There's nothing more helpful than an extended video of a player's unedited thought process. I'm gonna admit that I knew from the start that making any kind of vertical slice for this game was going to cause severe problems for playtesters just because of how much context a player needs for it to even be playable. What you played is a mechanics showcase, not much more at the moment, and you did an amazing job poking at everything to stress test the gameplay. I watched the video from start to end. Your patience is inhuman.
In the full game the actual long-form investigation is going to be merged with this moment-to-moment gameplay that you experienced. The junkyard ledger needed a lot of forced nonsense just so that it could be solvable within a single location. Because of that the game is still missing the core of its experience which is the player's initiative, and following leads around - something only possible in a larger-scale demo.
The entire interrogation aspect is also still absent.
The answers to the scene section lock in twice - once when ten are answered correctly (which exposes the wrong ones up to that point), and once when everything is input correctly. I don't state that anywhere and I don't indicate in any way to the player that the lock-in happens at the midway point. Wanted to test how obvious it is when the game draws no attention to it.
I understand the shortcomings of the single-level-demo format, so good work on sticking through it to test out the mechanics.
SOLUTION SPOILER
Blondie is a male nickname. Probably the biggest "fuck you" I did to the player's logical guesswork within the demo.
There are two Charlses. Both of them are involved in the answers. You got everything correct using the intended thought process. Only Blondie and ??? are wrong.
I would be very careful about relying on players being able to make deductions based on things like nicknames, like you mentioned. There's a lot of ways things can go wrong, but in particular, I would be worried about how much cultural experience differs between players and how that affects things. Another example that occurred to me was, you used the word "cunt" to describe someone, and for Americans that would more often be a word used to describe a female, but for Australians, for example, that isn't the case. And you can imagine how easily people from other cultures around the world could be lost on the implications of certain things that we might take for granted. If I were you I would be vigilant about using culturally bound details as gameplay critical as opposed to more universally understandable things.
Regarding the "I don't know what my goal is" thing, when I looked back at the start of the video I noticed that the game did present me with a goal right at the start and I proceeded to immediately forget it. I think it's a really good idea to put the current objective in writing inside of a menu somewhere where people can easily see it. This is something that's important in many games (open-ended ones) but people often take it for granted. I've seen a lot of amateur devs miss how important this kind of thing is.
I like this kind of thing and it's nice to see people representing more cerebral types of gameplay. Interested to see how this shapes up.
The game does something weird with my OBS. The video got chopped into pieces so I had to stitch it back together.
I can't say much as this isn't my genre and I have nothing to compare to.
wanted to left-click to interact
dialogue is insanely slow
UI is inconsistent; at one point I thought I got stuck in a menu when interacting with the electronic box (I think), as I was looking for the UI cross (the yellow cross on red square, when you're expecting something). The actual exit cross on the bottom right looked like screw head decoration. Would've expected it to be on the top right and be more prominent.
It was Mr. Blue in the living room with the brass-lamp.
Seriously though, not enough here for me to have any real opinions. Text is too slow, a run button would be nice.
Storywise, who knows, they are getting items to this scrapyard from people and taking out stuff to re-sell it, someone left something which was crossed out in the ledger, I think most of the other stuff was accounted for and could be found around the dump. Pen and color on those barrels are probably important since the pen was likely used to write in the ledger and the color of those barrels could be connected to the pen. Smudged fingerprints in the ledger could possibly be connected to the yellow color on the barrels or something...
I'm feeling really flattered that you took the time to try to piece together some sort of narrative, but I've already stated on the game page that there's no story in the demo yet. I don't want to spoil the story while the gameplay foundation is still in active development, because it can only be experienced once.
The current "mystery" in the demo is just there as an off-beat mechanics showcase right now.
Dialogue system was only just implemented. There will be options later on.
If you're really that interested in a story then stay tuned - it's already fully written but it won't see the light of day until I am satisfied with the mechanics.
I like it. I didn't get far into the ledger solving as I couldn't find any more hints.
The UI needs all the polish it can get as it's critical for the game. Wheel scrolling, memorizing screens when closing the notebook and minimizing the amount of clicks overall.
The slow unskippable dialogue got me thinking, what if some of the dialogue was a companion NPC you could talk with in some way in the background while you are walking around investigating, which would subtlety give player optional hints or just flavor text? Didn't play it but Firewatch could be something close. Think of it as MC's Watson.
Thank you for the feedback. UI is constantly evolving.
I'm way ahead of you on the companion idea. That's basically the planned role David will have in the story. However the dynamic conversations seem like something I would rather leave for an eventual sequel, since I don't think I will have follower NPC functionality for the game. Most of the NPCs will be static. Gotta manage that scope.
Gameplay of walking around and inspecting stuff is solid. Maybe I would like to inspect by left clicking?
The Notebook UI is a bit too much.
The more menus, submenus, and clicking you have to do navigate, the harder and more annoying it is.
I should press tab and I should have the input option right there, and maybe I can scroll or click a button to cycle through the other mystery input options.
The less clicking I have to do the better. I don't want to click as much as I do (Scenes > Early Bird > What happened here > Input 1....)
I will focus on other areas of the game next but I appreciate the insight. Can you elaborate on what specifically about the exploration gameplay you liked and think works well?
The demo is still in the proof-of-concept stage. A whole ton of small improvements have been made and the foundations of the dialogue system and item menu have now been implemented.
If you played the previous version but didn't finish the demo then this is for you. If you already finished the demo the last time but still want to test out the new features then this is for you. Very little new content; just mechanics mechanics mechanics.
Comments
If you get through it all, let me know how far off I was on things.
