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(+1)

Hi, I played it! Here's a stream:


The main thing I'd mention is that it was a lot for me. I usually play games that are on the simple side. And this is anything but, there's lots of dialogue, lots of little things to remember, lots of UI to traverse, etc. These aren't negatives. But they're not really what I like to play, so I definitely zoned out a few times during gameplay. I was not good at it, to the point where I couldn't solve literally every puzzle I stumbled upon.

The thing that I see is that... The design seems brutal and not hand-holding at all. It just throws you out there and there's a bunch of items, documents, notes; 3 pages of things you can ask people about; lots of uncompleted boxes you can fill, etc. I just find like it's too easy to get stuck and have no idea how to progress. If you played Ace Attorney, I got filtered by the investigation portions because sometimes you had to click on a certain object or ask a person about a specific item before knowing to continue. And that's a game where you're solving a single specific thing and items you can click on are on 2D backgrounds. This seems 100 times worse, because you have a full 3D world to explore, there's so much more stuff you can interact with, so many more 'case pieces' that you need a filter to even reasonable search it, deductions you need to make and you can potentially be working on multiple cases at a time? That's what I'm thinking... But I don't know, maybe you've thought about this, maybe you have a hardcore audience who can tough it out. My brain's not big enough, I'm afraid.

Having said that, I did really like the idea that you're trying to implement. Like, the dialogue, all the systems, all the freedom you give the player. I think it's super ambitious and I'm very impressed by it. If you told me this was an old game made by a legit studio, I'd believe it.

(+1)

Thank you for taking the time to play.

The goal of the game is not to be simple but rather to be believable and to immerse the player in its world. 

After you beat the signpost puzzle the game never again locks your progress behind having to solve anything. You actually went through the entire content progression without any issues which was more important as feedback. It's interesting you mentioned Obra Dinn since it works in the same way -- You can get through that entire game without solving a single death but then you lose the game at the end. I have watched people go through the entirety of Obra Dinn while only solving 10 fates so this is not new to me.

I've noticed that players have a tendency not to engage with the Case Notebook too much. I think that's on me and I will try to make it more engaging and compelling to solve things there, since that is the main gameplay focus, but at the same time different players play games in different ways and I have started to be more aware which types of players are my target audience and which types will never become complex puzzle fans no matter what I change.

Good luck on releasing Little Locked Rooms.