Hey there! I know we've got the discord now, but I'm posting here for visibility (and also hopefully so any interested parties scrolling by can hear about how cool this game is 0_0). Been playing loads with 0.39 (excited for the QOL in 0.310/11, which I just downloaded), and had some more thoughts/comments!
Compliments: The New perk system remains as cool as I thought it was when I first got my hands on it, even all these hours later. Not sure, but it feels like the armor changes (and possibly some enemy balance passes? That's what it felt like, but balance can be deceiving) have put the early game in a much better spot, and made the whole game overall a little less feast/famine (either die early, or get geared and go far). I also got to spot some new enemies that I'd never seen before, having been able to engage in overland travel this time trough the rocky mountains and snowy tundra south of the main spawn cluster! It's cool that after all this time, there's still new stuff to run into! While at first I thought straight backpack upgrades might be a bit much, the exponentially scaling costs and much simpler implementation have thoroughly proven me wrong on that front! Progression for inventory feels clean and natural, and allowing the player to start with chests in their inventory makes managing your early loot feel much, much better! Finally, the color-coding on the text window to the left has worked wonders for readability with respect to events, I seriously can't say how much that little change has made me much more aware of the world around me!
But foremost of all, I wouldn't even be able to sing all of these praises if it weren't for the substantial improvements to performance. I've made it all the way from Oldbridge to Azuremouth with no drop in performance I could even notice, and that's saying something on a laptop that could barely run slay the spire (the first one)!
The game seems to be in a really, really good spot right now. So pat yourself on the back, get some hard-earned rest, and really take the chance to be proud of all you've accomplished. It's a Marathon, not a sprint, and you're on really good track.
I had a few thoughts on some things from my most recent playthrough, mostly with regards to the perk system, for your perusal to help you out when you're feeling refreshed!
Perks - all in all pretty cool, and I think the different guilds are a unique take on having different playstyles in game that aren't just the classic fantasy archetypes. Seriously, it's taking tremendous effort not to turn this into an essay. With all that said, I noticed a couple of things which may be intended or not:
- It'd be cool to have a way and look at our history of not just perk selections, but also what we rolled and what our current terroir perks are. Not just a track record of our journey, but also fruitful information for seeing where our character's at and where we wanna head with them. It would also make giving feedback on this system easier in the future, as I must admit I've forgotten much of what I've rolled.
What's been too common to forget, however, is how easy it is to pick up the +2% Wanderer's Evasion perk. "The roads themselves have become your teacher" more times on my characters than I can count, even when I'm not traveling nor using roads. It would make sense to have some perks be more common than others, but this one in particular has to be like half my rolls. Making it take a longer journey, or having it reward you for specifically traveling on roads, might be a way to alleviate this. Likewise, It's kind of hard to pick up the perks that aren't either the evasion travel perk or the biome perks - I can spend a whole night in and out of my shelter killing mobs, or delve an entire dungeon, and still have only managed to trigger the +damage perk once. Finally, while it's likely an incomplete picture given how much of early game is spent in the plains compared to other biomes, I'm not sure how common enemy elemental damage is - perhaps it's more common than I've thought it is, and I haven't been able to tell? As a result, rolling an elemental resist perk seems a little feels bad. Again, that could easily be a matter of perception rather than actuality - if the game has more elemental damage to the player than I'm seeing, maybe that needs to be more visible? Finally, there's a pretty substantial overlap between the different guilds in practice when I'm picking guild perks. I've almost never seen the hardened guild's damage perk, but I've seen plenty of Life Steal and armor - things I've also rolled plentifully from other guilds. Some of this is by design I imagine - some stats are important, and some are powerful - you wanna make sure that players are rolling the important ones often enough and the powerful ones rarely enough. Still, while it could be a result of limited trials and me needing more repetition, from where I'm sitting at least it looks like the weights could use some fine-tuning.
