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(3 edits)

 This was super cool! I love detective puzzle games. It’s so satisfying to see my pile of notes grow, especially when I start seeing connections between those different notes and everything comes together. (Now that I think about it, I had a literal pile of notes on my desk just like in-game, haha. Though I didn’t quite hit the “document limit” in real life!)

Also, I’ve actually been going through GDQuest myself, and it’s inspiring to see what you’ve been able to do with what we’ve learned so far. (Though I’m sure you’ve done lots of research on your own, too!)

I’ve become stuck on the last set of three before finishing the full family tree, and was hoping you could let me know if I’ve made mistakes in my assumptions, or if I’m correct but there’s some sort of bug preventing me from finishing the tree. (If I have made mistakes, instead of giving me the answer outright, I’d appreciate if you gave me some hints!)

[SPOILERS BELOW]



Rightmost child of Rellis and Thyna:

I have this as Kenit, an unknown male. I feel like this is correct, unless there’s some way of knowing if Kenit is a carrier or wild type.


Rightmost child of Trivanel and Luthis:

I have this as Avina, an unknown female. I decided this based on the document “Pure Angels,” which I believe to be written by Trivanel. I was a bit confused, though, because it seems she has three children (Aditin, Avina and Mrain), but there’s only two slots for her children in the family tree. And I don’t think Mrain is one of them, because they died of whooping cough, not at sea. Did I misunderstand something, or is Mrain deliberately excluded from the family tree?


Wife of Rokol:

I have this as Ketini, a female carrier. I know this is correct because I’ve already solved the chart for Mercian’s father.


Besides not being sure if I got something wrong above, there’s one document I just couldn’t understand no matter how much I thought about it: Explaining Death. Instinctively I felt like the person who Miveen “allowed to be killed” was her daughter Vilan. While Vilan is alive, mutants are often hidden away and said to be “dead” long before they actually die. But Vilan is female, and Explaining Death uses “he” when referring to the dead person. Was Miveen referring to someone else? I couldn’t find a man within a generation or two of Miveen who died, but maybe I missed something.


Also, here’s some QOL things it would be nice to see, if you want to work on them:

- I would have liked some way of sorting the documents. There’s a lot of them, and I couldn’t remember the names of all of them, especially the pictures (as they don’t have visible names while on the desk). I was hoping that I could click and drag the documents in the list so I could put them in roughly chronological order. Being able to tag them in some way (maybe by changing colour, or by adding an icon) would have also been really helpful.

- I would like if there was some way to know which links I’d clicked before, like a change in the way the underline looks. Depending on how generous you’re feeling, the archive could show which documents still have unclicked links in them, or there could be a number somewhere telling you the total number of documents and how many you’d found out of that. (I’m thinking about Case Of The Golden Idol, which does something similar.)

- If you continue the game after analyzing Selinar’s family tree, but before finishing the full tree, you can keep working on the full family tree but it becomes impossible to analyze Selinar’s family tree a second time (the Analyze button is permanently greyed out). It would be nice to be able to see the ending again without resetting the game.

- It would be nice to be able to choose between windowed and fullscreen for the game, and in particular if I could choose borderless fullscreen.


Finally, here’s some small issues you may want to fix: 

 - the notes tab doesn’t remind you that the second pedigree chart exists, even after you unlock it. so if you forget about it, or forget the shortcut to open it, you have to restart the game.

- the document “Foreinger” – should this be “Foreigner”?

- There’s no way to know if Warian should be on the left or the right of Watian since their places on the family tree are equivalent. It would be nice if both spots were valid for them, and once one of them was “set,” the other spot became dedicated for the other triplet.


It’s been a long time since I’ve written this long of a comment on a game, but I was just really impressed with what you’ve managed to do with it. Especially considering you made your first game less than two months ago! It really is inspiring. I’ll keep working hard to learn more about Godot too!

Thank you for the detailed comment!

You actually got everything right for the bonus challenge, so the issue was entirely my mistake. Really sorry for that! 

I had the entire family tree scribbled down on my notebook, and used it as a reference while drawing the pedigree chart for the game, but I somehow completely overlooked Mrain. I think that’s what’s causing the bug.

I'll work on a patch update right away. As for coloring the links that have already been clicked, that's a great idea (I can't believe I didn't think of it)! I'll include that in the update as well, along with fixes for the Analyze button and the other smaller issues you mentioned.

*SPOILERS BELOW*



As for the document “Explaining Death,” it’s actually referring to Selinar, who was murdered by an anti-Impure group. His fate is hinted at in a few subtle ways:

In “Wretched Land” Selinar’s father warns him against staying in Merrithel, because the nobles are growing restless from the thought of an Impure being among their higher ranks, and, on top of that, being the father of the last possible heir. 

It’s also very subtly hinted at in Mercian’s letter. Mercian says that people told him Vilan was dead, but then she turned out to be a Mutant. He then asks if that means his father is a Mutant too, hinting at the fact that his father is dead (being a child, he doesn’t fully grasp the concept of death, and that was his train of thought). 

Now that I think about it, this may be unnecessarily confusing for players, since the document “Explaining Death” is among the first documents that can be opened, and thinking about who died and for what cause so early in the game might distract from the main mystery. I’ll consider making this document appear later in the game from a more relevant document (probably “Wretched Land”). 


Congrats on completing the challenge, and good luck on your game dev journey!

(1 edit)

 Hooray! I'm glad to know I managed to finish the whole tree. I'll definitely come back and do it officially after the patch is out!

[SPOILERS BELOW]






FYI, I tried starting a new game, and I was able to get Ketini to count towards a correct set of three, but I still couldn't get Kenit and Avina working. So if you're looking for a source of the bug, I'd start with those two.


RE: "Explaining Death"

Ahhh, now I see, thanks for the explanation! In retrospect, it makes sense that "he" was Selinar. I think you're right that making the document appear later would be helpful, because with the information I had when I first saw Explaining Death, my thought process was:

1. Mercian says "they (Miveen and Ovith) sed you are ded".

2. Rivanel's letter says "You dared tell my son the news... He did not simply die, Miveen."

3. Therefore, Vilan is male.

In retrospect, I assume Mercian's drawing is meant to imply Vilan is female (long hair and dress). But with textual evidence of "his" gender,  I just accepted that Vilan was a man with long hair wearing a robe. This is especially because, at that point, I didn't know enough about Merrithean society to see how they expect men and women to dress and do their hair.

Even once I knew that, I just assumed that Vilan's hair had grown out because "he" was trapped in a room for who knows how long, and that he was wearing a gown, like an ill person in a hospital might today, to make it easier to take care of him. 

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense in retrospect, because it assumes that Mercian has either seen Vilan recently, that someone gave him a detailed account of how Vilan looks nowadays, or that he understands things like "Meltormated folks get trapped in rooms for years with very little care, so they may not get their hair cut." All of those seem unlikely. But I wanted to give you my thought process anyways, in case it's interesting or helpful!


Good luck to you as well! I look forward to seeing more of your work -- maybe we'll even end up in the same game jam at some point!