Post by Loressa in Chronomatopoeia comments

Viewing post in Chronomatopoeia comments

This is a great concept!

I think the actual countdown is slightly problematic as it encourages readers to skim your prose, which loses the emotional impact of gathering up your life. It also means people on screen readers will lose before the screen reader has finished reading. Same with slow readers.

Have you considered tying each choice to the countdown, instead? Eg quickly reading the letters could cost 10 seconds while moving rooms could take 5. This would allow you to expand this out by adjusting the time remaining, potential choices and the cost of each one.

Great project, very cool core idea!

Henkerr8 days ago

Hey,

Thanks for playing the game and the detailed comment. I understand where you are coming from, and it does impact if you cannot read the entire thing. My thought was to reinforce the slipping nature and urgency of time. I hoped missing out on the texts will actually make people want to replay (especially with different ending prompts and potential branches).

I did not actually consider that and will tinker with it.

Loressa7 days ago (2 edits)

Choice of Games (basically one of the big audiences for interactive fiction) writes in their code documentation that much fewer people replay games than writers imagine. This is not to say that replay is bad, just don't bank players understanding your game on the replay value unless you've focused on that (eg time agent: https://alyshkalia.itch.io/youre-a-time-agent )