Post by Static Yeen in Build 2: The Hanging Gardens Feedback Thread!

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I'm enjoying this so far, but I have to say I'm a little confused. The way the writing style has been so far, it seems like you might be trying too hard not to info-dump or over-exposit, so I feel like I'm missing crucial context for most of the conversations. I'm struggling to glean things about the character's culture or how the magical elements of this world works when there's no explicit explanations. For example, I understand that Sprout got hurt trying to do magic, but I don't think it's really clear how he messed up or what exactly "Gravity" (or the other spells, for that matter) does in the first place. It sort of feels like I accidently walked into the wrong lecture on my first day of class.

I'm not asking that the reader be hand-held or that you over-explain everything, but I think having more explanations upfront would allow me to connect more deeply to the setting and to the characters. However, I recognize that this could be entirely a me problem, or that the explanations I desire will already be coming in future builds. Regardless, I'm excited to see how this story will turn out. Great work so far!

EDIT: Maybe there could be an optional lore section on the menu that you can choose to read or not read, depending on what the reader wants. But that would require more writing as well as more coding so it might not be worth it if others aren't having the issues that I am.

Cobalt Studio1 year ago (1 edit) (+2)

It’s a hard balance to make between explaining too much and explaining not enough. This build in particular had to set up a lot of things that won’t pay off until later, so things might make more sense in context later. I should probably also make another edit on this build and try to be more explicit in a few places. I’m sure you’re not the only person with this experience.

Thanks.

As I mentioned in the devlog, there will be a lore appendix at some point, but I think it would be better if the vn was self-contained and didn’t require outside reading.

TrinexxSlayer1 year ago(+3)

I'm kind of the opposite with this, the fact that the story references a lot of lore without fully explaining it makes it more engaging for me, as it allows the reader to try and guess what it all means. my current theory is that each of the magic types is correlated to one of the four basic elements and their general philosophies. Grace would be water type spells, it's described to be gentle and it seems that it helps plants to grow; Fury would be fire, it seems it's an aggressive kind of magic, Gravity seems to be earth based and my understanding is that it's used for weight manipulation and plowing fields, Memory would be air based, the only hint being the mention of the elephants atuned to this magic being stargazers. Also they are all color coded, grace being blue and fury being red makes the correlation to water and fire pretty easy, gravity being yellow and memory being grey are a bit more confusing, and gravity as a word could easily correlate to air instead, but i figured the abstractness of memory would fit air much better than earth.

Static Yeen1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

Your theory generally seems to make sense so far. I might have to re-read with that in mind and see if things start clicking into place for me better.

Our difference in opinion is why I thought an optional lore section might be nice. You could choose to have the worldbuilding naturally introducted throughout the story, or to have more elements spelled out from the start. For me it's less about preserving the mystery and more about feeling like an outsider. The reason for (parts of) my confusion doesn't feel like the inherent mystery of the narrative, it feels like missing context that I'd have if I were a native of their world. It'd be like me traveling to another country without doing any research on its history or culture, then being shocked that I'm confused upon arrival. I just wish I could do more research before I "travel" to this world next so I don't feel so uncultured.

I still concede that I may just be dense lol. In many fantasy stories that I've read, the point-of-view characters are either young, new to the area/world, or both, so characters have an in-universe excuse to infodump massive amounts of information. Because Thatcher is already well-established in his world and has lived several decades, his inner monologue is not very illuminating; many of the concepts that may be new to the reader are commonplace things that aren't even worth a second thought to Thatcher anymore. If there were lengthy periods of exposition within his own thoughts, it would feel untrue to his character and would obviously be there just for the audience's benefit. Anamnesis is employing a more mature method of storytelling that I'm not really used to. Not a writing flaw, just something I need to either learn to adjust to, or simply accept that things will go over my head as I'm reading and power through until it makes sense again.

TrinexxSlayer1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

I do understand what you meant. I was just voicing out my own preferences on the matter. I find that characters with well stablished pasts i'm not immediately privy to are leagues more fascinating than your usual blank slate protagonist, which is generally a clutch for storytelling to excuse info dumps. This is done so many times, and those characters often turn out way too ignorant or naive, thus i revel when a narritive actually challenges my own intellect as a reader. I do think that i'm of a minority in this regard though, as i see a lot more people who dig in the self insert protag cause it helps them relate to the story. It's just that doesn't work well with me, these self inserts feel more like non-characters as they have little to no remarkable traits. At the end of the day it's all a matter of preference.

also i just felt like trying to theorize about the magic system out here, you seemed interested in the topic at the very least.

itch.io

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