Heya! I played a bit of your game.. :)
I love the maps.. the jungle, the beach.. so so pretty! I love it all!
But the exploration.. I'm having a hard time with it. lol The paths in the jungle are really hard to see and I'm not totally sure but I might have missed a few objects that I could interact with.
I found the camp.. the temple.. the cave... the vines.. I have the spear, the nails, 2 coins.. and for the hell of me I can't figure out how I'm supposed to cut the vines to get to the cave. I must be missing something but not sure what or where it is.. XD
I walked around for 30 minutes going back and forth between the beach and the jungle before giving up..
I love exploring in games especially games with gorgeous maps.. but I feel like I missed a lot..
MY advice: Make it a bit easier on the player to find what is interactable and what areas are important to the gameplay, you could add a sort of shine or a flash or something.. just find a way so that the player doesn't miss anything and especially things that will get the game going
I will wait for the end of the contest in case you release a new version with fixes/changes.. I hope you do because I would definitely give this game another try then.. the game looks interesting and well made it's just unfortunately the gameplay is just a tad too difficult for me. I'm too impatient.. sorryy!
Good luck with the IGMC!
Viewing post in Tales of Esferia: ARCHIPELAGO jam comments
Heya!
Thank you for your feedback and thanks for trying out the game!
It does seem that the vines part is giving trouble to some people, so I'll give you a little hint: take another look inside the cave ;)
Regarding the difficulty:
I'm a pretty old school gamer myself and this demo has a lot of influence from old school games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Broken Sword etc. and I just personally wouldn't like to make the game too easy, since I feel the whole "hook" of these games is for the player to pay attention (surroundings, what stands out in the maps, dialog and all that jazz) and try to figure out how to get further in the game. Of course the interactable stuff shouldn't be too hard to spot and I tried to help that with the top left hud (with lights turning on when you're looking at something you can interact with) and with the description text which pops up at the bottom of the screen.
I know the jungle maps have a lot of stuff going on in them and you might feel that it's frustrating to go over every nook and cranny to see what you can interact with, but that's why all the interactable stuff on those maps are on places that stand out (the camp, the cave) with the exception of the vines (which Edward tells you about) and the coins. The coins are meant to be just a collectable thing for someone who does like to look for them :)
But again, thanks for the feedback! <3