Finally, a couple of thoughts on things other than the perk system:
Dominion Soldiers seem to be spawning on later nights rather than ending my runs early now, and it looks like their building damage is much more manageable now - whether that's cause I'm later in the game or because it's been tuned I can't say. That being said, raids seem to be spawning in pairs - usually two delayed waves of soldiers - and even though I've been on the move, they've been coming for my base just about every night. Not the end of the world and certainly not urgent, but figured you should know.
There seemed to be some weirdness involving supply quests - at first I thought it was that it wasn't detecting crafted materials, but I was able to turn some in on my most recent 0.39 save, so it might just have to do with feedback on making them.
All in all, with every update to this game I've found much more to love and much fewer rough edges - It's been evident every step of the way this has been a labor of love.
Lastly, I saw that 0.11 seemed to have borked something with saves, and you reverted the download to 0.10. I can confirm that the reversion works. I know you're likely mortified, but stuff like this happens to the best of us - especially on one man projects. Don't lose heart; Rest up, take a deep breath, and come back with fresh eyes and a refreshed spirit in a little bit. This community loves the work you've done, and we're excited for what this game has in store - we're not going anywhere.
All that said, just wanna reiterate - seriously well done. Not just on the most recent updates, but everything this game has gotten to do so far.
Bird Iron
Recent community posts
Rapid-fire Replying to myself because as soon as I read the comments and booted the game I remembered some stuff my ADHD ass is inevitably gonna forget:
Save issues: Looks like it's not just me, but the issue is most pronounced on lower-end hardware. Just saw Squirrels's comment.
Enemies not dying: Another thing that has sometimes triggered it is having enough walls/structures built causes enemies in the enclosure to stand still - I noticed this when I built walls around the starting town on one of my saves in 0.34 to protect them from the dominion, and I saw many of the ghosts, frogs, etc just... stand there and eat hits, even out in the open. Just saw something possibly similar happen with a wraith in my save, which made me think of it.
Compliments to: The cheese magic system. Seriously, the fact that casting the spell lets you specialize and get some perks is super cool, and makes the magic of terroir feel not just like drawing power out of the land, but out of cultivating your own relation to it! Would love to see the concept expanded on, maybe through like affinage, or perks of some kind? Come to think of it, Terroir is also heavily associated with wine... Similarly, casts are often pretty limited and inventory can be hard to manage - maybe like a utility belt slot, where you can hold some smaller wedges? Or even like profession tailored pouches, (E.G. Caster's pouch, gatherer's pouch, hunter's pouch, etc) which can help you hold specific kinds of gear? Backpacks seem a little impractical and are probably already covered by pack animals, but having some playstyle-specific utility could be cool. Just spitballing though, and for all my Ideas, I've found even more pleasure being surprised by the things I wasn't even expecting every update, so above all take care of yourself and keep creating the game you love, and I'll be happy to taste the samples!
Hello! Wanted to check in and comment. Haven't had as much time to playtest all the new updates, but I have a handful of things I've noticed:
Current to 0.37 confirmed:
Enemies Not dying: Still around, though cases are notably reduced. I think I've found the key though, it most commonly occurs when I (the player) am standing on a door or floor!
Early dominion raids:
Dominion raids are here, and even early game they're pretty brutal! I've had them pop up as early as day one in the starting town. I think around 0.34 I remember reading something about the requirements being like moving 85 tiles from spawn? My information is poorly recollected, and probably flawed in some way, but I will note that in the grand scheme of things, 85 tiles is not a lot. Depending on where your starting town is and whether you have enough wood to chop near your starting campfire/water, it's really easy to hit that by like mid-morning day 1. Though the early raids aren't spawning siege ogres anymore, they soldiers they send tear down my walls fast enough on their own - Usually they've broken through my wood walls by the time I've stepped like 5 tiles. I also don't know how scouts tie into raids (if they do at all), but IF they do then I've found its actually easier to avoid being raided later than it is earlier. Admittedly, haven't had the chance to build a homestead, so that might be a factor here.
