itch.io

I think I've finished what's available now. I found Alice's ring and helped Vlada, so now all I can do is the repeatable quests. Will save files still work with new builds when they are released? Or will each build require starting over? I'm debating if I want to spend any time grinding the repeatables for money, collecting recipes, furnishing the house, and increasing stats and perks, but if the save won't work that there's no point.

The story so far seems to mostly just be mystery. I don't know how long you intend the full game to be, but this basically feels like a prologue (which makes sense for a demo). As I understand it the story is: 

• You don't know who you are
• You were attacked by *someone*
• Dead animals are being found in unexplainable conditions
• Some supernatural evil is causing people to disappear and leaving nothing but death and rot across the land in it's wake
• *someone* is leaving traps in the woods
• Vlada has also been attacked by *someone*
• These 3 *someone*s may or may not be the same people
• The supernatural evil, dead animals, and *someone*s may or may not be connected
• You may or may not have a connection to and/or a bigger role to play in everything as your memories return.
• Everyone is horny. So horny

If you plan for everything to be connected then I can see potential for an interesting story there. If it's not connected then it's too much, and you should focus the story more. The main problem, I think, is the pacing. It's just so slow. I don't know how many hours it took to run out of things to do, but I can tell that with this pace a fully fleshed out story may end up being a 100+ hour epic, which is difficult to do for even a whole studio. here's my opinion:

Problem: Buying a house takes way too long. Saving up 15 Denga takes hours, and while doing so it disincentivizes the player from spending money on other things.It makes it feel bad to buy food, or repair equipment, or other necessary things. Then when you get the house it's a bit of a disappointment. It's just a stove with no tools and a hay bale bed. Sure, the comfort level and effectiveness of sleep is better, but it just doesn't feel worth the time and effort it took to get it. 

Suggestion: Don't charge for the house. Forget about the bench and campfire in the middle of town. Say it's in exchange for helping them out, and that you can pay it off slowly by working. Use that as a reasoning for some quest rewards seeming small.

Problem: Get the plot started faster. You get the main story quest "Fog in the Head" right at the start then it doesn't get updated for hours.  By the time the merchant came and said to investigate where I was attacked my first thought was "Uh.. Where was I attacked? Did they tell me? It's been so long I don't remember." 

Suggestion: Have him come sooner. On the second or third day, maybe. Him being there doesn't hurt the progression of the story with the other characters, so why not? If you don't want him to be there permanently from that early on then make use of your day/night cycle. Have him come once a week, maybe, then once the world opens up and you can go to other villages you become able to go visit him where he lives. Alternatively, there's another empty house. Maybe he leaves Brynja at the village to help you and also keep an eye on you to make sure you keep your end of the deal to help him.

Aside from those two things, having more show don't tell for the story would be nice. People are finding mutilated animals? OK, so have at least one somewhere in the woods for the player to find. Some evil is causing everything to rot? OK, have some portion of an area that is dead, though with the size of the world right now I can see not wanting to put that too close to the village. People are being attacked? OK, have the body of a victim somewhere for the player to find. Make them think "That could have been me... I should thank Shaartan again."

Some other things that go nowhere right now:

The bathhouse. You fix it up, get one scene, then never think about it again. All that's in it is a normal stove. It should serve a purpose. Something like letting the player visit the bathhouse to recover some health, or get a buff of some kind, but in exchange the passage of time while there makes you lose daylight you could have been doing something else in, you get hungry, and with the sauna making you sweat you need water.

Lockpicking. I finally decided to make a save in front of a lock with picks ready and said I would keep reloading until I got it. Eventually I did manage to do it. The problem is, as far as I can tell there are 5 locked buildings and no other locks in the game right now. 3 of those 5 you can get keys to (warehouse, bathhouse, and the house you buy), so I wondered about the other two. Once I managed to pick the locks I found... Nothing. They are completely empty. You should really have something in there as a reward for being able to get in.

Gloves. This feels like such a no brainer, no offense. One of the first things you do in the game is collect nettle, and you are told that you should use gloves because it's prickly and does indeed cause a small amount of damage when you collected it bare handed. There are no gloves in the game.

And in closing, a random meaningless thought I had while playing:

I climbed a mountain because it was there.

I got bit when I hand-fed a bear.

I met a centaur and wondered...

It goes where?

Also, seeing a normal human height centaur with a miniture pony sized body gave me a good laugh. Nothing wrong with it, just unexpected.

Discord add sent, too. I'm phantomearth there.

Sounds like you've got a lot of good stuff in the works.

For the bathhouse bug, it's when you have enough charisma to offer her a massage. I've tried twice now and it happened both times, so maybe it is something specific to my hardware/software configuration that doesn't happen on yours? Not sure what to tell you, sorry.

Speaking of the bathhouse. I was curious to see how the censoring worked so I had it turned on. When I got to the point that the bathhouse was ready it just said "Turn off censor to begin act", but when I turned it off I had no way to go back and start the scene (or I couldn't figure it out, if there is a way). For every other scene just cutting it out is fine, but there is dialogue with some important plot that takes place in the bathhouse, so I would recommend coming up with a way to make sure players with censorship on still get that information.

