Post by sinopiasaur in A Visit To San Sibilia comments

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sinopiasaur2 years ago

Ah, could you remove the

very long repeated dashes?

They make your comment so

wide I can't read without

copy/paste into a separate text app.

And it seems to wreck formatting

of comments here.

So my further thoughts are:

1. I don't think I understand why repeated prompts are bad still? I'm also not sure how you get a good enough sense of how jounaling would go without doing it at least a little. As for why anything should happen, isn't that something you create? The prompts guide you. At least that is my experience with all journaling games save for the CARTA system. There are other solo games with a huge array of tables and that guide the experience more, but the idea that randomly generated prompts need priors from the game to happen is weird. For myself I chained elements from previous entries I'd written, and that is a lot harder to do when you aren't doing journal entries.

Through that methodology I feel you missed some of the mark here, and it hurts the review.

2. I know you weren't condemning them, but I wondered indeed why you thought the game couldn't wander into deep wells of feelings. That was what struck me as strange.

3. I had a lot of experience with RPGs but journaling games tend to be very different beasts. My surprise was at how some of the things that felt pretty normal in journaling games that were present in San Sibilia elicted surprise from you, so I wasn't sure you had experience with journaling games specifically. That experience still doesn't come across to me.

4. This is where it gets weird because I had one extremely short run (6 days) and I don't run much character gen. And that was the session that made me fall in love with the game. I still had a great time and made a bunch of stuff happen with a follow-through storyline, so the idea that a short run results in nothing sounds strange to me.

Though this is where we differ the most, in that I end up feeling frustrated when more guidance is present, and you seem to feel more frustrated when there is less guidance in general. So that's likely why our views on the game are polar opposites, save that we both agree the game has a good core though I feel that part's just sense.

And yes, being honest about reviews is great but I feel like there was something missing in yours, and I'm trying to pin it down. It is obvious you do good reviews, I just wasn't sure why this one didn't feel up to par with your standard. However I shall have to chalk it up to my lack of reading comprehension.

On discussion of tweaks, A.ii isn't difficult. Add up the ranks of each card you pull, and when you hit blackjack (say, a sum of 21, but I think a larger sum would also make sense) mark a progress box. I'm sure I presented it incorrectly for you to have that impression.

Re B. I don't think I understand since I was mostly thinking about ways that prompt variety is achieved in other journaling games, and Alone Among the Stars is one of the core games of this nature that is amenable to hacking, which you're maybe familiar with. I don't think prompt variety makes the game a wholly different one. Then again, I'm no designer nor writer.

JonSpencerReviews2 years ago

Yeah, done. It messed up the formatting anyway on the page.

1. Just because I didn't physically write for all 10 games doesn't mean I wasn't playing along in my mind. Does that mean they aren't as strong of an experience as they could be? Probably. The additional games weren't meant to be play reports though, I was testing game length, content distribution, and overall feel. I understand that you chain events together and work to make sense of the prompts. Remember, I'm not new to this, I just don't think that the prompts always connected together well. This is subjective, my opinion, and reflected in my review. You are welcome to like the game and disagree with my review, again, a lot do.

2. I didn't? The game tells you it can. Everyone has different views on safety rules. I mentioned it for those who might care, I personally didn't think I needed them for this game, but again, it doesn't hurt that they are included. That's all I meant by it.

3. Sorry it didn't come across, I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what you want me to say. I've played a lot of journal games from English Eerie to Alone Among the Stars, some games hit better than others. I'm not trying to suck anyone's enjoyment out of this game, I even advocate that people try this one for themselves anyway because I didn't feel great about the negative review, I wanted to like it, I just didn't.

4. I don't think the game needs to add a ton of guidance, I'm being unclear here. I just think, as it currently stands, the moment-to-moment gameplay doesn't always necessarily help the player keep good forward momentum. This ties back into pacing. If nothing has happened to my character and a major event tells me that something dramatic has shifted in my character, it's hard to come up with and justify what that is. This is the core of the complaint here when I talk about "guidance". I'm saying that previous events, or lack there of, don't always help to inform the current situation, which I think hurts the game.

I appreciate your compliment on my general writing. If you think what's missing, let me know. I mean, feedback is always valuable.

In regards to tweaks. A. ii. No, I understood, from a player perspective, in a game like this you don't want the player to have too much "upkeep" and depending on how the numbers are adding up, this requires the player to keep track of a lot of things at once. It's not difficult, but too much of it can be a barrier to a more general audience, which in this game's case, would likely hurt it. The exact number would need a lot of playtesting too, I just think there's a more elegant solution, but the concept of your idea here is sound.

To point B I mean to convey that the level of work that would be required to switch formats as you suggest would mechanically influence the game a lot. In that way it becomes a new game. Additionally, some of what you suggested would be a lot of additional work for this title.

Hope that makes more sense.

sinopiasaur2 years ago(+2)

It does and doesn't but that's ok, I generally lack the ability to understand complexity and nuance, so I think it's just me at this point. I don't think further explaining would help as you've done a lot of it already and I'm pretty sure everyone else gets it even if I likely won't.

Re feedback, not all feedback is valuable. But you probably already know that! Plus, I don't think my feedback here for you is useful.

Thanks for the thread.

JonSpencerReviews2 years ago

No problem, give yourself some more credit though. Anyway, have a nice day :)

JimmyShelter2 years ago(+2)

Thank you both for the discussion.

I do like the randomness of the game, but I can imagine it's not for everyone. Some of both of your suggestions did spark some ideas. I might add a variant end game rule, which will land the game in a smaller range of turns.

JonSpencerReviews2 years ago

Sure thing, and thanks for being open to feedback! If you do update the game, like I said, I'm always happy to take another look and update my thoughts :)

itch.io

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