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(+9)(-5)

cool in concept but in reality it would appear almost everyone in the wyoming branch didn't want to make a haunted ps1 game at all, most of them are glorified cutscenes that lead to a choice almost to shove it onto another developer most of them don't even go for being "ps1" instead opting for sharp edged low poly unity games. Sadly almost the entirety of the actual meat for the game is in the kyoto branch writing off half of the project, I made sure to look through every branch from wyoming but none of them did anything interesting, cool, and definitely had a massive lack of writing.


I really do appreciate the kyoto branches though, a fair few of them try to be inventive and some of them do fall through but it seemed more out of a lack of time or want to really flesh out what they had rather than a lack of ability. kyoto itself had an interesting first person melee mechanic that was a cool proof of concept, there was the animal crossing like one that also seemed like  an experiment to make something like animal crossing which all of the props to them for that. I also really enjoyed the one where you go back to where you started that played with ambience and space rather than mechanics.


main issues: all of these were extremely short and bite sized segments that had little to nothing, almost all of these were working from the initial game which sets it up but it really breaks my heart that none of them wanted to deviate from this, they would all focus on the god of time, the antichrist as the main characters and try to set up twists and turns without the real time investment to do so. I'm sure the setup was just so there would be a plot device for everyone to set their own game in their own setting while easily being able to tie it back in, but instead of actually branching out, all of these games seemingly loop back into each other instead.


I think the main issues could've occurred due to a lack of time and pressure, only being able to work on a bite size thing for a buddy who's working on a large scale collaborative project and needing to also write something meaningful to that project means they can't work on a big scale project that they would personally be invested in and both their idea for a game and story suffer for it.


I would absolutely be extremely interested if another project was made that gave these devs as much time as they needed and if they had extra emphasis on being able to be as loose as they want to be with this game. I would hope though that if this happens there are a fair bit more people not to oversee everything but more because I think having a chaining sequence of haunted ps1 games and not trying to mess with it in a unique way seems like a lack of both potential and possible creativity, maybe linking multiple branches to unlock an extra haunted secret branch, 4th wall breaks, things like that. 


Most importantly this game has a majority based on psuedo ps1 games masquerading low quality for aesthetic without the tailoring done to make it actually fit, the story premise trying to leave everything as open as possible instead made everything a christian mythos inspired matrix parody instead of something that could've been unique.


AGAIN I really do love this concept put together but I would be much more interested in another try at this with more foresight. Thank you for making this regardless.

(+8)(-5)

Nah

(+10)(-15)

You can give all the caveats you like with 'again, i really love the concept' and 'thank you for making this' but at the end of the day you went out of your way to leave a lengthy negative review on something that is free you absolute total muppet.

(+13)(-1)

I went out of my way to criticize something that I now care about, making me care about something is a plus but that doesn't mean it was great, I want to leave criticism to make anything else they do better. Assuming that the people that made this won't go on to do anything else would be depressing, I want everyone who made this to know what was good and bad about what they made for anything they work on in the future.

(+4)

Yeah i'm sorry I was in a bad mood : ( I'll delete my comment later..

(+7)

oh no worries you can leave it, I get heated all the time ,>_<

(1 edit) (+4)(-1)

i know what you're saying, and you're not wrong with the points you make but; to make a project like this feasible, let alone *fun* to make, you need to give individual devs some liberty. i tried my best to strain away from too much direction and let things develop naturally, a lot of people in the wyoming branch did focus on doing more narrative stuff, but I think that's the magic of a project / experiment like this. as the organiser for the project, every small bit of constraint you add makes for a lot more opportunities where things can fall apart. this was already a lot of work, i can't imagine the amount of work it would be to also *direct* every single game.

what i'm saying is, it's already a miracle this even worked out as flawlessly as it did. managing more than 50 devs to make a thing like this happen is hard!! quite simply, the project you are describing is not possible as a free collaboration, that would be a full-time job for multiple people, would not be as fun to make for the devs, and would most certainly not be free :-)

(+2)(-2)

Oh absolutely, I would love to pay money for a project bigger than this that goes smoothly, I only left this comment in the first place more out of frustration. I don't like leaving reviews and especially not for something that wasn't for me, but if i play something that I didn't like but had all the puzzle pieces I just really want to see it go further.

(+3)(-2)

A project of this scale with this many people that is monetised is insane, and borderline not feasible...

(+8)

I think these are a fair critiques and they pick up on tensions that have always been in play with these large collaborative projects. - I'd say generally what you point out as negatives are areas where developer comfort and interest have been prioritized over the player's experience. This is not an accident, but an intentional decision, although the consequence is this opens us up for obvious critique when the player experience is lacking.

In the end, these collabs are a bit more like game jams than full projects with strong directions, and that's intentional. I think it's a good sign these projects are at the point they are judged with high expectations, rather than treated as oddities. It shows that the collabs ARE getting more cohesive and compelling, although there's always room to improve. In the end, I think Chain2 was structurally and thematically more successful than Chain1 as a whole. I'm excited to see how we can improve the next collab using what we learned here.

We are listening and reading everything. All player feedback, good and bad, goes into consideration the next time around.

(+1)

well put colter!!!