Thank you for the extensive feedback. I appreciate the video as well.
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Yep, the plan was to limit gameplay based on a permission system/free will theme – the permission to break down certain walls of the ship, etc., with Mother unable to take them back once given, thus very reluctant to ever give you any of them until it’s absolutely necessary. But the pace of these permissions is a bit rushed in the jam and I couldn’t get to most of the ideas. It’s mostly a bit of flavor with the disabled dialogue options now.
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F for doors is definitely getting put in as a tutorial line as soon as possible after. I could have done that in thirty seconds had I thought of it, but it would have helped for a lot of people.
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Not too sure how to interpret the current text message thing. It does grey out older messages when new ones come in, or at least it’s supposed to. In some cases it sends multiple lines without greying out the previous, but perhaps I should just increase the contrast, you can tell me what you think if you like.
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The combat/pacing is what I most want to refine. The random encounter system was added in the last day, and only adds enemies to a random encounter pool when you kill others (spoiler), for lore reasons, with the intent of having pacifist/non-pacifist playthroughs be possible, kind of going for an Undertale approach. I also wanted Mother to encourage combat while the player was still trusting in her and incapable of speaking with the “bad guys”. But what it currently means is that players will blindly pick a few fights and flood the random encounter pool before they even learn they can heal. It’s tuned such that you should at least survive a couple battles but otherwise not intentional. Also didn’t have time for combat items, skills on level-up, etc.
Thanks again for playing!