Thank you for getting back to me! Alright, looking forward to getting the game on here, then. :)
TheBetterStory
Recent community posts
This has quite the original puzzle mechanic! And you got a lot of leverage out of it. I found a handful of the platform-oriented rooms a bit annoying―it's one thing to fail at a test of reflexes, and another to fail because you can't see anything―but the room design in general was really clever.
I loved the scraps of lore, and the QR code element gave a cool delay to the information you gain that made it feel like it had more weight once you "decoded" it. One gimmick would have been enough, so I love that there are two and that they work so well together. Although I can see why other players found it annoying, particularly if you don't time things well enough for a screenshot before the code gets whisked away.
I'm not sure I really understood the ending, but that means I'll be thinking about it for a while longer and that's not at all a bad thing. Brilliant submission!
Hello! I've only just gotten started with this, but I'm really loving it so far. It's great that the seeds are mystery seeds and you only get to find out what they are once you plant them and add them to the book. The pixel art is gorgeous, and I love the amount of thought and detail you put into each plant!
I was surprised by how slowly the hearts accumulate, but as a design decision it does force me to really treat it like an idle game and just let it run in the background (although I've forgotten to water my waxy diamondback a few times already, whoops). Some sort of timer or health bar to show when they next need to be watered would have been a cool addition!
I do have a few early game questions that might be nice to answer in the tutorial at the beginning: what does choosing northern vs. southern hemisphere at the start of the game do? Is three the maximum number of plants before you have to begin harvesting them to make room? If I harvest a plant, can I randomly get the seeds for it a second time or is it gone forever?
Love the idea and theme behind this! The art is beautiful.
I was a bit disappointed to realize that there is no "good" ending, since the first thing I thought to try was a run where I only watered the tree without picking from it, or watered it and simply let myself be "robbed" of the fruit when I picked it. I know it's outside the scope of the game, but it would have been neat if doing so eventually unlocked a character who links to a willing community of helpers who share the spoils.
This was pleasant to play! I ended up wishing I hadn't maxed out the bird stat so soon. The giant flock of them made it too difficult to see my trees and it stripped the fun out of it before I finished maxing everything out, but I liked the simplicity and the sense of progression before then. The birds added a fun element of using your reflexes to the usual clicking and waiting.
Just finished this! I enjoyed my time with it.
I especially loved how the finished puzzles were placed in the context of a gallery, though I wished the text that had accompanied the puzzles was included somehow, or else meta commentary about the stories. I was saddened to find that only the Mondrian exhibit had that, I would have loved to know the inspiration/thought process behind the other two.
The opening dialogue was extremely charming (a non-judgemental response to asking what a museum is!), and none of the mechanics overstayed their welcome.
The gameplay in this wasn't half-bad! I thought it would be more like snake, where you couldn't run into your tail, but dealing with enemies and figuring out how to warp to different zones was a satisfying enough challenge. I ended up stopping at Zone II, Level 2 because the enemy was bothersome to beat, but I think with more polished graphics people might give this a look.
She's very cute! I love seeing her waddle around the screen while I'm busy and petting her occasionally.
I wish there was a way to force her to stop following the cursor around, though. It's a little frustrating when I'm trying to click on a tab or something and she keeps running underneath the mouse.
So, I've been trying to buy a number of games from the winter sale for the past day...but every time I click "pay with ____," whether that's Paypal or my credit card, it just loads the front page of the website instead of taking me to a page to pay. I've tried doing it in another browser, I've tried logging out and paying for the games incognito in case it was an account issue. Nada. I'm starting to get worried I'll miss all the discounts.
EDIT: To be clear, this isn't happening with one game or one developer, it's happening with every game I try to pay for across multiple developers.
I'd love the option to hide games I've supported in my library (not delete them, necessarily, just put them somewhere so that they don't show up when I click on the whole collection). Obviously you can carefully curate your individual purchases, but buying bundles means you frequently get a lot of games you don't actually intend on playing, which make it harder to browse your collection for games to download. Steam has this feature, and I've also found it useful for hiding games I've already played and not enjoyed.
