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Sinathir

Raising sim / survival game inspired by Princess Maker. · By QuentinWH

Sinathir 0.36.2

A topic by QuentinWH created Oct 02, 2023 Views: 97 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 2

Since the last big update changed the game in a big way and made the early game much harder, I decided to make a new system that should help with early mood problems.

This new system adds the "recreation" spot. This is a half-day activity, where you put certain items in a specific slot and get a skill and mood bonus.

This spot can be upgraded to have more slots and you can find, earn or buy new recreation items.

Most NPCs will now give you a skill book coresponding to their trade (Zach and Olaf won't). If play on an older save and you already went above relationship 10 with them, then you won't be able to get them that way.

I added a new trader to Riverstone that shows up roughly once every 5 weeks who sells all skill books and even some misc. books, so if you missed the skill books from the NPCs, you can still get them that way.

I also added a bag into the hideout that gives you some recreational items and some escape items.

Bear in mind that this system was done very quickly and is not that elegant. Spot graphics don't change with upgrades, book earning dialogue with NPCs is very short and simple and resourcess + requirements for upgrading the spot are also temporary.

The system itself works though and should make early game easier to manage.

(2 edits)

played through this version for a short time and faced no issues or errors.  at this point i feel like any concern i've ever had was addressed so things run smoothly and make sense to me. 

it feels like the volume amount changed. my headset and PC is the same, but the game felt very loud even at 50. i put the master volume at 15 for it to be on par with everything else.

the only minor complaint i guess i could have is that when doing work or training, sitting through the cutscenes is boring if you already know the outcome. previously i'd watch them and be invested since they'll tell me my results, but if i know the outcome is 2-5 then i don't really gain anything by watching the cutscene. again, this is quite minor.

otherwise i also noticed that the earlygame now feels easy - even if you say it's much harder. i can't really tell if this is due to me being a veteran at this point, where i know the optimal strategies and loot locations, or due to the game changes. perhaps i didn't play long enough to feel a difficulty spike?

same with the tutorial - since i know things i can't really say how educative the early game/tutorial section is. my only tutorial feedback would be: 

>shorten amount of hits needed to kill the dummy

>consider splitting the tutorial into fighting and surviving.
since the player is warned many times to not fight early, perhaps it would be clever to have a "forced encounter" in week 2 that teaches you fighting. perhaps billy comes back with a target dummy then instead of day 1? the reason i bring this up is i can understand how a new player might be conflicted:
>tutorial teaches you how to fight
>there is an enemy 1 screen away from base (and on the start screen!!) 
>you are told NOT to fight them before you're ready. 
while i think your idea makes sense (dangers can be anywhere and you're just a young girl, even a big chicken in a 'starter zone'  is a threat), gameplaywise i can imagine someone starting, dying to the chicken then giving up. again, it works as a filter if that's how you want to approach this.

things like chatting/shrines/relaxing spot all appear to be good ideas. i haven't had any mood issues in a bit so i didn't find much use for them, but i still ended up chatting whenever possible mostly because the icon that pops up is cute

excellent work as always


edit: forgot to mention this

the random events are fun and feel nice to discover.  it's much better than what felt like static events from before. i had a guy cooking appear near the beach one week. things like that feel fun and make me want to revisit locations.

(+1)

Glad you liked it.

Volume is too loud and I don't really know why. That's why the default volume is set to 50. It's not that big of a issue, so I never looked into it.

Animations will get replaced with a "calendar". Simple screen that looks like a page from a calendar with a note telling you if you succeeded and a still picture depicting you doing well or failing. It will make more sence and it will be easier to skip and make. As I said before, I want to have more activities that take days to finish and doing those short animations for them would take me too long. Doing still images would be easier and I could even do more variations of them so they don't repeat that often.

Start of the game is easy when you know what you are doing and plan ahead a bit, but new players will deffinitely strugle. Especialy when I just nerfed the easiest ways of getting mood like chatting and getting used to killing after about 30 kills. The difficulty becomes more obvious if you do a lot of things that lower your mood, like killing or going into caves. In old version, you could get about 12 mood just from chatting and then resting. Now you will get only 2 for doing the same at the start of the game.

The tutorial:

  • The dummy has 30HP, because that's the exact amount of XP to level up from 0 to 1. Every next level is multiplication of 30. I will check the dummy and maybe lower its stats to make fighting it faster.
  • The tutorial will need an overhaul. I added quite a few system since then that are not explained in there and it is quite long while not explaining that much. Hints are a good way to go I think, since they are short, completely optional and show up near the things they are explaining.
  • I get the chicken complaint quite often and I saw plenty of people try and fight it. I still like what it does though. Especialy now that you can see your hit chance. You start a game, attack the screeming monster in front of you, see the 0% hit chance and say "oh shit". Yes, it will filter some people but others will realise what kind of game this is at that exact moment and stay or just leave.  I think it saves everyones time. People that would drop the game anyway will quit at that moment and people that will enjoy it will start liking it at that moment.

Again, thanks for playing it again.