Post by Mildawg in Dante's Jail Cell comments

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Hello, played a bit of the game just now. The premise of the game was what interested me for sure, and I was curious to see how you'd tackle the concept of personalized legal punishment.

Sadly, though, I couldn't get through much of the game before my eyes glazed over and I found myself having to scroll back and reread sections. Sometimes even when I did reread I still wasn't engaged enough to follow what was being said. I think there are a few reasons for my disinterest:

- The writing is very "stream of consciousness", it feels like the same person (namely you, the creator) having a conversation with themself rather than 2 characters with unique voices and thoughts. The characters are both outrageously dressed/styled (and one is a murderer), yet somehow they both speak in such a stale way. That makes more sense for the inmate (a sleepy rambler), but I feel like the main character's staleness didn't feel like an appropriate "detective" type voice, nor one of any real legal background, nor anything that screamed "personality".
- As soon as the story turned into a fictional autobiographical rant session, I realized I didn't have nearly enough established interest in Ms. Hale to commit to hearing tens of minutes of back-to-back life stories. Even though it was obviously adding up to something to do with the premise, I couldn't stand it. I closed the game after Ms. Hale confirmed that she believed in reincarnation, because that would probably be the subject of another long conversation between two people I'm not committed to. Most of the things being said didn't have much to do with the two things I've been given reason to care about: The crime and the punishment.

Those are my two main issues, but there are a few smaller concerns as well: 1) Why, as the main character, would some of our OWN perceived dialogue and documents be redacted? It disappoints me that not only am I barraged with inmate backstory info, but I'm not even allowed to look at my own (Zelenka's) known information unhindered. 2) Kinda adding to all the previous points; There needs to be more worldbuilding in the beginning. If I had more time to experience the inner workings/motivations/living situation/etc. of the main character before getting vented to, I might have been able to push through it with the sole purpose of wanting to see Zelenka succeed. Unfortunately, I can't care about a character who hasn't established herself as anything but the dialogue-instigator.

All that being said, there's definitely respect to be given to you for your obvious interest in giving the sleepy inmate character (and, I assume, other characters to follow) an in-depth backstory. It's just all given so fast and loose. Wish my attention span could last longer, but for now my interest is spent.

Hazel137 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Hello! Thank you for the feedback! I'll reply to a few things but I won't spoil you since you haven't played the full game:

1) The "stream of consciousness" style of writing is definitely something I struggle with as I focus more so on what each scene's purpose is and making sure some things are being said for later on over giving the characters more personality and actually feel different from each-other! Thank you for pointing that out, I'll try to be better in that regard!

2) About the pacing, it's definitely something I struggle with (especially when looking back at the entirety of the game), however Ms. Hale quick rambles and lack of focus on Zel are definitely here for a reason (which I will not spoil, of course). About the crime and punishment part, while it does stray away from it, it's only to take focus on Ms. Hale (which will shift, of course). Of course, I will take the pacing issues in mind for future stories!

3) The reason why some of the stuff is blocked out is much like the static you see at that cutscene: to not reveal the twist of the game from the get-go (that is in exception for the massive redacteds on the paper where both Ms. Hale's and Atolos' pictures are shown: the first option you have leads to Ms. Hale telling different parts of her past about herself and since that paper says the notes she wrote(idk if you'll play through the other 1st options) i wanted to keep it simple for my brain especially when it comes to coding)). I'll definitely try to fix some things and especially be more subtle when blocking out information. Thanks for pointing that out!

4)Again, there's a reason why there's a lack of focus on Zel, but one thing that I'll definitely try to do more in my writing is try to balance focus on both characters when they're conversing, bring out aspects of them without it taking 10 000 hours!

Honestly, thank you for your constructive criticism! It definitely helps, and it warms my heart that you not only bothered to take your time playing even a part of my game, but putting even a shred of respect into my work for trying to put passion into a story! I'll definitely keep your points in mind for when I tweak parts of the game and even for future projects!

Mildawg137 days ago(+1)

Phew. I was actually kinda dreading your reply because I knew my comment must have come off as extremely harsh to hear. You obviously put a lot of time into this project and, although I said everything with the intention of helping, I didn't say much in the way of praise. Thank you for taking my criticisms well. I probably wont pick the game back up, but if you ever make another writing project I'll tune in to see your developments as a writer.

My most important advice: Keep having fun making whatever the hell you want !! >:) godspeed

itch.io

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