Awesome idea from the IGC community, looking forward to playing all of your games!!
Our Game: "Gamepad Recommended" Dark fantasy adventure inspired by N64 Zelda games and PS horror classics. I wanted to capture the feeling of solving Zelda puzzles/events, in a dark "Silent Hill" like setting.
Current challenge: Lately, we've been struggling with the player experience, as we aim to create a cryptic/mysterious game that rewards curiosity and exploration. We've found that most players find it too slow and aimless. I'm not sure if it is an issue with the (target audience), (the game design), story, or just everything in between. I can feel we are somewhat close to the intended result, but can't seem to balance it quite right.
Please help: It would be really useful to know your overall experience with the game, what you like, and what you don't. If you find anything exciting, frustrating, interesting or boring. If you get lost, or if something didn't make sense. And of course, any technical bugs or weird glitches.
State of the Game: The core quest line is mostly completed. The demo lasts a bit over 1hr along 4 scenes (Main menu, Prologue, Farm house, and credits). Includes all the core mechanics (Combat, stealth, parkour, quests, inventory, equipment, dialogues, cinematics, puzzle mechanics, Core NPCs, dynamic pickups, UI, etc). Most audio clips, okayish music, and somewhat working game settings.
Missing:
- VA for main characters (wordless expressions, Zelda style), and more environment audio clips (doors, fire etc).
- New prologue introduction cinematic (current first cinematic is a placeholder lore dump).
- Side quests, events and NPCS. Eventually, we'll add optional events and rewards to flesh out the world-building and setting. But anyone should be able to enjoy the game while skipping them, so it shouldn't affect the current testing. (So if you find lots of empty areas and a lack of filling, please excuse us.)
- Combat and Parkour actions are a bit iffy. Need tuning, more feedback to the player and overall improvement.
- Overall polish. Need to create a new main menu scene, introduce localization options, improve sharders, optimize, etc. Hopefully, nothing game-breaking.
Thanks for your consideration. Share your games in the comments so I won't miss them. Let's keep on grinding. Cheers!!