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silversatyr5 years ago(+1)

The game starts out fairly good. The graphics are well used and the diorama's are really cool. The whole aesthetic is pretty great, honestly. The gameplay consists of burning stuff down and figuring out the meanings behind drawings left by some no-name artist.

There are issues, however. For one, you aren't told how to burn shit down (or that it's something you need to even do). Instruction on how to play a game is something that people should always put in a game if there's something different added to the mix. For two, the gameplay suddenly changes without warning and you can die very, very fast before you realise it. 

See, I got that I needed to kill the pigs, but we'd also been told to fatten them up. Considering we could interact with the damn things before this message, there was no way to correlate that to 'Pigs will now kill you'. So I tried collecting apples to fatten pigs with. No go. I tried interacting with pig. Game over. 

Yeah.

Ultimately a nice looking game but it needs a bit more explanation about shit. It has promise, though.

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Ciclope5 years ago

Thanks a lot for giving the game a try. We've been developing turn based games for a long time, but all the Action based stuff is new to us - we're aware of all the mechanical problems present in the current version - they're being improved since the release to give a more intuitive feel to the player.

We sometimes try to give the player the chance of discovering things by themselves - the fire key, for example. We follow the rule of "The less tutorials, the better", it's risky, but also helps us improve our skills in "Show, don't tell". But, of course, it's hit or miss in most of the cases. I'm sorry that your first experience with the game didn't go well - we'll definitely take into account every design choice that we've made in the wrong direction and try our best to improve them.

==//==

Again, thanks a lot for your feedback =)

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silversatyr5 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

It's all well and good to show instead of tell and remove tutorials that aren't necessary, but when you actually change gameplay choices - like, say, making a previously safe mob start attacking or giving an item to use in order to progress - you need to tell the player about that. Else they get annoyed and upset that the game is suddenly changing without letting them know.

That is, you can't just change the 'rules' half-way through and expect a player to be okay with that if you don't actually give them a heads-up that things are now different for them. It's straight up bad design choice. So, sure, remove unnecessary tutorials. Don't explain things that are pretty much straight forward. But inform them when you are changing shit. Or show instead of telling, if that's your hang-up. Have a pig chase you from a room and then have the character ask wtf changed and why they're suddenly aggressive.

Keep it in the game 'dialogue' instead if you must, but at least 'show' if you're not going to 'tell' in a way that the player can understand without having to die first.

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Ciclope5 years ago

The first stage of the Game was a disaster, I have to admit. I actually tryed to warn the player about the game-change with music (When the time comes to fight the Pigs, a Battle Theme plays on the arenas), BUT, I completely ignored the fact that the music starts with a huge delay, which will leave the player vulnerable for enough time to be killed.

Going into Spoiler territory, I'm thinking about changing Elisa's Attack from fire to a hammer strike - which would make a lot more sense considering what the Pigs represent. And by the time I make the changes, I'll definitely add cutscenes showing the rules - and change of rules - to the player. 

Again, thanks a lot for your feedback =)

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