For auto-saving, yeah, something like after each quest, or just on a timer every 15 minutes or something. It only needs to be one save that overwrites itself each time. I learned my lesson and have started hitting quick save often while periodically deleting the old ones to free up space, but something to limit how much progress is lost if you forget to save would be nice. I know some games make it an option that you can disable, in case a player wants to have the more challenging experience without the auto-save safety net.

I was curious about the things hidden behind stats so I tried making a character with 1 point each in str, end, and agi and 8 points each in per, int, and chr. I gotta say, having the feedback to show your actions matter makes the game feel a lot better. You may want to lower the stat requirements for some stuff like the "NPC liked that" messages. I think I found a decent balance with 4 str, 3 end, 3 agi, 5 per, 5 int, and 6 chr, but that still isn't enough to see a lot of the things. At what point in the game do you start being able to increase your stats so you see more?

Note: I added some more to this comment, see the <EDIT> sections.

Items names - If it is skill based then I can see that working, but it requires the characters to give more information. There should be an option to ask what the plant I'm looking for looks like. Using the soapwort as an example again, if she had just told me it has a white flower then that would have made it easier to find. A tutorial screen of some sort that explains that system, that item names will change to be more detailed as your skills improve, would also be good. Right now there's no way of knowing that.

Another example is Chamomile. On my first game when I needed Chamomile the first few I got actually said Chamomile Flower, but then all the rest just said White Flower. Since I had already found some that said Chamomile I didn't collect the white ones, I just got frustrated saying "This looks like the same thing! Why isn't it right?" I guess that may have been a bug, since if I successfully identified Chamomile once I should know it from then on. This happened with the Pennybun mushroom, too. When I collected it, and in my inventory it said the name, but then when I was at a stove to make Seaweed Soup it switched to just saying Brown Mushroom.

<EDIT> I had an idea, but it may be too much to ask for. Since the interface is a book, why not add a tab for something like an encyclopedia of plants (and maybe animals, too). Give each entry three things: A black and white sketch, the name, and a description of the plant. If you are told to find a plant you haven't seen then you get the name and description, but no picture until you find it. If you find one you haven't identified then you get the picture and description but no name. As you get more information from NPC and the world, and your skills improve, you start being able to fill in all the information. This would make it so you have a reference of what you are looking for, like the quest log says the name then if you need more info you could look it up in the other section. Just a thought.</EDIT>

Food - I did try to cook the wolf meat, but with the heat and duration options I couldn't find a combination that worked. I'll try more, but I feel like putting raw meat on a fire should be pretty simple. It should give a result of too rare, well cooked, or burnt, rather than the message about not being able to make anything with those ingredients. I stopped trying because I figured that message meant I was missing something

 <EDIT> I figured it out now, high heat for 15 minutes gives normal quality. Still seems like for something as simple as a piece of meat it should work almost no matter what and just give terrible quality if it is under or over cooked. Or make it possible for food to burn if you set the time too long, making you loose the ingredients.</EDIT>

Personality - Backstory and character development, yes. From what I've played I know Yotra is a blacksmith, Alice is a farmer, Shaartan is an herbalist/alchemist, and Nami is... a mermaid. You don't really get a feel for who they are, just what they do. Pretty much any line of dialogue I've seen could be coming from any character and it wouldn't feel out of place, they aren't very unique. Some kind of character progression for romance would also be nice. I don't know if the dialogue matters that much yet, because I have only played trying to be nice, I'll try a new game choosing the rude options to see what happens. The closest thing to romance right now is earning their trust so that they will trade with you, but there's no feeling or flirtation.

Nudity - The problem is that it just happens. Like I said, the bathhouse makes sense, but all the rest are completely random. They say something like let's get food, or beer, or whatever, then boom, sex. I guess it goes back to the lack of romance too. I'd prefer something like a dating sim, or the relationship system in House Party, something that makes it feel more earned. If they invite me inside I want to know why, and what to expect. If that's not what you intended to make then I just had the wrong expectations, and that's fine. Not every game is for every person, so if you never intended to have that kind of romance then making it the way you want is what you should do, I'm sure other people will enjoy it as it is.

As for the quality - It seems like each scene is just an animation loop that will keep going until you end act from the menu, right? Ideally I'd prefer something more scripted, but I understand the limitations you are working under (you are just one person making this, right?) so I won't ask for something like a fully animated cut-scene, I know that's not reasonable. What I would like is if they had an ending. Either a set length or a player option to finish. It would just be more satisfying if the characters were, well, satisfied.

