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Hi George, thanks for the feedback!

Got rid of crow and got his feather (this cost some time because it’s a small area to actually target the crow to get the scene to shoot it!)

Ah yes, I know, I will try to fix it. It's because the hotspot is too far.

I could only access 3 of the signposts

The 2 last ones can be accessed as soon as you break The Morrigan's magical bareer at the end of the misty path (where you found the bow).

I could not lower the bridge or get across the river to reach the other two?

You can't lower it from the side of the river where you start the game. You have to break the magical bareer to access to the Dolmen and the other side of the river.

When it got dark, the game becomes very not fun and unplayable.

Sorry. It is meant to be like this, just like the game series I used as a reference (Myst). More recently in the genre you had Quern or Call of the Sea. You have to be careful to the details around you because there are clues hidden in the environment, that is useful to progress in the game. I'm quite aware that this kind of game is not very popular nowadays and that, as a Jam project, I probably failed to create the kind of experience that I wanted to, but I'm sure you could beat it easily with a bit of help.

For example: The Morrigan's magical bareer must have a device or something to be disabled. If you search around the bareer, have you found the red hand painted on a stone, with numbers? You should go find it, then try to find where you can use this information. Isn't there another place in the mountains with "fingers" that you could use?

I still do not know how to “say” or recite one of the 5 words properly

I'm pretty sure that you'll find out after breaking the magical bareer. It's one of the first stages in the game, after finding and using the bow (both can be done in any order: first use the bow, or first break the bareer. You have used the bow, very good!).

Once you find the 2 last signposts, use the diary to see how to compose each word, then use the full incantation made of 5 words.

Design is likely too involved/hard for a jam game.

I don't think so, I make difficult games all the time. Being a Jam game or not doesn't matter in my opinion. It's an experience and an experiment, for both the dev and the player. You like the game or not :) But I'm glad that you appreciate the effort I put into it! Thanks!

Some of the play is a little obtuse to figure out

Well this is probably because you've not played a Myst game before. Or maybe my interpretation of Myst game has been wrong all the time ahah (I've released several commercial Myst-like games and the amateurs of the genre seem to like them in general?)

Don’t take any of this poorly and it’s just meant to be constructive.

Ah no, don't worry, it's great. I like to read feedback to progress. It's not easy to please everyone when you make a game (including myself ahah). What you said is interesting. I thought that Shadow of The Morrigan was quite easy (compared to what I did in the past), but there are actually several issues that came to my mind through all the comments:

1 - the island is vast and it's easy to get lost, and to miss an important clue

2 - some people like the current gameplay with keyboard, others would prefer a point and click gameplay

3 - players nowadays don't seem to like too much a challenging puzzle game ahah. 

4 - if I want to make the game more modern (with the use of full 3d), then I need to make also the gameplay and game design more modern, and not just do it in the old way like I always did. For this I would need to play more of the modern puzzle/adventure games in 1st person view, and see how they are done.

Or you were new to Adventure Creator?

Yes and no. I have never done a polished commercial game with it but I have already created several Jam games. However it was the first time that I was using Adventure Creator for a 1st person experience, and it was quite different of what I did in the past.

I would at least spend a few days wrapping it up and polishing it so more people can finish and enjoy it.

Absolutely! I will continue to work on it in the future until it is more "finished". Cheers!

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I missed the stone with the red hand, will look for it. Thanks. In such a detailed environment you likely need something to draw the player’s attention to smaller hotspots they can target? I assumed all were marked on the map and that’s likely incorrect, or I just missed it.

re: getting dark…some things are just objectively bad and poor game design, despite other games doing it. Myst etc are 30y old and were never really that well designed to begin with (just new and very pretty at the time). Call of the Sea was on my list to play soon. Not to debate, but that darkness just breeds player frustration here. You may be able to tweak it and polish it (maybe make items glow a little in the dark etc) but I’d advise against it. It’s 100% ok to make hard/challenging games, but you always have to factor in fairness and having the player blame themselves and not the game or developer. In the case of the time of day, they will all do the latter.

You can certainly make a modern adventure game with FP view and items and walking around solving puzzles. That will 100% work and will actually be an order of magnitude more successful than traditional point and click games if done properly. 3D is just more popular and mass market. It’s a valid path to pursue.

(+1)

Well Icehouse, I’m stubborn and beat the game ;)

Lost 30m more because of the font. RAT = NAT, R = N! Man… ;)

Enjoyed the vibe and overall mood. Would play a very polished up version of this sort of game.

Thanks for taking more time to play and for the detailed feedback. 

re: getting dark

What do you mean? Like it's the night suddenly? The lighting or darkness are not changing in the game, there's no weather or night cycles, so I don't get it.

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What do you mean? Like it’s the night suddenly? The lighting or darkness are not changing in the game, there’s no weather or night cycles, so I don’t get it.

Hmmm, weird…I have these shots I took when it was dark. No idea what I did but seems like a bug then, or maybe some timer issue with any weather asset you may be using? Maybe the game needs to run a while for it to happen, but on the second playthrough I was loading from a save game, so I don’t know.

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Uh weird, this is not supposed to happen. There is no setting in the weather effect to make the world become dark. This never happened to me or to anyone else that I know. I think it could be related to your pc maybe? Are you sure your GPU is not overheating, which could explain that kind of trouble? 

Well I don't know. I'm taking your screenshots very seriously, so thanks for sharing them. I'll check everything in the game to try to discover if something's wrong. But it's really weird that it never happened to me or to anyone else who played. 

Could you please edit your comment and delete the 2nd screenshot, as it gives the answer to the puzzle? Thanks.

(+1)

I don’t think it’s overheating. I regularly play something like Escape From Tarkov for 6-7 hours. Deleted the shot. Sorry about that.

Machine is pretty updated and always on new drivers, never crashes on me and is stable. Just weird development issues that always seem to happen. Let the game run for an hour or something and run around and see what happens when you get time. I remember the game being fine, then it just went dark and I thought “Ok must be some day/night thing or I triggered something”. Only other thing of note is that I saved/loaded a bunch.

Good luck with it.

I think it might be the save system then, I might have forgotten to add a script or something. I'll take a look for the next update! Thanks for your help.