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(2 edits)

The aesthetics of this, especially the sound design, are really well done but gameplay wise it feels like you took all the worst aspects of the series (particularly Silent Hill 3) and threw them in for some reason:

-Death pits. Just no. It's obnoxious as hell and does nothing but serve to irritate the player, especially when many of them seem to be intentionally obfuscated by the camera angles.

-Bizarre camera angles. Fixed camera and tank controls can work really well, but right now there are quite a few spots in the motel where items you can grab, enemies and pitfalls are difficult to see because of their positioning. There is also this weird tendency to have areas where you traverse a narrow walkway with the camera either very zoomed out so you can't make out where your protagonist is moving, or where the camera angle suddenly changes dramatically halfway across a narrow plank.

-Extremely high damaging enemies on Hard. Yes, I know, it's Hard difficulty for a reason, but having the flying enemies kill the player in 2-3 hits when it takes multiple energy drinks to recover that lost health is silly.

EDIT: Got stuck at the clock puzzle. I have 3 notes which highlight the numbers 43-23-32. I see you stated in another comment that this requires knowledge of cryptography - I think it's an extremely bad idea to expect esoteric outside knowledge from the player when approaching a puzzle, just like with the infamous Shakespeare puzzle in SH3. I have no idea even with a basic understanding of what cryptography is how you are supposed to approach this. You have 3 numbers, seemingly with no relation to each other whatsoever, in a sea of equally unrelated numbers, and from this you are supposed to determine which clock hand to manipulate and what value to set it to. At first I thought it was simply the position of the highlighted number in the text document, which gives a solution roughly around 6:35:35, but this wasn't the case. The other solution I thought of was that the numbers are directly indicating clock hand position, since a clock face goes from 1-60, and the numbers are analogous to Second-Minute-Hand based on which values are higher than the others, for example: 23=Second because it's the lowest, then 32 for Minute, and lastly 43 for hour, which gives us the solution of 8:23:32, but this also was not it. I'm at a total loss as to what else you could expect the player to think here.

There's also a padlock with a 3 letter code, which I have found absolutely nothing relevant for at all, and a book that talks about POW's during the Vietnam War using a system of tapping on the ceiling and pipes to communicate...which also doesn't seem to be relevant to anything at all.

Thank you for your input. Sorry you're not liking the design choices. The camera is zoomed in for a few reasons but there is a debug command to zoom out; You're free to use it, but there are times where it'll reset so you'll have to input it again sometimes. The pitfalls are disabled on Easy action difficulty if they make the game annoying, as well as make enemies not KO you that fast.

As for the hard riddle, you misunderstood: cryptology is a study that deals with decrypting/solving codes, and the two hints the hard riddle gives you are SUPER important. The game gives you two massive hints on what method you need to look for (you're absolutely free to use google for this one). The hard riddle is meant to be like some puzzles in Siren with the intent of people sharing their solutions/hints/ideas online. They don't have to, but it's welcome.
Those 3 little messages tell you which hand to use and where, you just need to decode the message. People who are familiar with the method should recognize it after at least one of the hints. (one literally spells out the name of the method) I'm sorry if you don't agree with it. The player who started hard riddle mode will finish it some time soon, so if you're still interested you can check it out later. I'll post a link here a day before the stream so that whoever wants to see what hard riddle is like, they can know in advance. Merry Christmas (if you celebrate) and have a good one.

(2 edits)

I'm confused - your saying the notes with numbers on them are a code, and once you understand it you can find a hint in the highlighted number? How does a player with no previous experience in this cypher method decode it?


Edit: So after some googling, I learned about something called the Polybius cypher, which essentially assigns double digit numbers from 1-5 to letters in a system like 11=A, 12=B, 21=F etc. I decoded one message using that cypher to be "five Matthew", which obviously means minute hand at 5. Sorry if I come across like a highly critical ass here, but my point about puzzles not requiring outside knowledge is that outside of someone who has studied Cryptology before and actually heard of this cypher, there is no way I can fathom a player approaching, understanding and solving this puzzle. It's not so much a solution to work out as it is just a knowledge test - if you know this method, it's easy, if you don't, it's impossible. It would be like presenting a puzzle that consists of 5x5 to someone who has never heard of multiplication, they would have no idea what to do. If other comments here hadn't eluded to cryptology, I could have stared at those notes forever and never understood them, simply because there is nothing about a series of double digit numbers that makes my brain go "wait, what if 13 means C?"

Congratz on figuring out the puzzle. You're about to face another puzzle but that one won't require outside knowledge... still, it will be very cryptic; Imagine piano puzzle v2.0 from SH1. I'm aware that this riddle difficulty will be unfriendly for players that don't know these specific methods/riddles but I still want this difficulty to contain riddles which require thinking outside the box. (meaning: hints are in the game but the solution requires outside knowledge or looking it up on the net if there's no one who shared their knowledge) Also that polybius cypher is called smitty tap code, and the name for it is in room 24.(or whichever room with the plush it is)

I appreciate your input and criticism. I will take it into account when/if making riddles for the full game. I am aware that not everyone will agree or like it, but this is how I'd like to make this game. (and if it's too difficult for players, the option to change difficulty levels will always be there; albeit with less extra content on easier difficulties)