Post by Alessandro "NeatWolf" Salvati in The Nameless City comments

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Alessandro "NeatWolf" Salvati2 years ago (2 edits) (+2)

Loved the sound design - on my first playthrough I got stuck due to a game breaking bug when opening the first wall (probably I clicked on the wall while reciting the Glyphs - as the wall disappeared I could no longer move, look or interact with anything, no key was working anymore).

It's nicely immersive, the atmosphere really gave me the creeps!

A few things that I believe could use some work. Maybe they're like this by design, but I personally didn't like them:

1) The extremely strict Field of Vision - it gave me a bit of nausea after a while. I understand it may look less cinematographic but it reminded me of when Doom got me sick by sliding along the wall perimeter while trying to find some secrets.

2) The mouse rotation choppiness. Coupled with the point above, made the experience less enjoyable. Why is the mouse look so clamped vertically?

3) V-sync was off - had plenty of screen tearing while turning around. That boosted even further point 1 and 2.

Minor:

4) Excessively overbright/saturated colours. Playing the game while using the torch on an average HDR display put quite some strain on the eyes.

5) At the beginning of the game the music volume overshadows the narration - maybe tweak the mixing a bit?

Wishlist:

6) The game text/script being supervised by a native English speaker. Maybe it was just me but a few sentences didn't sound right.

Looking forward to play the full game - keep up with the great work! :)

By the way - the use of generative AI to create creepy supernatural alien-like images was spot on!

Cyberleaf Studio2 years ago(+1)

Thank you so much Alessandro for taking the time to play our demo and for your precious feedback!
1) You are definitely right. Some other players made the same observation and we are now testing again the game to find the perfect fov. Will hopefully update soon!
2-3) We'll look into that. I haven't personally experienced V-sync issues but we'll test again for sure. Did you play the Windows or the Mac build?
4) Yes, I noticed something similar too. It has something to do I think with the textures, the PSX shader, and the light when it gets too close to objects. We'll try to improve that.
5) Yes, I guess that was because I wasn't feeling too confident about my voice-over, so I probably subconsciously hid them a bit. Just a little case of impostor syndrome :)
6) We had some friends helping us, but we'll definitely double-check the scripts again. Sometimes we were probably trying to achieve a more poetic and Lovecraftian way of writing, but it's not easy!

Thanks again!

Alessandro "NeatWolf" Salvati2 years ago (2 edits) (+2)

No problem, I was genuinely intrigued by it.

About the bug I found while opening the first wall - I probably interacted with the wall, opened the book, clicked on the glyphs and deactivated the wall - all while the initial interaction dialogue was playing. So it probably left me in a non-responsive state. Considered that players are likely to experiment a bit there it may happen again :P
I was a bit puzzled as you could only do much with just 2 glyphs, but then Arx Fatalis came up to my mind ;)

2) Win11, but I'm developing with Unity as well on the same rig, so I'm quite sure I didn't have V-sync forced Off in the nVidia settings

4) You're probably in gamma colour space so it's probably just how the torch lights the book. Maybe you could have 2 different lights on the torch, a dimmed one for the book, and the standard one affecting all other layers? Just a quick and dirty idea :P

5) It's really just at the beginning, when the music is particularly dominant - you can only appreciate one thing at a time :)

6) It's nothing major, I've been picky. The script was almost flawless - a few item descriptions left me wondering. I'm not a native speaker myself so I understand you're up for a challenging task!

Keep up with the great work - I'm looking forward the next update.

PS: I'm not sure if it fits in the game, but if you keep having such large environments you may want to consider a sprint key in open areas - and just walking elsewhere? I understand that running may ruin the immersion, so you maybe a "fast walk" would be more appropriate then a "run" key. I'm not sure myself - you'd definitely not want to add any UI for stamina or run so... Up to you to experiment if you haven't already. I saw a few gameplay video and I believe someone was crawling in open areas, or running wildly down some stairs. I wonder if keeping track of "sanity" would keep the player a bit more on the edge...

7) One last thing: pacing. I'm realising only now that the character is a bit... speedrunning between quite some scary events, especially at the end - I'd be quite shocked if I had those visions. I can't tell how, but maybe we could add a bit more drama to such terrifying events? I'm not a writer so I don't have any suggestion on how to manage that. Bigger environments? reduced walking speed? Passing out? (fade ins/out). I did inspect everything around, but someone could just skip the hints and the mental state of the character entirely? Just my 2 cents.

itch.io

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