- The F4 for fullscreen worked fine for me. Khryse probably didn't read through the help text at the start so he didn't know, so you might want to take impatient people into account. Usually an info dump right at the start won't work for that reason. I'd suggest an options screen when pressing ESC, with the help somewhere inside that, but I'm guessing you already have an options screen planned.
- The BG for the intro (the one where you get the phone call) takes too long to transition to the game proper. This is more evident if you rapidly kept skipping the text that shows up.
- This is the kind of game where sometimes I want to be able to play it completely by mouse, meaning classic point-and-click adventure controls where I click somewhere and my character moves there. I'm hoping you have something like that planned.
- Mouse doesn't seem usable during dialogue. I tried clicking on a dialogue option, but it seems click just confirms the already selected dialogue option regardless of where the mouse position is, and the only way to change it is via the W and S keys. I'm hoping mouse can be used for dialogue in the future.
- I had no idea my client was in the CellShock building (I don't think that was mentioned at all, even by the client during the phone call). It might help to say that, also have the main character say that when you click on him.
- Overall the premise of the story doesn't seem bad. The setting is ok, even though there doesn't seem to be anything that makes it stand out from similar games in the genre, a lot of thought is put into it, with the political climate being evident from the news to the gossip that people say.
- It's amusing the main character doesn't wear pants but I'm not going to question this fashion sense.
- The client should have proposed how much to pay, and what the method of payment is, before the main character agrees with investigating the case. As it is, the main character looks gullible just going ahead and saying yes.
- The client should probably have mentioned the general gist of what products/services his company provides.
- I would have wanted to talk to the client in detail and ask more questions (as dialogue options), such as:
- How many people in your company are working on this prototype? Who are they?
- Isn't this project kept secret from the rest of your employees? (this should be a yes, because if a regular janitor knew about this, they could just go ahead and steal it and sell to a rival company, unless security is tight, but having the main character easily get into the client's office, I'm guessing not)
- Are there people outside the company who might have known about this? Friends/family? News reporters?
- Are you sure the video wasn't tampered with? Who's the head of security here?
- I'm curious about the energy bar. Usually, story-driven games don't need this kind of life sim game mechanic. It depletes in realtime, and getting it empty means you need to go sleep, and have to continue the investigation tomorrow. To prolong your energy you spend money to buy food to replenish your energy. So my question is, does the game really need this? Or is it just an extra hassle getting in the way of the "meat" of the game (the story, investigation, puzzle solving, etc.) If the experience for the player is the same with or without this energy mechanic, I'd say just remove it for simplicity's sake. But if it will affect the story, as in, maybe you got something planned like a calendar system for the game (and that the investigation can go wrong if the player takes too long) and maybe you need to pay rent at the end of each month (requiring you to save up on money), then I'd say that's the time this energy and money thing is worth having.
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ayy good feedback man
all this press F2,3,4,etc to change resolution stuff is temporary. when the rest is done i'll make a proper main menu where you can change that.
i guess i should've been more specific about the Cellshock building but Mac does give tips about what to do when you click him, and Van gives you the building's number during the phone call.
your suggestions about the dialog with the client are pretty valid, i deadass forgot to write any lines about the payment at all so oops.
the energy mechanic does have its purpose. there will be a deadline to the investigation and the game will also have some action bits; too early to talk about them in detail but suffice to say energy will act as health. these action parts are also the reason why the game is a sidescroller in the first place and why i don't think all-mouse controls would work, atleast for now.
anyway, thanks for playing!