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I'll get the ball rolling!

In our game, Negative Nancy, it's possible to get an early bad ending in the cop scene if you're not careful.

We're unsure if we tuned this so it was too difficult; some players seem to think this scene is impassable and stop playing there.

  1. Is the scene too hard? Should you have more chances, or is it OK at the level of difficulty it's at?
  2. Our goal is to polish the game up and smooth out the difficulty curve post-jam, as well as broaden out some of the content.


Would really appreciate any insight you could give!

And please, post your games and tricky questions below so me and anyone else posting in the thread can return the favour!

I got killed by the cop. The most difficult part of the game is that I am not always sure what my actions will do (does not answering mean I'm silent, or am I saying "yes"?), or even which response is negative or positive (ex. "Did you never do X" could be answered as "No, I never did X" or "No, I indeed did X"). In the case of the cop scene, my logic was "Well, since I don't have the option the drop the knife, I'll say 'No' since it's not possible". I think reworking the dialogue or just going to the "hands up" dialogue regardless of the player's choice could help. With "hands up", you're probably not going to say "no" to that. Plus, it still works if you're holding a knife.

One other minor thing was that it took me awhile to figure out that I was supposed to let the "no" run out for some dialogue. At first, I just assumed that it would give me a game over. Maybe changing the start screen to where you have the let it run out (instead of clicking) would help? This could just me a "me issue" though.

I really enjoyed your game and it's one of my favorites from this jam. I hope my feedback can be of some help.

(1 edit)

Yeah, that's a good call on putting a waiting loop earlier in the game.

I think the first one, as it stands, doesn't show up until the second scene, which is more than enough time for the player to get the wrong idea.

Good to get an insight as to your logic when you said no in the cop scene! I was surprised when writing for Negative Nancy just how tricky it was to balance difficulty, as I do want the cop scene to be fail-able, but I also want it to be fair.

Naww, shucks! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

This gives me a lot to think about actually, I hadn't considered that a player might answer on a meta-level in that scene (No, I can't drop it, the game won't let me). Thanks so much for sharing your experience and taking the time to explain it in such detail here.

The game was great! The cop scene wasn't to bad, realised I could fail if I did it wrong [or I assumed I could fail]

Comedy was good, and the angry detective jumpscare was weird/funny.

Also, is it possible to refuse the toaster?

Thanks!

Yeah, it is both possible to refuse to refund the toaster and to give a refund!

I saw this on a stream before I played it so I am biased but the first time I played it I got through the cop scene okay. I tried it again on purpose and the one shot does seem quite harsh. I think if that had been my first experience I may not have realised there was more to the game or not wanted to go through the start again. The 2nd time I did all the opposite choices to the first time and you have added a lot of content in there nice job. 

I really like that the no concept is introduced in the menu. The part that I was not sure of was when I left it run out what my response was. Giving a triple refund could have been that I was saying yes or that I was just silently agreeing so I was not sure then. In the managers song it definitely seemed like I was just staying silent. In the interrogation it seemed like I was saying yes but I guess silence works there too. Maybe if someone commented directly on the response near the start like 'nothing to say aye' or something along those lines it would help explain exactly what the consequence of doing it is.

Ah, that's an interesting point re: the consequences of not saying no. I'll have to go back over the script and double check what it is I'm implying in each case to make sure an implicit silence is consistent enough to be more explicit about it! Thanks for the detailed analysis, that was really helpful feedback!

Which stream did you see it on out of curiosity?

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/463745191?t=00h23m48s . It is pretty exciting to see your game being played on stream!

Oh neat! Yeah I saw that live, was not prepared for how giddy that made me, haha!