No worries!
Start From Cero
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Enjoyed the game! Started out okay, then gradually won me over. Very good for a first attempt at a game. Though I'm aware this is an updated version, so that definitely colored my impressions.
Found out about your games from searching around on HowLongToBeat for new titles to play. Stumbled across Guildmaster: Gratuitous Subtitle and purchased it on Steam.
Looking forward to playing it!
I think it's perfectly reasonable for indie dev's to ask for payment from time to time. And considering how cheap the asking price is, matched with the quality of the game I'd say it's a steal.
To give an example from a different medium for comparison:
The average film ticket price in the US for one viewing (minimum runtime being 90 minutes as an example) is $10-11. That's about 11-12 cents per minute.
In contrast, for a maximum (estimated) runtime of 60 minutes (counting retries) you are paying the equivalent of 2 cents (maximum) per minute.
And while I agree it would be great if it were free, I also know indie dev's have to make some form of living from time to time. And I've seen indie titles priced at far higher ranges that aren't 2/10ths this games quality, so I'd say we all lucked out on the asking price being this generous.
It was written that way to emphasize that he's still learning English and was slipping up and resorting to his mother tongue from time to time. I may have added a little too much in hindsight. That and I'm not a native French speaker, so I had to dedicate a decent portion of the writing and development to researching it.
+ Good ambiance
+ Good voice acting.
+ Good controls & movement speed
+ Solid mystery
+ Good sense of player driven exploration.
+ Mostly good performance
- Some performance issues at times, with framerates dipping in outdoor locations (especially around the village) out of nowhere.
- Some texture pop-ins
- Some textures not being fully present as objects that have collision detection
- Sometimes puzzles felt like they could use a few more natural context sensitive clues, as its somewhat vague how to progress.
- Opening cutscene is extremely abrupt in terms of how quickly it jettisons you into the plot
- Ending felt incomplete. Needs more of a sense of slow down for closure, especially considering how important the main character's objective is. Maybe an epilogue cutscene or gameplay segment?
But overall, pretty impressive for your 2nd game. And especially this being (from what I can tell) your first 3d game. I'm still struggling with 3D design, so I'm falling back on 2D at the moment using RPG Architect for my next project. You are way ahead of the curb compared to anything I've made!
Update: Had the Alpha download from awhile back. Just saw on the game's page that for the Beta release you added an Outro scene, good to know!
Took several tries but managed to beat it. A very fun, short, original experience! Quite challenging, but for the most part it felt appropriate.
I'd say the only 3 areas of improvement would be:
Having an interactive tutorial, though the written one is still good enough.
Sometimes the random nature of the draws can send you into a failure spiral on a few occasions. This doesn't happen too often to be egregious thankfully.
Perhaps having a coin value clearly visible for Question & Show Evidence, in case some players jump right into the experience and don't know (or forget) that Question and Show Evidence also have currency amout requirements.
I'll break this down from Positives to Negatives from what I've played so far.
-----------------Positives-----------------------------------
+Runs well
+ Nice sound design for the forest
+Character movement is smooth
+Overall mostly good main HUD design
+Good Crafting and Inventory menu's
-------------------Negatives----------------------------------
- Save feature doesn't appear to be functional, as an option to save never shows up.
- Opening after helicopter crash is a bit abrupt. You go from hearing the narration to rolling on the hill while the dialogue cuts out before finishing.
- The run function does not seem to work, though that could be from the injury you start with.
- I feel like Force should be renamed to Stamina, if that can fit, as it fits more with what the stat entails.
- Next to no options in the Options menu, especially to look over and re-bind keys.
- Hard to tell how fast time passes by, as stats seem to decrease at faster than logical levels in accordance with what can be determined by player.
Pretty self-explanatory. Just looking for more feedback and opinions on my two titles, Constricted & Gift From A Roi.
Gift From A Roi by Start From Cero (itch.io)
Almost 18K words long
19 outcomes
A short interactive novelette made in the Twine engine.
Available for Browser play and Download!
Writing & development for my Twine engine, text-based story game is complete!
About 17K word count, with several endings. Games rather short. Should only take 2-hours (tops) to read through it all.
Not sure about implementation of art or sound, yet. My general area might be getting a hurricane or 2 soon. I’d rather release it before that, just in case. I will be giving it a trailer and cover art though! Should be up on itch.io within a week or two!
Current progress on my Twine text-based story game:
45 Passages
29 Work hours (168-hour deadline set)
85-99% Complete for writing (roughly)
83-93 Minute runtime for 100% based on 2 play testers (vanillabeanmedia & I)
May add sound effects, music.
May add original artwork by vanillabeanmedia (Twitch/YouTube).
The last 2 options are contingent on whether it exceeds my deadline (1 week worth of work hours) and if they do (or don't) lead to game bugs or crashes.
I've reached an over 10K word count for my Twine text-based story game. 20.5 hours of development and writing thus far. Should be about 75-85% complete. By the time I'm done it should be about 10-20K words in length, roughly that of a short story or short novelette.
Current length of full read through is 50-65 minutes.
Current progress on my Twine text-based choice game: As of 10 minutes ago currently sitting at 4,047 words after almost 7 hours of development time, not counting any breaks.
Currently between 20-30% complete by my estimation and can take between 30-35 minutes at the most to read all outcomes (so far). Since this is my first time writing and designing (but mostly writing) a game like this I've adjusted my expectations and ambitions based on what I have so far in the development process. The game has many "bad" outcomes, that still work as endings but also serve as their own game overs, before the player decides if they want to proceed with the main route.
I'm currently speculating that, with my current pacing of writing & tweaking, that the game might exceed one hour of playtime total if you go for a completionist run to see all outcomes by developments end.
Progress Report on my Twine Text-Based Game:
Have currently written 2,086 words worth of material and story, including choices and several, quickly achievable endings. The main story path is currently being focused on. Should be, at most, 10% complete I'd wager, not counting going back over it for proofreading and playtesting. About 4 and a half hours of development (so far).
I'm currently trying to set up a script for Displaying two Choices (Yes & No). I have the array set up, but getting it linked up to other scripts for displaying messages or other choices is proving difficult. I can get it working to some degree with one tree path with a direct link all the way through multiple scripts. However, when attempting to branch off, either by using Bauxite Code directly or Evaluate Condition, Assign Value, etc. it basically breaks the chain. The choices will show up on screen, the scripting is registered as working, but if you try to make a choice it will either only allow one or none to go through.
Any help with this will be a life saver.
Thanks! I've plotted it out with a combination of handwritten notes and mental checklists of sorts to adjust when needed.
It was going fairly smoothly too, but now I'm at a bit of an impasse. I've gotten to a point where I want to set up choice options using an array for scripting. Unfortunately, I've been stuck on that for about 5-6 hours of development. If this keeps up without progress, I'll have to either come up with a solution, cut back on the extent of outcomes, or cancel the development.