<EDIT> I tried a new character with different stat distribution and now I see that there is an ending, I just didn't wait long enough or have the perception to see the gauge. I also had enough charisma for the other bathhouse option, and I think it is broken. The camera was inside her head. It was all eyes and jaw, I felt like I was looking at some horror show.</EDIT>

<EDIT AGAIN> Auto-save. You need auto-save. Pretty much all modern games have some sort of auto-save or checkpoint system. I wasn't thinking about it and just lost a few hours of work when I died after not saving at all since starting the game. The fact that I died of drowning because "swimming" is just walking along the bottom of the water is also a problem. I don't know how hard it would be to impliment, but you really need the ability to hold space bar and go straight up in water. Either have something more like actual swimming or put the seaweed closer to the shore. Sorry for the rage edit.</EDIT>

3. Take the soapwort root as an example. She just ask you to get it, without a single hint of where to look. When I finally found it the item I collected was "White Flower" and in my inventory it was just "Root". Even in the quest log it had some other name, it did not say soapwort root. A hint in the dialogue like "Near the village by water" or something, and some consistency in naming so that the name on the item I collect is actually the name of the item I am looking for. The other thing was the need to be able to ask the NPCs "What was it I needed?" If you accidently click through their dialogue too fast or just forget what it was there is no way to go back and find out.

5/6. The issue of money and hunger go hand in hand. At green hunger your capacity is 75%, yellow is 50%, and if it drops to orange it's only 25%. Ores are heavy, so if you are trying to mine for Yotra it's a race to get the money so you can get food so you can carry the ore to get money. Hides require combat, which means damage and bleeding. Tools and weapons also need repairs. The amount of money you need for food, medicine, and repairs is just too much compared to what you get for quests. Shaartan's herb quest, for example, takes 12 items (4 types, 3 of each) and pays only 0.15. The time it takes to gather those items burns through more hunger than the payment is worth. You get hungry while sleeping, too, and even if you aren't tired I found I had to sleep at night just to pass the time because it is too dark to do anything, the lantern doesn't give much light, and it costs too much to refill/repair the lantern. Honestly, I think an early game recipe that let's you turn wolf meat into a decent meal would go a long way in fixing this, since that is a food you can get without money.

7. Off the top of my head the only specifics I can think of are when Shaartan say something about her herb quest "isn't dusty", and a lot of the recipes mention letting the food digest. In both cases I'm not sure what you mean because those words don't make sense in that context. For the food digesting, does it mean over-cooking?

I started a new game after my comment to see how it was knowing more at the start. I did get further, and I also got to some of the nudity. The bathhouse makes sense, at least, but boy was I shocked when "I'm going to take a break and get a bite to eat, join me?" meant something else. I was expecting some kind of romance path through dialogue or something, not just random "let's take a break" scenes. I found this game from it being mentioned on the Steam forum for House Party, so maybe I just had the wrong expectations. As is, I think the nudity is the part of the game I like the least.

I just spent a few hours on the game and I definitely see the potential here, but also some frustrating problems.

1. Better tutorials or instructions. I could not find the fish trap for the entire first day. I found the dock, but just having a rope off the side with nothing to draw attention to it isn't enough. It wasn't until I tried going into the water that I saw the actual trap at the bottom. Since I was frustrated with this I just did tasks for the other two characters instead, but then Yotra's tasks caused a bunch of time to pass and before I knew it, it was dark. You're not told about the bench in the middle of town until after finding the fish trap, so I didn't know I could sleep there. Basic things like where you can sleep should be told up front.

2. It's too dark at night. Since I didn't know where to sleep I was wandering around in the dark. Inside the buildings it's completely pitch black, so I actually got stuck inside just ramming the wall hoping I would hit the door eventually. I even tried boosting the brightness on my screen, but that didn't help.

3. Better logging of what you need to do. You should be able to go back to a character and ask what you were supposed to do or where you need to look, and/or the quest log should have a description. Sometimes you're not even told where to look to begin with. I'm stuck looking for Soapwort Root with absolutely no clue where it could be.

4. Lock-picking. I don't get it at all. It's not explained very well and the sounds when you are trying to pick a lock are confusing. What is a click? Why does pressing the space bar keep breaking picks? The instructions mention the left mouse button, but there is no indicator to show something is happening when you do, so I thought it wasn't working.

5. Hunger. Food needs to be more filling, and having access to more recipes earlier on would be nice. I've got wolf meat but the only recipe I have is for fish. If the first thing you are going to be fighting is wolves, a recipe to use the materials from them should be given early on. Once my hunger hit orange I was never able to get it back above yellow even though I ate every single edible thing I could get my hands on.

6. Money. After playing for a few hours buying my own home for 15 whatever it was called seems like it won't be attainable for many more hours. Using a currency system that has two decimal places makes it feel like you are getting so little. The fact that many of the items you can get early on sell for 0.01 is really discouraging. The whole economy could use work.

7. The story. There isn't one. You are just some guy that was attacked by bandits and now you're main purpose in life is to do fetch quests for this village. I know almost nothing about these characters. They have no personality. If there's supposed to be any romance I don't see any sign of it yet. I can forgive the writing since English isn't your first language, but if you know anyone that is fluent or a native English speaker I'd recommend asking them to help, or even crowdsource it if you want.

TL;DR: I was saying "Where do I go? What do I do?" way too much, and I feel like the progress I made in a few hours could have been done in less than one hour if there was better direction.