I really liked the concept for Death Stream and think it's core ideas are solid. It has well thought out rules and a good tutorial. One of it's strengths is also one of it's weaknesses though: luck. On any given play through you may have terrible luck or fantastic luck. I had times where I had multiple health injections available to me and was wearing a shield while other times I was killed within about 5 turns because it was all arrows and electrocutions. The main downside to Death Stream that affects many other parts is the lack of a save system. Once you eventually get lucky enough to get free of your locks you are put through a test of memory which if you fail means death. To further make that difficult the developer's interpretation of how many doors I unlocked was different from mine which meant a few times of dying and starting over before I got the hang of it. The next downside is the movement when you are walking around felt very unnatural and weird. Couple this with the fact that much of the later game involves movement and that if you fail this you die and start from the very beginning and it got very frustrating very fast. Add to all this that there is little to no story and there is little holding the game together outside of a good concept and rules. The game does give a good summary at the end showing your results as well as a tiny bit of lore but overall you are given little to no info. The graphics were decent enough. They seemed to be going for some kind of comic book or cell shaded style but to be fair the game takes place largely in one room so it is hard to judge the quality from that. The music was good and helped upped the tension, especially during wheel spins. I will also say that I liked how many different things could happen to you based off of the wheel spins.
I played Death Stream on Linux. The game never crashed and I didn't notice any bugs. I did notice five spelling errors though. Given that this is a game where you die often and repeat the same things over you will see these spelling errors frequently which makes them seem even worse. There was a resolution option but the drop down box was empty so I am not sure if this was intentional or a bug. There were no other graphics options. This included not having a v-sync option which meant that the game ran at crazy high frame rates and had much higher GPU usage then it should have based on graphical quality.
We Should Talk certainly has an interesting concept. I actually liked the way in which you craft responses and would like it if other visual novel type games would adapt it and build on it. It wasn't always perfect though. A few times I couldn't really find a suitable response to certain situations. It seemed liked the game was trying to force you to make a response that would inflame drama and conflict at certain points. The story overall lacked much meat to it. It is basically a short game where you are out at a bar. The game hints at possible issues in your relationship before and hints at flimsy endings but never really gives you much context or resolution. It just came off as really thin. There also didn't feel like I had much choice or control in the story despite the point of the mechanics being to change that. I also want to point out that I got one achievement which said I lied about talking to my ex which is weird because I mentioned them by name and Sam knew that this was my ex so if I used their name and my girlfriend knew that was my ex how did I lie ? Graphics wise the game had a decent style to it but at the same time it wasn't enough from feeling like it lacked either visual pop or texture detail. The music as good and lended to the bar atmosphere well but was a bit repetitive.
I played We Should Talk on Linux. It never crashed and I didn't notice any spelling errors or bugs. The game has one resolution option and one graphics setting. I did notice that every time I launched the game it would default to 1920x1080 and I would have to manually change it to 2560x1440, it did save my choice of Ultra though. The game didn't appear to have any save system. I tried exiting and going back in early on at different points and it always put me at the beginning of the game. This means that to see the possibility of any different dialog choices you have to replay the game in full. It is a short game but a manual save system would still have been nice. There is also no mouse support and you have to use the keyboard. There is also no v-sync option so the game runs at crazy high frame rates which pushes the GPU usage way higher than it needs to be. Performance was fine obviously given this issue.
Got my copy in case it's pulled. Love DRM free ! Looks interesting, good price, DRM free version, Linux version, made with a FOSS engine, checks enough boxes for this VN fan.
The store page has a logo indicating Linux support but the files in the demo folder just have the Windows .exe executable. Was the mistake checking the box for the Linux support or was the mistake not including the other executable ?
Thank you for being honest about not testing the Linux and Mac versions and for having a demo. The demo worked fine on my Linux systems so I bought it.
I would have to recommend in the future to find a different solution than Mega App for downloading the game. Because of the game's size I had to create an account with them because they won't allow Firefox to download that much. Even after creating the account they only allow 9.9 GB of data every so often unless you get a paid account. I started the download around 1:30 AM and it is now 10:27 AM but there is still another three hours before it will let me download the last 500 MB that I need for the game. I know that hosting on Itch wasn't an option as they only allow 1 GB for games but maybe there's some other option. With GOG accepting adult visual novels now maybe they're an option.
Congrats on the release. Don't forget to mark the main store page as "released" instead of "in development". People might think it's early access and pass on it.
Anybody else get weird options for resolutions ? I have two monitors, one at 2560x1440 and the other at 1920x1080. The 2560P one tops out at 1920x1440 when I launch the game and see the config screen and the other monitor tops out at 1400x1050. I'm playing the Linux version 2.6.6.
I see that it just lists a .zip folder for download. Is there a Linux and a Mac executable in that folder ? Been burned a few times lately where they list support for Linux and then just have a Windows executable.
While the dev may not officially support it I can verify for anyone interested that there is a Linux version that gets downloaded with the Windows version and it runs fine for me so far.
I enjoyed the demo enough to buy the game. I will credit you in that you give all instructions needed to solve the puzzles. You even give a good hint on this page saying "You'll need to think outside more than just the box". My only issue was that I didn't expect to think outside of the game as well. Don't get me wrong, I found it inventive and creative, I just wasn't expecting it. I didn't even use your full walk through, as soon as I saw the first bit I could see where your mind had been going and pieced together the rest. Kudos, now on to the full game I go.
I saw the following issue. "seems" should probably just be "seem". As in "You seem to be making friends". Not really an error as depending on the context and sentence "seems" can be correct.
The store page has a Linux and Mac logo indicating Linux and Mac support but the files available for download specifically say "Windows.zip" and the folder indeed only has a Windows executable. Was the mistake checking the box for the Linux and Mac support or was the mistake not including the other executables ?
The store page has a Linux logo indicating Linux support but the files available for download specifically say "BuildOsx.zip" which indicates a Mac version. Is there a Linux version ? Also why does the Linux or Mac version cost $0.05 more ?
I just thought I would mention that the name of the executable for the Linux version is "sarawak". It worried me at first because I thought that maybe Itch had downloaded me the wrong game but it does indeed launch We'll Always Have Paris. You may want to change that name though.
The store page has a Linux logo indicating Linux support but the files available for download specifically say "Princess Sword.exe" which indicates only a Windows executable. Is there a Linux version ?
The store page has a Linux and Mac logo indicating Linux and Mac support but the files available for download specifically say "Invention.exe" which indicates only a Windows executable. Is there a Linux version ?
