I wasn't aware of that, thank you for the info! My pleasure, there are only a few games that are worth their salt, and MalP is one of them, In my opinion. It's part old-school cool and part sci-fi charm =)
Viewing post in Malevolent Planet v0.2.3 comments
Hmm, fair question. My last playthrough has been a while ago - so I'm not entirely sure I've seen all there is to see. I distinctly remember exhausting the Village story arc and exploring the actual planet as much as I could. I think I hit a black wall then.
I like the exposition approach to it all: You start on a rather linear path, get to know all the intricacies of the overall story (but not too much fluff) - and then are catapulted into "the situation at hand". Although there is not THAT much content, the entire sandbox experience is exactly what I want from games like this. You can explore on your own, manage some gear, cultivate little story arcs (or not) and have generally some "fun" scientific discoveries. The implication to build (or avoid) "contamination/corruption/lewdness" is the key here - it implies further darker or lighter paths ahead. Plus the Village mystery box (and it's larger story).
Then there is the easy navigation (inside the ship) - what a nice hub for activities! In order to shorten this: You have certain game UI elements and design choices that are very nice and mature. The design is ambitious (even the story structure and where it leads), it must be rather hard to stick to the overall higher production quality. Which is my key issue with the game: You decided to switch the engine mid-game development. This has to be a rather hard uphill battle for you, maintaining both branches (effectively two games) AND developing each story content.
So these are my two cents from the top of my head. I'm intrigued, the story and design both lead you to expect a game I'm deeply rooting for. Cuz y'know, the "Anomaly Vaults" (NoodleJacuzzi's work) of this world are super fun and nice - but the story-heavy games are where this genre truly shines, for me at least. Hope this helps in any way. Take care and have a great week!
Thanks, it definitely helps :)
I decided to change the engine because I was getting burnt out of describing environmental details and thought via a 2d approach I can put more creativity into dialogues and scenes rather than describing how the yellow sun torches the soil underneath your feet.
However, the 2d game will diverge in terms of gameplay compared to the text game, the changes are described here https://www.patreon.com/posts/malevolent-77497184
I'm planning on making exploration more centric around the ship and hub areas, like the Citadel was in Mass Effect. Precisely what you said, you're not sure you've seen all there is to see, is what led me to think about some things. I was working a lot on developing content, but I had to hold the players' hands to actually get to see that content and I figured I went wrong somewhere.
Now, I think I know where I went wrong and that's why the 2d will diverge from the text game. Because I was also focusing on adding content to the open world village map, I also neglected focusing on the main story plot that would have had you repair your ship and fly out to space.
I hope the changes I'm making will be to your taste as well, since I'm always happy when I hear that someone liked something I did :)
I see (fumbles with his small goaty, while describing to himself how the sun reflects on every droplet of water in the area)... this makes a lot of sense. =)
Having given the patreon post a quick read, you write "and my lack of direction made me lose sight of my original goal for a while." - If this is how it happened, then you have made a rather valuable insight! Further on you say "It feels like this is what drew people into the game at first" - it absolutely was for me! The entire game oozes with ME-genes and the overall feeling of "let's establish ourselves here and utilize what we've got." Inside the players mind - the motivation to "help" or "explore" comes from the setting and the lewdness factor. There is one particular encounter I recall, some insane Flora that - through its' mere presence in the story, promises a deeper, darker theme in hiding.
So yeah, I wish you good luck in this endeavor - I'll have MP on my private webserver/nginx docker and it will stay there until the last HTML update arrives ^-^
I uhm... should go.
Edit: Please, for the love of all GPUs and coil whining, enable VSYNC in the Unity version ^-^ Have a gr8 day SugarMint