There's nothing more helpful than an extended video of a player's unedited thought process. I'm gonna admit that I knew from the start that making any kind of vertical slice for this game was going to cause severe problems for playtesters just because of how much context a player needs for it to even be playable. What you played is a mechanics showcase, not much more at the moment, and you did an amazing job poking at everything to stress test the gameplay. I watched the video from start to end. Your patience is inhuman.
In the full game the actual long-form investigation is going to be merged with this moment-to-moment gameplay that you experienced. The junkyard ledger needed a lot of forced nonsense just so that it could be solvable within a single location. Because of that the game is still missing the core of its experience which is the player's initiative, and following leads around - something only possible in a larger-scale demo.
The entire interrogation aspect is also still absent.
The answers to the scene section lock in twice - once when ten are answered correctly (which exposes the wrong ones up to that point), and once when everything is input correctly. I don't state that anywhere and I don't indicate in any way to the player that the lock-in happens at the midway point. Wanted to test how obvious it is when the game draws no attention to it.
I understand the shortcomings of the single-level-demo format, so good work on sticking through it to test out the mechanics.
SOLUTION SPOILER
Blondie is a male nickname. Probably the biggest "fuck you" I did to the player's logical guesswork within the demo.
There are two Charlses. Both of them are involved in the answers. You got everything correct using the intended thought process. Only Blondie and ??? are wrong.
I'm glad to know I was close 😄
I would be very careful about relying on players being able to make deductions based on things like nicknames, like you mentioned. There's a lot of ways things can go wrong, but in particular, I would be worried about how much cultural experience differs between players and how that affects things. Another example that occurred to me was, you used the word "cunt" to describe someone, and for Americans that would more often be a word used to describe a female, but for Australians, for example, that isn't the case. And you can imagine how easily people from other cultures around the world could be lost on the implications of certain things that we might take for granted. If I were you I would be vigilant about using culturally bound details as gameplay critical as opposed to more universally understandable things.
Regarding the "I don't know what my goal is" thing, when I looked back at the start of the video I noticed that the game did present me with a goal right at the start and I proceeded to immediately forget it. I think it's a really good idea to put the current objective in writing inside of a menu somewhere where people can easily see it. This is something that's important in many games (open-ended ones) but people often take it for granted. I've seen a lot of amateur devs miss how important this kind of thing is.
I like this kind of thing and it's nice to see people representing more cerebral types of gameplay. Interested to see how this shapes up.
The game does something weird with my OBS. The video got chopped into pieces so I had to stitch it back together.
I can't say much as this isn't my genre and I have nothing to compare to.
No commentary video.
It was Mr. Blue in the living room with the brass-lamp.
Seriously though, not enough here for me to have any real opinions. Text is too slow, a run button would be nice.
Storywise, who knows, they are getting items to this scrapyard from people and taking out stuff to re-sell it, someone left something which was crossed out in the ledger, I think most of the other stuff was accounted for and could be found around the dump. Pen and color on those barrels are probably important since the pen was likely used to write in the ledger and the color of those barrels could be connected to the pen. Smudged fingerprints in the ledger could possibly be connected to the yellow color on the barrels or something...
Also: PUTTING CANNED BLUEBERRIES IN PIE? NOW THAT IS A CRIME.
I'm feeling really flattered that you took the time to try to piece together some sort of narrative, but I've already stated on the game page that there's no story in the demo yet. I don't want to spoil the story while the gameplay foundation is still in active development, because it can only be experienced once.
The current "mystery" in the demo is just there as an off-beat mechanics showcase right now.
Dialogue system was only just implemented. There will be options later on.
If you're really that interested in a story then stay tuned - it's already fully written but it won't see the light of day until I am satisfied with the mechanics.
I like it. I didn't get far into the ledger solving as I couldn't find any more hints.
The UI needs all the polish it can get as it's critical for the game. Wheel scrolling, memorizing screens when closing the notebook and minimizing the amount of clicks overall.
The slow unskippable dialogue got me thinking, what if some of the dialogue was a companion NPC you could talk with in some way in the background while you are walking around investigating, which would subtlety give player optional hints or just flavor text? Didn't play it but Firewatch could be something close. Think of it as MC's Watson.
Thank you for the feedback. UI is constantly evolving.
I'm way ahead of you on the companion idea. That's basically the planned role David will have in the story. However the dynamic conversations seem like something I would rather leave for an eventual sequel, since I don't think I will have follower NPC functionality for the game. Most of the NPCs will be static. Gotta manage that scope.
Is a nice prototype.
Dialogue is too slow
I feel like on a boat when walking
Walking in diagonal is faster
Noted and appreciated.
Never removing the head bobbing though.
dialogue should be skippable / escapeable.
Gameplay of walking around and inspecting stuff is solid. Maybe I would like to inspect by left clicking?
The Notebook UI is a bit too much.
The more menus, submenus, and clicking you have to do navigate, the harder and more annoying it is.
I should press tab and I should have the input option right there, and maybe I can scroll or click a button to cycle through the other mystery input options.
The less clicking I have to do the better. I don't want to click as much as I do (Scenes > Early Bird > What happened here > Input 1....)
I will focus on other areas of the game next but I appreciate the insight. Can you elaborate on what specifically about the exploration gameplay you liked and think works well?
no
The demo is still in the proof-of-concept stage. A whole ton of small improvements have been made and the foundations of the dialogue system and item menu have now been implemented.
If you played the previous version but didn't finish the demo then this is for you. If you already finished the demo the last time but still want to test out the new features then this is for you. Very little new content; just mechanics mechanics mechanics.