Hey Pol,
Thank you so much for taking the time to play and write such a thoughtful and detailed comment. It means a lot!
I saw your submission "Rise of Viktor Orban" in the feed too and the screenshots look incredible and I can't wait to play it!
To answer your excellent points:
- You've hit on a lot of the exact quality-of-life features that I unfortunately had to cut to make the submission deadline. Things like an undo last connection feature and a dedicated on-screen button to switch views were all on my initial list, and they will definitely be in a future public build.
-You're also right about the controls for moving the nodes. I couldn't quite get the overlap and right-click functionality working stably in the time I had, so I opted for the click-and-drag to move and hold-to-connect scheme to ensure it was functional. That will be one of the first things I refine post-jam. And haha, you caught me on the corkboard texture, it's literally a temporary sandpaper texture I used as a placeholder to test functionality. All the aesthetics will be getting overhauled moving forward.
-Your suggestion for the tutorial box is very helpful. Having previous/next buttons is much more user-friendly, especially since some of the text can go by quickly. I've added that to my list of improvements.
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Your last point is the most important one, and something I should probably explain better on the page itself. You mentioned not being sure why certain links were correct or how good your score was, and that's actually the core of the intended experience!
Unlike a lot of detective games, my goal was to avoid any visual hints or correct/incorrect feedback on the connections themselves, (which is a difficult choice since game design usually requires some sort of visual feedback to the player). I wanted to instead fully emulate the feeling of a real investigation, where there are no pop-ups or glowing lines telling you you're on the right path. The challenge is designed to be purely intellectual, it requires you to read the documents and form your own logical chains based on what you think is relevant. You can connect anything to anything and get a score, but only the connections that are logically sound (based on the game's hidden scoring system) will build a strong argument and a high score.
In the real world, the only way we know we're right is when the facts line up, and that's a subjective feeling we have to trust until the full true picture emerges. My hope was to create a system where the player has to trust their own reasoning to find the objective truth of the case, just by reading and connecting the dots themselves.
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Again, thank you for the fantastic, in-depth feedback. It's super valuable for the future of the project. Best of luck with your game in the jam too! It looks amazing and I can't wait to play it once it's public!