Likewise, while I know there's supposed to be a text warning when they're coming, I don't think I've noticed it. The flavor window with text on the left side has so much passing by all at once, that its easy for any given thing to get lost! Maybe there should be color-coded text for different events? Like red for raids/danger, blue for look/tutorial text, and green for weather or something? Just spitballing, but might improve visibility and readability.
I'm also still having my saves sieze up and freeze ocassionally, but while I might have some insight I think ultimately it's a hardware issue on my end - Don't see too many others having the issue to this extent, and my computer almost crashed when I tried to stream Shattered Pixel Dungeon to a friend, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Don't worry about fixing it for me (depending on just how screwed my hardware is, might not even possible), but I can still provide some insights to see if there's small inefficiencies you wanna tackle - at the very least, others might have a smoother experience! For what it's worth, I think it might have something to do with how world data is saved - every time now, it happens after exploring a certain portion of the world map (usually just after reaching a tier 2 city and hunting for a tier 3), and it appears that having a lot of items spawned in at once from having a full inventory and picking fights seems to exacerbate it. Probably small on other systems, but figured I'd bring it up!
Haven't had a chance to test farming changes yet, though I'm excited for them! When I was on 0.34 or 5, I couldn't get my farm plots to be watered by water barrels nearby, but I noticed a lot of the changes had to do with homesteads and farms in one of the more recent patches, and figured I'd pitch in that I actually haven't really set up a homestead yet! With the amount of stuff in tier 3 cities (particularly, certain NPCs and goods) It's really worthwhile to have one in walking distance, and while I've set up larger bases before hitting the road, at the end of the day I still ultimately end up hitting the road and trying for a T3 city, which is quite the journey. Maybe there could be smaller, less stocked, lower ranking NPCs similar to the T3 ones in T2 towns, selling a smaller inventory for higher prices? Like, instead of a healer or priest, you can find a monk or medicine man who can sell some low-tier consumables, and like maybe an affineur's nose at a high markup? just an example, but I've found usually by the time I've journeyed to a T3 settlement, the enemies are dropping rinds.
Which I think also brings me to early game gear and curses. First, glad to finally meet the skeletons! I've been wondering where the hell they were since there were still only a handful of dungeons and I was still getting quests to kill them lol. Are they supposed to drop bones? I collected a recipe in my last playthrough for the bonepicker set, but could never find the mats to craft it.
As for gear, identification, and curses, I have a couple of thoughts. First thing's first, cursed gear is auto-equipped on pickup if you have nothing in the slot, same as regular gear. Usually not an issue, but I've accidentally equipped a cursed item or two in the early game specifically because I had nothing in the slot to start with and it was one of the first pieces of gear I picked up. Maybe having just like, some workman's wraps, a farmer's cap, and some simple statless jewelry to start? What's more, I know Affineur's nose is probably meant to help identify cursed equipment, but at least in my playthroughs it's always started dropping AFTER I've already equipped at least one or two pieces of cursed gear. Early game you kind of need every spare scrap of stats you can get, so you're inevitably going to put on the first thing you see, curse be damned. Likewise, while I was initially motivated to travel to t3 cities by curses and rumors of healers, I've found that purging rinds generally begin to start dropping before I've even gotten there. I know they're part of the roguelike experience (and from the roguelikes I've played closest to the original rogue, if I had to hazard a guess they're probably featured in the original Rogue, so I'm really interested in seeing curses preserved as part of the game, but right now they're more an annoying thing that happens sometimes, rather than anything I feel like I can play around nor something I'm super punished for. I'm sure there's interesting gameplay buried in there though, and I'm keen to see it!
Anways, I initially intended this to be short, but I'm about as long winded as usual. Hope some of this helps. Every update the game is shaping up more and more, and it's in a state now where I'm safely recommending it to some friends, so I'm happy to see it keep growing!
Hello again! New update is looking super good. Haven't had a chance to test the performance after lots of overland travel, but even 0.34 was running remarkably better!
