Post by theseuscloud in Hearth & Holmes Demo comments

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found you through ao3 and snooping around i find out you have a visual novel in the works, fun!

I really enjoyed the demo! However, i do have some trouble with the UI. On normal gameplay, having four different bars for things that don’t change so sporadically, and you're notified when they do change, makes them feel useless and make the window feel cluttered. Same thing goes for the buttons on the left of the screen and the textbox.

The "too many buttons" aspect is heightened especially on the case section. Although I did like it, i do feel its the weakest part of the demo. In my personal taste, a UI so stiff and uninteresting (at least visually, nothing is happening on-screen) kind of takes you out and makes the whole case section feel like a chore, "get to point A then B then solve the case to get more interactions with Holmes", when most of them could be remedied by more visual and gameplay aspects that would give charm to the secondary characters like it does for Holmes when travelling from one location to another. A reduced version of the case investigations of Ace Attorney come to mind, although I'm not sure its the style you're looking for.

Moving to the good things, the art is absolutely delicious! I'm almost sad that there's not a credits section to see who the sprites belong to, they look so lively! And the dialogue feels charming, in character, natural and easy to follow. That part, you have nailed it with every letter of the word. I'm most definitely wishlisting it on steam, i hope to see more of this adventure when it is finished!

OpenSorceryGames28 days ago

I really appreciate the thought you put into this constructive feedback. I hear you about the clutter -- I'm generally a minimalist, but gotten different feedback in regards to whether people want constant access to the bars. They're actually all there because I had a few peoplerequest the ability to constantly monitor them. But that was only a few people, so in my next playtest I think I'll poll people specifically about what they think of that and see if I can discern a general preference. It's possible I could add in an option to display fewer of them? A light UI, so to speak.

I really REALLY hear you on the fact the cases are the weakest part. I know. I've been trying to make them more and more interactive. You actually prompted me to think that maybe I could rewrite them, lose the case UI, and make them scene sequences.

Then I talked to my production consultant about the fact I was considering redesigning the CaseUI and rewriting all five existing cases. He yelled "NO" five times, threw things at me, and then ranted about scope creep.

So....that may be an idea for Hearth & Holmes 2.

theseuscloud27 days ago (2 edits)

Oh my god, I didn't expect such quick reply, I'm glad you took criticism so well! I was half expecting to get my comment deleted, so that’s a relief

From my perspective, I think you *could* get away with pleasing everyone about the bar display with some smart placement. Right now, the bars are all completely separate, so are buttons and some of the settings, taking up a lot of space, if you could combine them on their own section, maybe with submenus (and here is where i gave up trying to describe what i was thinking, I'm an artist, not a writer, so i made a small mock-up, i really do hope this is not overstepping hahah). Even if they're smaller, they would display all of the relevant information, and you can still notify the player with a pop-up on-screen every time they change just to be sure all of the bar changes sink in.

And yes, your production consultant is right, scope creep is completely real, sadly. Maybe you don’t have to redesign *all* of the UI? The programming is all there, after all, maybe you can still use it, but make it feel less obtrusive to the story at hand? Making it a bit smaller, maybe chatbox sized, with all of the buttons coming out of it, while the main section of the screen is still dedicated to displaying stuff.

It really depends on how far the poor artist and you as the writer would be going, but, a few examples off the top of my head for making the cases -- that I'm assuming are the bulk of the story, so they should be the most engaging part -- more interesting would be:
Different backgrounds for different locations (never mind if you reuse them once or twice to make them less of a one-off investment)
Little icons for the case objects (the drug from the demo)
Camera movement for game feel ( zooming in when the suspect starts to run, shaking the camera when maybe the dogs bark and Watson gets spooked, a bit of movement does *lots* of heavy lifting, hell, maybe even when Sherlock's health goes down as nice visual feedback)
If we're going overboard, maybe having dialogue sections when Sherlock talks to someone to break up the gameplay, you wouldn't even need another full sprite if the character spoken to is minor enough, many visual novels get away with having someone just talk without sprite, the arcana comes to mind. If we're going full on crazy, even an end-of-case illustration like the Sherlock on the floor one.

Sorry for the wall of text, I'm a game design student and doing an internship with a company who's main game is a visual novel, this is all I've thinking about for the past two and a half months ahahah. You are completely allowed to disregard everything in this message if I’ve gone a little bit overboard myself, and I apologise in advance.

Thank you for replying!

PD: i also did the sub-menus and a comparison of space taken, but apparently itch.io only lets me post one image at once, so I'm posting the most relevant one, hope this works

OpenSorceryGames24 days ago

(laughs) I'm glad you liked it enough to think this much. I'm afraid my art/programming skills/budget isn't quite up to using this free consultation you're giving me, almost all of my visuals are unity assets I've polished and cobbled together, but I'll keep it in mind.