itch.io

Thanks for the feedback. My gut feeling is that it would probably take about two hours to play the game. I think you could divide it into two phases - an information gathering phase and a puzzle-solving phase. If you dropped out early, then you missed all the neat puzzles in the puzzle-solving phase. This game is a lot richer than what you'd be used to in old-school adventures that only present what you need to solve puzzles and nothing else. The game is all about exploration and discovery. Once you know what you have to do and what materials you need, everything else falls into place.

The list: There is only one list. It lists the ten chores you have to do and serves as a memory jogger so that you can see what you have to do and what you've completed. It's colour-coded and updated dynamically.  Each chore has three states as described when you examine the list.

The text book: The text book has a long list of topics. This is for realism, as Santa's workshop makes more toys than just the ones you have to make. You can read all the topics, but you don't need to unless you want to. Its better just to concentrate on the chores that Santa gave you. Of course, if you haven't worked that out yet...

Inventory: Eldrid is a young elf, not a Mack truck, so a ten-item limit is quite generous and you can increase that by taking advantage of the containers, although that's not really necessary. There are over 20 items in supplies alone. You probably fell into the old trap of picking up everything in existence, including objects that you don't need. Call them red herrings, if you like. This was by design. If you flounder about, you will certainly waste time and energy. Inventory management is an essential skill in any adventurer's arsenal. Bottom line? Ignore the items you don't need.

Supplies: There are four supply stores and each can provide you with around five or six materials. You can ask about the materials, but you don't need to if you don't want to. This is just for colour and backs up what you can read about in the text book. You only need to ask for what you need. It sounds like you made the mistake of asking for everything, whether you needed it or not. For each store, just ask for what you need, then GET ALL. You can do this in as few as two moves per store. For example, ASK FOR LINEN AND COTTON AND FABRIC. GET ALL.

Elves' name and location: You don't have to memorise the elves' names, as the ones you need are on the list. You also don't need to memorise the locations, as you don't know where those locations are until you've found them and once you've found them, you've found the elves. Simple.

Similar locations: The hallways are necessary to provide access to other rooms. There's not that many (two upstairs and four downstairs), they all look different and have different descriptions and different exits. Draw a map! (The layout is actually very logical and straight forward. Living quarters upstairs, workshop facilities downstairs, outdoor locations surround the workshop.)

Directions in descriptions: If this was an Inform game, I would provide directions in the descriptions, but this isn't an Inform game. Obvious exits are listed separately. If each direction tells you where it goes, then this reduces the sense of discovery when you discover a new room. For example, if the description says, 'There's a kitchen to the east', then it just bloats the description and you don't feel like you've discovered anything when you first enter the kitchen.

Font size: That is useful feedback. It sounds like you may have played it in full-screen mode. Adventuron has really weird scaling and the font is really large at full screen. If you play it in a window and resize the window to a comfortable size, the font gets smaller and you don't have to do as much scrolling. It's really hard to know what font size to use so that it works in all situations, including mobile. If I make it too small, it gets hard to read in small window sizes and on mobile.

One chore to start with: Hmm, that's an interesting idea, but it would require a major redesign. The aim of the game is to complete the ten chores on the list. By presenting you with ten chores up front, you can do multiple things in any order. Giving you one chore at the start or one chore at a time would make it too linear.

Sorry for the long rant, but come back and give it another play after the jam is over. There are numerous ways to play the game, for example:

• aim to do the elves' chores first, then make the toys
• aim to make the toys first, then do the elves' chores
• when making the toys, gather the materials for one toy at a time, then make that toy
• when making the toys, gather all the materials for all the toys, then make all the toys
• aim to do everything upstairs, then downstairs
• aim to do all the inside chores, then the outside chores
• aim to do all the outside chores, then the inside chores
• and so on

Realistically, you will need some combination of the above.

For anyone else reading this, I was recently writing up a solution and found that a good approach was to firstly work out what you have to do. (That goes without saying.) Collect all the materials you need from supplies and drop them in the assembly area. From this point on, there's nothing but puzzle solving. Collect the remaining materials you need from indoors and drop them in the assembly area. Collect the remaining materials you need from outdoors and drop them in the assembly area. Make all the toys and put them on the sleigh. Do the two elves' chores along the way.

Once again, thanks for the feedback. It's much appreciated.