The biggest reason I haven't had as much chance to test long overland travel sessions is because 0.33 actually really dramatically changed how I play in some pretty interesting ways! Gonna keep this short and sweet to the best of my ability!
In essence, the changes to overland travel which made exploration easier actually incentivized me to stick around my local area and explore a lot more! I actually died a lot more in the early game, not because the game was harder on paper, but because I was getting cocky - I'd assumed I was safe, till I was knee deep in the wilds and I wasn't! Couldn't help but laugh - this made exploring the wilderness feel a lot more like survival and less like battling across the roads from one town to the next! This is compounded by the fact that travelling is easier, and inventory management is a lot cleaner - meaning even before I've gotten my hands on a pack animal, It's a lot easier to move stuff from one location to the next. In other words, I'm not nearly as stuck with a given base as I used to be.
Dungeons have also been a great addition, they're fun to find and the rewards have made staying in an area and delving into them before rushing off to the biggest city I can travel to a lot more rewarding.
All-in-all, an excellent batch of updates, and the game's in a much more playable, stable, and enjoyable state for the long term. Will get back to you maybe tomorrow or the day after once I've had some more time to test, but in the meantime just wanna say job well done as always. The game is still truly a treasure.
Update super late at night: Got pretty far into a run this time around, got to actually see a city! Unfortunately, it still appears that whatever issue is causing the game to sieze up and load super slowly for me is still present. It's super odd - it was initially happening in certain outdoor spaces, but then I entered a tavern and when I exited it was normal again. Then I went exploring to try and complete some quests for the local villagers, and it seized up as I revealed more of the world map and traveled west. The game seemed... better behaved now that there have been some optimizations to the pink "item" placeholders spawning (although I did weirdly see a couple after cutting down some trees, entering a tavern, reloading the game, and exiting). Maybe it has to do with how the game handles loading entities on the world map? This time it occurred particularly near a field of flowers, while I was cutting trees with a full-ish inventory and therefore spawning a lot of items, and in the aforementioned tavern.
Asides that, most of the issues I mentioned in my last comment seem fixed, although I still had some trouble finding the "mountain springs" added in 0.32 and the issues with cursed items remain. Likewise, certain enemies still retain their infinitely killable behavior while standing on top of certain furniture - I think it was a bed or chair when I last encountered it?
Overall, good progress, still super stoked about the game!
Edited because I left in the morning while I was in the middle of writing this, and came back to see an update only an hour ago! Comments pertain to 0.31 - if it's already been fixed, then my bad! at the very least, hopefully it helps you get a bigger picture.
Hello Again! Hope you're well. Back again with some fresh bug reports, gameplay thoughts, and assorted musings. I'm a huge fan so far, and hope you're taking breaks and taking care of yourself so that developing this game is as positive an experience for you as playing it has been for me! I'm going to attempt to be thorough so that my feedback can be as helpful as possible, so apologies in advance if I'm long winded. Do not mistake the length of this comment for any amount of disappointment on my part, but rather thorough passion and appreciation for the work you've put in!
Bugs:
All of my playtime so far has been in adventure mode, on the downlaoded version for windows 10.
- Still encountering the issue with saves eventually seizing up:
It appears to have something to do with how the game is rendering/calculating the overworld - the game runs just fine when I'm not moving, then chugs as soon as I load the save. Stops chugging once it loads the world and I stand still, then chugs again once I attempt to move. Tends to happen once I've done a certain amount of moving on the overworld map, though in previous versions it was also happening if there were a lot of pink "item" spawns from fighting at a full inventory and traveling. Hitting "New Game" instantly fixes the issue, albeit at the cost of my current save. Is there any way I can locate the save and send it to you to help you out? I've tried disabling/enabling windows's optimizations for windowed games as well as hardware-scheduled GPU acceleration, and it made no difference. Willing to admit it could possibly be a hardware issue, but while I'm not super hardware savvy I don't think it is - task manager isn't showing a lot of strain on my GPU/CPU/Memory, and I wouldn't expect as much from this game. I'm also more than happy to test the browser version to see if I can reproduce it sometime today.
