Damn I feel there's something really cool here, but it's a little rough. You should def put in some work to at least get some practice polishing some of the gameplay. Visuals and audio are great, though maybe I'd make the visuals slightly less hazy? Or if there were better instructions, maybe that would help. When you play your own game, it's easy to understand how to play, and you forget what it might be like for a new player. I knew I was making moonshine, but wasn't sure how to do it. The only interaction I found was the little sprites that kinda looked like Minecraft gunpowder on the ground. Cool game though! Lmk if you end up fixing some of the issues. I'd love to give it another go. Seems like a cool vibe and concept.
Viewing post in Where The Land Don't Shine. jam comments
yeah absolutely, if you want to help, I'd love to talk with you! I mained most of the world stuff. I kinda probably could've managed everything better, most mechanics were only brought into the game from the test scene on the last day but implementation didnt work well, it was super buggy, I was up for like 30 hours tryna fucking fix it. Still going. And the instructions were in the last 10 minutes lmao. And yep its hazy. I looked at most of the post processing in the editor, but in the editor stuff like grain is scaled down to fit the size of the screen. I think Unity's post processing grain is just an image they scale to screen size. So in the actual build it was much larger than what I saw in the editor, I fixed it a bit but I didn't have time to focus on it. Could have done more exposure/contrast too just let it be down for snowy effect
I tried this bad boy again. I still had some issues. I put the big cooking pot under the 1st station, and I think I'm supposed to wait for it to finish? But I didn't see anything happening so I wasn't sure if I did it right. I did explore the house this time though too. The game is very moody in a nice stylized way, but it's so dim and hazy that I had trouble finding the door again to exit the house. I think maybe what's missing from the gameplay is more clear feedback to know if you're doing something right or wrong? Especially since that sequence is important. I think when I put the pot down under the first station, it should communicate to me some way if I did something right or wrong, especially because the game is a little confusing. Still feel the same though, I love the concept, vibe, and atmosphere, just having trouble figuring out how to play.
yep lmfao valid.
Dude the first station is finished as soon as you put it in, it pours water, I just didn't write a notification that it's poured. If you look at it at the top there'd be water in it.
yeahhh
obviously my instructions weren't enough
If you look at the video I think the actual result was kinda cool, just lol people actually gotta be able to figure out how to play it
Hmm yeah didn't see the last instructions. I'll give it another try later in the day, but genuinely did not know anything had happened. I thought I had to turn on the station. Part of it is I can't see. I guess if you want constructive criticism it would be this:
Even though it's frustrating, I do think it's a principle of design to not try and blame the end user but also know that end users are dumb lol. I know I'm not the only person who's mentioned being confused. I've had the same frustrations watching people play my game, where I'm like "come on, it's so obvious", but I also know I've spent 100x more time with the game than they will, and so it's hard for me to understand what's obvious. I think if there was a like a water sound in this case, that would've been perfect to let me know something happened. I genuinely thought the pot was just sitting there and I had to activate the station, but had no idea how to do that. Hopefully you take this as constructive criticism, because I do really see potential in the game, it just needs some better feedback to be less confusing, especially because it is creative and not using obvious mechanics like a platformer would be.
hey bro.. appreciate you putting up with me lmao. I've just gone and made a video tutorial:
It's my fault anyway, my instructions were so last minute. And the product is for the people who play it, not me, so whatever I do in my game needs to be enjoyable by the player. If I don't put good enough instructions in my game, and the player doesn't know what to do, and they can't have any fun? That's my fault.I also just added those last instructions just then so yea dont stress