I like how you have to do all this careful planning to get to level 5, then you just have to let your fairies be permanently pissed to finish that quest haha. Very fun. The gameboy advance packaging the game is wrapped in is very cool. I got a little confused with how some of the resources worked, but quickly figured it out when I decided to read what was in front of my face and hover over the sticky notes.
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Thanks for playing!
Yup they get pretty grumpy, but they'll still do their job!
I'm happy to hear that you enjoyed the aesthetics, but I have to say, as much as I loved working with it...it was also one of my greatest hindrances because I had such limited space to work with, it was quite a struggle to figure out where information about playing the game could go.
It's a relief that you were able to figure things out from reading the information provided by the sticky notes - I worried that it might be too confusing and throws too much at the player.
Do you think something like a tutorial could have helped?
I think a tutorial would be great, but not entirely necessary if you think it would break the flow of the game or the feeling you're going for. When I brought up the sticky notes, it wasn't a critique of the game, but mentioning how I'm not very observant sometimes. I think the sticky notes are very cool thematically. I can imagine the person who owns this GBA figuring out unexplained mechanics in the game and leaving little sticky notes for themself on the console to reference, it would be cool to lean into that if you ask me. I'd put little doodles and notes not about the game itself, but the character who owns it. Just a thought. It really added some feel for me because it made the explanations feel diegetic and I really really appreciate that in games.
Maybe it doesn't need to be an extensive tutorial, perhaps just for level 1 it could tell the basics?
"Build a hut, now build a farm for food..." etc.
Then once you've got the basics up and running you've already got a small economy going once the tutorial ends, so you don't have to start over.
Regarding the sticky notes, that's exactly the theme I was going for!!
There's always been a game or console in our past that we played to death, and I wanted to imagine that the owner of this game had played this game a lot and perfected it to a fine art, and wanted to note down all the tips and tricks they'd noticed whilst playing the game.
So you think it could be like...as you "discover" these interactions, lines get added to the stickynotes to indicate that they're learning?
So maybe when you place houses together for the first time, something pops up saying "Note added!", prompting you to check the note to see that fairies don't like overcrowding?
I could totally see that now!
Thank you for your feedback!