-Possibly related; village jank in 0.32:
Super happy with the changes to villagers, they feel much more alive and I'm glad I can visit a new settlement without the guards deciding to -1 me out of town! I will comment that performance in and around villages has been a little bit worse, and sometimes villagers are getting stuck in the walls of their settlements. I've had success getting them out by talking to them - causing them to phase out of the wall and me into it. Overall, a marked improvement to settlements, more than happy to wait to see it polished!
-Dominion Sieges being unable to destroy structures in adventure mode: Can confirm Tobacoos's report that Dominion sieges can't destroy structures. While they can damage the health bar of a given structure, once that bar reaches zero the structure remains standing, and the healthbar often appears to reset. I'm of a couple of minds on this - on the one hand, sieges being able to destroy settlements is obviously intended design, and a basic wooden shack probably shouldn't be invulnerable to their assaults. On the other, early game is a punishing experience as is, and the ability to safely sleep through nights has been very important to a lot of the overland travel I've been doing. Likewise, I shudder to think of what will happen to the small, wooden settlements I visit on my way to the big cities once sieges start spawning.
-Possibly related; Phasing enemies inside of walls appear to be unkillable: As of 0.31, it appears that enemies such as ghosts, wraiths, etc which can phase into walls have unlimited health while phased into walls. While I can damage them and even get their drops from "killing" them, they remain in the wall and will continue fighting me. What's more, their healthbars appear to reset just like the walls do - leading to an exploit where one can infinitely farm item drops from a ghost in a wall. Walking away from the wall and killing them fixes the issue.
-Cursed Items:
A couple of things up with cursed Items. First, I've struggled to remove the curses using purging rinds dropped from mobs in the world - despite being told to "select an item to remove the curse" by the dialogue box on the left side of the screen, my inventory instantly closes upon using the rind, and hovering over the items or clicking them doesn't seem to do anything. Is it supposed to be similar to Affineur's Nose, where eligible items are highlighted and you can click to identify them? Likewise and also likely unintended, reforging cursed items removes the curse, providing an inexpensive way to cleanse curses in the early game. I'm of two minds on this one as well - being able to get rid of cursed items this way, especially with purging rinds being harder to come by from world drops until later days and with churches being something I haven't even seen yet, has been a boon to my playthroughs. However, I'm almost certain it's unintended, and reading in the game guide that larger towns have churches that can remove curses was a big part of my motivation to try and reach them for the first time in the first place!
Gameplay:
The core gameplay is very satisfying, which is part of why I've been so happy to stick around despite needing to reset my save every so often! I'm excited to see what the future holds once I can get settled into a long run.
Water, campfires, and overland travel:
Overland travel has been what I've spent a lot of my time doing, and I'm quite fond of exploring the world you've crafted. That being said, while the core is satisfying, it has some growing to do. The biggest thing is water - Before I attempt to journey from one settlement to the next, I usually fill one of my hotbars and 2/3rds of my inventory with water. Even still, I often find myself running out of water partway through the journey. I think there are a couple of culprits - first, while roads give a boost to movement speed, overland travel involves fighting enough mobs that I still end up bogged down. If I can't travel along a lake or river, I can basically count on running out of water at some point, and I usually plan my routes around bodies of water before I plan them around the roads. This is all on foot - I haven't gotten late enough into the game to use ships yet due to the aforementioned save issues. I think this could be alleviated with maybe a slight increase in the amount waterskins can hold to help save inventory space (like 1 or at most 2 uses would do the trick), as well as some easier water to find in the overworld. Some scarcity should be expected, but the frontier is teeming with water and wildlife - surely some small lakes, puddles, or tributaries should be a little more common. As things stand right now, I don't find water unless I'm at a river or lake marked on the world map, or by the starting puddles.
