Post by Adventuron in Ask For Playtesters Here

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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.

I've played this a bit, and it feels a bit too spread out if I'm honest and after 15 minutes of playing, I don't think I've solved anything.
There are a lot of objects that do nothing, and don't reward looking at them. The STAIRWAY object in the first location can kind of be implied by the basement location and the UP direction for example. The examine message "seems" redundant. Try to keep the player focused on objects that a relevant or that deliver real clues and/or great puns.
In TWO, I tried to make it so that every location had something to do, with few exceptions (the first two locations were there just to teach you how to move north).
Some responses end in the full-stop, and some do not. E.g. "PLEASANT VILLAGE" versus "DARK. IMPOSING."
Some responses seem to be two words when more would be more appropriate. I would understand if your whole game had two word responses, but some responses are the full SIX words.
It looks like you are using objects to represent things that you could discover simply by going in a direction. Whilst I used this once in TWO (from the hilltop), it was there to service the in game tutorial (prompting the player to type EXAMINE). If there are too many redundant objects in the game (such as describing something in the next location), it will feel like a chore to play.
The next 3 locations all had puzzles or rewards that could be delivered quickly (the fountain netted the fountain pen), the shopkeeper revealed items that needed to be purchases, and the village leader would give you the village ladder. All delivered with a satisfying beep. The location north had two puzzles (the climbing tree puzzle and the boat making puzzle), the location east of that had a puzzle, the location east of that had two hidden objects. The forest path had two items. The dog location had two rewards too.
I think the point is not to simply have a list of objects with just clues, but to have a fairly dense collection of rewards, and interactivity.
If possible, try to stay away from diagonal directions. I know that on paper it's fine, but it completely throws off the flow of the game, especially for beginners. I much prefer games that only use N, E, S, W, UP, DOWN, ENTER and EXIT.
The Z character (with the strikethrough) is not supported in the font so it ends up looking strange.
There seems to be too many things to do at the beginning of the game without solving a puzzle or two first. Giving the player some easy puzzle to solve or treasure to find should draw them into it. Also be sure to use the ": success" command to reward players when they solve a puzzle or find something via an EXAMINE or other verb.

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.

Rex Mundane4 years ago

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.

Adventuron4 years ago (1 edit)

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.

itch.io

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