Hi Sean, thanks for playing!
Yeah, I don't think I have the balance right yet between subtle and confusing! :D
I was really keen to keep the cursor as minimal as possible and to remove as many non-diegetic elements as I could. In this case though I might just have too many different kinds of interactions for that to work intuitively!
Cheers,
Nick
I was able to work my way through it. What I felt was lacking in some interactions was a 3rd state, particularly the lights in the first section.
1 - Object starts to react as you get near it
2 - Object reaches full interaction when you hover directly on top of it
3 - You click and the 2nd state is maintained, there is no indication your click altered anything until you remove your mouse from the object.
That said I was able to make my way through the whole game and even work around a bug in the lamp room.
Just a simple audio clue when you are on top of something and able to interact might help? There are some clicks/buzzes but they don't seem to directly relate to the mouse over state, but I might have misread it.
Overall more consistence between the interactions I think would go a long way, another example of this being the mop vs the Gatcha Capsule. The mop always moves exactly the same way whereas the Capsule moves differently each time and feels like it's a puzzle, but wasn't as far as I could work out.
But! All the interactions and stuff are fun to find, and if they all work the same way maybe they feel less unique/interesting. Depends how much you want to lean on the game aspect I guess.
Overall I thought it was a really nice piece with some minor hitches to a fuss free experience, but perhaps that's what you intended. Can't wait to see what the next Toryanse installment is!