Similarly, Placing campfires with some degree of frequency becomes an absolute necessity after a certain amount of traveling on the road. It doesn't matter if I'm geared enough to 1-2 shot wyverns and endure a huge amount of hits, the fact of the matter is fighting them requires me to waste my already scarce water and time. This is even more true if I've run out of water and don't have a weapon with lifesteal - at that point, campfires every 50 or 100 tiles are the only thing keeping me alive.
I don't necessarily think the idea of resource scarcity in overworld travel is a bad idea - quite the opposite. But I've found that rather than methodically plan my routes and manage my resources, I've sort of resorted to accepting that travelling overland is racing against the clock - mobs, water, campfires, and my limited inventory space. Rather than slow down and explore the world or hunt or forage for supplies, I tend to blitz along the roads and rivers and pray when I have to bushwhack. I think that fewer, slightly tougher daytime overworld spawns might be better suited to the exploration adventure mode wants to focus on. One wyvern or bear being able to easily KO me once I got far enough wasn't necessarily the issue, it was the fact that at 150-200 tiles, I have a dozen of the former and handful of the latter breathing down my neck. Likewise, holding more water would be good, but it would be even better if we had better access to it in the overworld and better tools for finding it - maybe a dowsing rod, or a way to dig for it or get it from rain or trees. Finally, as a stretch goal/wild idea, I think it would be cool to have a small equivalent to the boats for traveling on roads - like a wagon or pack animals. This could help alleviate the inventory issues, incentivize exploration, and give players more reason and means to move around.
Farming - Moving some of the stuff from homestead to farm was a great start - it means if I want to play agriculturally early, I can, and it got me to try some of those systems! Unfortunately, A couple of things could use some tweaking. As of now, I couldn't find a way to destroy/demolish farm structures as opposed to regular ones. Furthermore, while I was able to find seeds and plant them, and place and fill a water barrel, I had no idea how to water my crops! I tried placing them next to water barrels, bumping them with waterskins in my inventory, placing them next to water, and even waiting for rain, and couldn't seem to get the ground to be anything other than dry! Could be I'm missing something, but if so, that means a lot of other people are likely missing it too.
General Musings: I actually have some background in Philosophy of food, and I have to admit that the notion of a world where Terroir is literal magic is part of what has kept me so hooked. I don't know what your exposure to the concept is, and I'll admit mine is mostly academic, but that's probably one of the most intriguing and exciting things about this game. Terroir as I understand it encompasses not just the land, but also the cultures and traditions of cultivating that land and the people who live on it - how they interact with and form each other. I've also heard efforts to preserve Terroir, however, used to push away people whose food supposedly does not match the land or its traditions. The example that comes to mind was an article explaining how at-the-time recent French laws about Terroir and street food had negatively impacted the businesses of immigrants. An example closer to my home is the chili pepper; it has been grown in my home for centuries and part of our food for just as long, but the land is far older than centuries - the chili pepper itself is an immigrant. But we are formerly a spanish colony, and before that inhabited by native peoples, and many of us do not technically "originally" belong to this land either, despite having been here for generations.
All that is to say, Terroir and its relation to ecology, economy, and politics are an extroardinarily ripe subject, especially for a game like this. Likewise, Magic is literally power - an abstraction of spiritual beliefs, cultural practices, and the abilities of people to change the world. I've only heard the peasants of your game speak of the Terroir, how it runs deep in these lands. I'm excited to see what the nobles, guilds, and scholars think, and how they wield it, use it, and misuse it for their own ends.
That being said, I only have ever even heard the word "Terroir" due to having an academic background where it was relevant. I doubt any of my peers would even know what it meant. At best, they might know it's why we have to call it "sparkling wine" if it's not made in Champagne, France. At worst, they'd probably assume you misspelt "terror." I think having a primer on Terroir in the game guide, and maybe even a small introduction to it or loading screen tips about it in game, might be a big help so that others can see just how interesting the concept for this world really is, and enable them to engage with the setting all the more.
