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Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 5! It's nice to meet you! My name's Hythrain. I'm part of the FQ team and a hobbystreamer. I'm writing this review live after having played your game.

On start up, I was a little shocked at the game's presentation. I went into the tutorial, but when the game seemed to be just up and going, with time ticking away, it immediately felt like I was told nothing at all. As such, I would recommend that when a tutorial dialogue box pops up, it should do so as a focal point and pause the game so the player can read.

Once I had gotten an idea of what I was doing, I restarted and tried again. I immediately realized the challenge of this game as both the items you find and the strength of zombies was completely random. I could have the first few fights go easy and I get a lot of strong items, or they could be a slog and I'm deprived of items and unable to continue. I'm all for a challenging experience, but it's felt incredibly painful to get anywhere without cheating for cards. Speaking of, if you have too many cards you end up covering the usable cards in the UI. Not really something that should happen in normal gameplay, but worth knowing.

I want to play more, but for me it's hard to dedicate the time when it's so heavily reliant on luck (That and I have a lot of games to cover). If you can make the game balance out so rounds with a lack of items = weaker enemies, it'd help to make things feel more achievable.

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Hello hythrain, I wanted to check out your Twitch stream, but can only find recordings being around 6 months old. Any hint where I can see you playing the game? https://www.twitch.tv/hythrain

It would be much easier for me to see how you actually play. The points you mention from my perspective I adressed already, so having an inside look at your gameplay would be preferrable.

Some questions upfront:

  • The game presentation shocked you? Why? What are you referring to - is it plain shocking ugly, or shockingly good or what?
  • You felt like nothing was told at all? What you mean by that? Have you missed some information to make the start easier (tutorial teaches you how to move, what to do first, what to take care of, when to craft, how to fight, what the symbols mean...)?
  • Finding items is not completely random, but to a large scale, yes. Over the first 2 days everything balances out - there are so many items to be found, sooner or later you will get everything you need - in more than plentiful numbers, once you get a hang of it.
  • The covering card issue should be fixed, as you can see in one of my devlogs https://humane-tiger.itch.io/9-dayz/devlog/585215/feedback-quest-5-spreading-car...

It's not a game you can rush into or through (I added an intro mentioning that, as I am aware that many Jammers feel forced to play a lot of games as quick as possbile in a short time). 9 Dazy doesn't serve that need - and will never do. It feels painful  - that's okay tbh. It is designed to feel harsh and unforgiving, again, the intro is mentioning that - and so it mentions the good and bad luck. You will need time to get the hang of it - quite a lot of time, maybe 5 attempts at least - depends. If your time is short, there is no chance to come even close to success. At the end of the world, there is no surviving for rushers ;-)

I see 9 Dayz in one line with harsh and brutal games like The Long Dark, DayZ, Project Zomboid and others. In these games new players die like flies - dozens of times, before they start mastering to survive at least some little time. That's my inspiration - I will polish the pain, I will give players a choice of what items they want to start with, but I won't change it to "quick and easy". Made it easier already - thinking about making it harder again :-D

(+1)

So before I provide a link to where you can find the VOD, I do want to note three things:

1. I may have had consumed cannabis by the time I played your game.

2. I won't be able to answer your questions just yet. I'm about to go live for another FQ5 stream as I'm writing this. However, I do plan to later on.

3. My overall experience is I liked it a lot. No matter how you may see my feedback, I want that to be at the forefront.

With that in mind, my VODs can be found on YouTube. My brain can't remember which VOD it was right now, but I can dig in afterwards to find the specific VOD for you.

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Don't worry, found the recording, thanks or the link. It seems to me like you were kind of in a rush - trying to play all the entries is an ambicious goal, I understand that. As I said, 9 Dayz is not made for a quick experience, so we can let it rest on that.

(+1)

Yea, I do give a limited amount of time. I usually cover every game (FQ4 was crazy, when we had 100 games and yet TotK dropped early into it), so I do need to pace it. Of course, things are working out in a way where I'll get more time for certain games later on to explore them more, so I'll get to see what more time looks like.