean is that it would have been easy to always have there be a right choice and a wrong choice, as in "robots"/"software" and "not alien"/"not raised on Earth," but then there's the case of "not a doctor"/"not in space," where either option is viable if you have the evidence to back it up. This is a pretty short demo, but I got the feeling that being able to solve puzzles from multiple angles might feature more in the full game.
The one mystery element that felt awkward to me was that SAM always questions whether or not they're really in space. Gema's lines to the effect of "it sure is something to be on the S.S. Vision, in space, where we are" all have ! marks, and I was confused as to why until I got to the end of my first playthrough. SAM figured it out before I did; they even ask Gema about it with no player input, whereas in every other case, the player directs SAM's questions to Gema. It felt like the game prioritized getting the plot twist information across instead of letting me solve that mystery by myself. I can see how that would be more effective for a demo, though, since that information is the main hook for getting the player intrigued.
Gema is a great character! I already really like her and want to see more of her. The artist did a terrific job on her, and she has a distinct voice that comes through even in this relatively short scene. Something I also appreciate about her is that she has anxiety and ADD, as the player learns right off the bat, and that's not presented as inherently funny or tragic or otherwise weird. That feels like a low standard to set for writing characters with mental illness(es), but a lot of works don't manage that, especially video games, so it's a pleasant surprise.
I'd be glad to point out spelling, grammar, and general language flow issues if you want (I apologize for bringing it up if not), but otherwise, that's all. Sorry this post is grotesquely long. Thank you for sharing your demo!
Thank you so much!! I really appreciate the long and detailed critique and I'm so glad that you enjoyed it and that you found the story intriguing!
A lot of your critiques are things I had been thinking about--either stuff that I ran out of time to implement fully or that I ran out of time to figure out exactly how I wanted to do them, ha ha.
I definitely think it's a flaw that the only two statements you can press are from the introduction. I don't want to make the players able to turn off the ! because part of the idea for me is that SAM's built in polygraph can be set off either by lies or by intense emotion--which comes up a lot in therapy. I want the player to have to sort through what's really suspicious and what isn't. Of course, I didn't really achieve that with this, either, since the player can't really do much with any of the statements except the lies.
I still haven't decided how I want to go about fully implementing that idea. With the way the basic menus work I could never fit all the ! statements on screen so I'd have to figure out a different way of pressing. That's something I'm going to be spending a lot of time figuring out. If you have any suggestions, let me know!
I almost put a flag on whether or not you found out about her love of robots but decided to concentrate on other things. That should be something that's easy to go back and put in now that the jam is over and the time press is gone.
Going at things from different angles is something I want to do more with so I'm glad you enjoyed that element!
And yeah, the space thing is another thing that was kind of rushed because I needed to get it in for story reasons but didn't have the time to do much with. SAM actually only asks about it if you see a certain number of suspicious statements regarding being in space/on the ship, but if you're playing the game at all thoroughly it's hard to avoid seeing them. It's a fair critique that it doesn't allow the players to come to the conclusion on their own this way.
I'm so glad you liked Gema! I'll pass on your compliments to the artist. My family has a really extensive history of all sorts of mental illnesses (anxiety and ADD included) so creating good representation for people with mental illnesses--especially in a game about therapy--was something that was important to me in coming up with the idea for this game, so I'm really happy that you appreciated that! In the full game every character will have different mental illnesses that they deal with (and that you help them with) in different ways.
But once again, thank you for this incredibly detailed critique! This is all stuff that I was wondering how people would respond to, so this is all incredibly helpful! If you have time to go through and point out spelling and grammar stuff it would be really helpful, but I don't want to make you go out of your way too much.
Thank you for your response, and I'm so glad you appreciated the critique!
Right, the polygraph aspect – I admit that I forgot about it after the explanation, because my focus shifted to just looking for suspicious statements. But I do remember feeling uneasy when the polygraph was mentioned, because they're so often misrepresented as true "lie detectors," and then being happy to see that you acknowledged the way they actually work. (Maybe this is a weird thing to fixate on, but I have very high anxiety and know I would probably set off a polygraph immediately, so that's on my mind.) Considering that makes me like the ! system more, since it makes narrative sense: SAM is a robot/program, so it's plausible for them to have that kind of mechanism built in, and they're an AI, so differentiating human emotional responses probably isn't intuitive for them but it's something they can learn. That even seems like something that could mirror the player's process of learning when not to press someone, once you add statements that set off "false alarms" on the polygraph.
I'd definitely be willing to go over all the writing stuff I noticed! I can do that in another comment here if you'd like, but I'm very long-winded, as you saw. I could also DM you on Twitter to make it less public, if you don't mind having big blocks of text coming at you there.
My intention is to have other more subtle indications of when a ! statement is truly a lie and when it's just an emotional response. For example, you may not have noticed, but even in this demo Gema always shows a blank face when she's actually lying, but will be emoting if it's not an actual lie. I also want to encourage the player to make sure that they have other evidence that something a character is saying is a lie before they jump on it. Creating a system to achieve that is gonna be my main focus programming-wise for a while.
And twitter DM's could work, so that we don't take up too much room in the thread. My personal twitter is @brenna_asplund and the game's twitter is @void_talk. I'd be fine with you contacting me on either account.
Hey Cepheid,
Want to keep this short, but, I really love this idea. Its got a cyberpunk LA Noir vibe that I am 200% down for. I agree with some of the other comments, a way to bring up the papers would be beneficial to the player. I think the mystery that you set up really lends its well to a sequel/expansion and I really REALLY want to know where it goes.
Keep up the solid work mate,
Atomic Brainbag
Thank you so much!! The cyberpunk thing is definitely what I was going for, and I have to give massive credit to the artist for implementing it so well. My goal eventually is to implement a way to bring up the papers and a log of previous conversation for reference. Thanks for your interest in the future of the project, too!