Long-winded comments concluded, I'm genuinely having a blast with everything I've seen so far. I'm excited for what this game has in store, and more than happy to see it grow. The game is in need of polishing and finishing - aging. But the authenticity, passion, and craft present within it - its Terroir - is palpable, and if it is magic then I find myself thoroughly charmed.
Honestly, the core game is fun enough that the patience is well worth it! Figured I'd pitch in, just now it seems like I ran into a couple of issues:
Good news, I finally made it to a settlement beyond the starting area! Bad news, the guards seemed to want to kill me on sight! I had neutral reputation with the faction, and I could still talk to them and even accept quests normally, but for some reason whenever they saw me around they decided to bump into me and deal some -1s. Figured it was time to hit the road again!
After another day of travelling, it looks like my save became unloadable. Before that happened, it was seizing up and freezing, taking a long time to load changes to structures like building a campfire - but loading things like shooting mobs pretty quickly. Not sure what the bottleneck was, but figured you'd like to know!
I'm sure hearing this project is running into issues like this probably sucks somewhat, it looks like you're working really hard and actively developing it. All I can say is I'm grateful for the game, and whatever time you have dedicated and continue to dedicate to it! This is honestly a super cool project that scratches a one-of-a-kind itch, and It's been well worth the time I've spent on it!
Heya! Saw the update last night and was super stoked to see this game is in active development! Still haven't made it to a second town yet, but getting there! My GPU is dying and this is one of a few games this computer can run anymore lol.
So far, all I can comment is that switching around items in my quickslots is wonky. For example, when I eat all my bread, it automatically puts lactic culture there... and I can't put bread back in the slot without selling the lactic culture!
The PDF guide is super helpful and has given me a lot to look forward to once I can finally manage to survive the journey to a new settlement. Best of luck with the game!
Hey! I'm pretty new to finding games on Itch, but I created an account just cause I wanted to comment on your game!
TL;DR: I had a blast being tricked in to writing fanfiction about "The Witcher" while simultaneously barely knowing anything about "The Witcher!" I'd highly recommend the game to anyone willing to try it out, if they either have some prior knowledge or are willing to look up some terms on the wiki.
I finished a session just today, after a LOT of hours. I ended up being way longer-winded than I anticipated and had ended up writing about 20 pages of narrative for the journaling component of this game! Someone more willing to write fewer than four or five paragraphs based on a single flip of a card would probably enjoy this game in a much shorter time, but I still had a blast!
Something I noticed in hindsight was that the game was very flexible in a lot of the details, both when it came to gameplay and when it came to narrative. I think part of this has to do with the flexibility inherent in Cat McDonald's and Peach Garden Games's Carta SRD, which leaves many of the parts of the game —particularly the pacing of the journaling segments— up to the discretion of the player.
That being said, you also carried much of that spirit in The Path's DNA. Something I appreciated is that the game didn't tell me a lot about when exactly in the Witcher Saga's timeline it took place, and it also didn't have a lot of specifics about who the mentors were, what the gods were, what the monsters were, etc. This meant that players like myself have a lot of flexibility not only with regards to how much detail they fill out, but when and where in the Witcher Saga their Path will take place. This flexibility also extended to the journaling segments. leaving the player to write the most about the things which catch their eyes about the world of the Witcher.
Likewise, many of the prompts did a great job of giving just enough information to direct play and give the player something to work with without answering all the questions for them. In fact, the questions the prompts do ask are excellently written. I agree with the other commenter that I found myself looking up some of the terms I wasn't familiar with, but it ended up being the case that these details helped me think about how to tie my character to the world and the information which I had been provided. By the end, I felt like I could believe that my character could exist in the world of the Witcher, which is a very hard feeling to get right in a rules-lite system.
The game is excellent, and I look forward to more! I wish you well on your future endeavors.