You can just create a whole new collection for "things I actually want to play" currently, but then you have the extra work of adding your new purchases to that collection each time instead of it being done automatically for you.
I live in China. The pandemic's been casting its shadow here since the New Year's celebrations, or what we managed of them before all events were abruptly cancelled and people began to panic. It was very strange then, speaking to my friends outside of the country and seeing how their normal lives got on, while dealing with this surreal experience of being both in the center of the epidemic and completely isolated from it alone in my apartment.
Now it seems like the situation is reversed. I read news stories about ice rinks being used as morgues and elderly patients being taken off respirators to save young ones because of equipment shortages. Then I go outside into the perfect spring sunshine, with children who are still off from school giggling, biking around, flying kites. Families are getting a rare chance to spend time together, and now that the immediate threat is gone there are more people smiling than not. That doesn't feel real, either.
So it's nice, you know, to have a game that pulls that weird, distant sense of death and panic and loss that's been looming overhead since January, and concentrates it down into something as small and tangible as what gets left behind. It's soothing to play something that reminds me that death is both painful and normal, that we can mourn the loss that the world's going through without turning it into a horror story. It's okay to be scared for the people you love and still find quiet enjoyment in the fact that the plum trees are blooming.
I already considered myself a "death positive" person, though I didn't have a word for it before. My friends humour me when I babble to them about burial methods and drag them to necropolises for sightseeing, but they don't quite get it. I never realized there were communities out there for people who do.
So A Mortician's Tale made me feel less alone during a difficult time, in more ways than one. Thank you.
Would it be possible to make Steam codes available for people who paid for the Itch version during the Kickstarter? I assumed going into it that we were being given an either/or choice of Steam or Itch, but now Itch codes have been made available to Steam backers (for completely understandable reasons). Plus it looks like all new purchases on Itch come with Steam keys, but keys aren't available to the original backers for some reason?
I'm really not trying to be a jerk! But if I'd known we were the only ones who wouldn't be given the option of owning the game on both platforms, I would have waited to buy it on Itch post-Kickstarter instead.
I just pledged! Ahhh, it's doing so well, that's wonderful! The early bird tiers are almost gone. I'm glad to see the Kickstarter boycott hasn't affected things too much. (I've decided this will be the last project I back and promote before joining in.)
One small note! You mention that the Blackcross & Taylor Bundle comes with your other games, but it's not listed as one of them in the FAQ, which would probs be helpful just in case someone gets confused. (Yes, I'm an overly meddling and anxious person.)
Anyways, congrats on the launch! I'm looking forward to following the campaign and all the bonus content on Tumblr!
Hi, again! I'm so pleased that you've raised the game's price. I'm sure you were a bit taken aback by all of us protesting cheap content, haha.
I'm really happy you went with my TRoS suggestion! Adding it automatically to higher tiers was really generous, but this is more flexible and makes the cheap price of higher tiers much fairer to you. I've seen add-on tier FAQs before. I can find one for you if you want a template to use. :)
And the B&T bundle tier, yay! I know you must be tired of hearing this, but it's priced a bit low. I hazarded £45 at TToW's original price, £12. Now that TToW's £20, you're actually charging for less than the asking price of your games, which is £42. Don't forget they're getting the letters and wallpapers as well! At least bump it to break-even?
In terms of pricing in general...it's better now! Beta access, Join the Cast and Budding Playwright are priced well. Fit for a Queen's great. It gives those "superbacker" types something to pledge if they like the project. And I can get the Epistolary tier, yay!
I still feel like you're undercharging for Lady's Maid and the POV tiers. Anything that affects game content like that is usually at least $100! You, or your artist, will be putting a lot of time and work into collaborating with those backers.
The description for Fashionista's much clearer now! Being allowed to design an in-game outfit that's actually part of the world is rad. I still feel like it should be limited to one character, though, especially if you're not allowing any male options! That would give four people the opportunity of purchasing the tier instead of two.
Speaking of which, I'm assuming the reason male characters aren't included in Fashionista is for story reasons? If not, maybe consider having them as options? There might be people willing to pledge to dress e.g. Frederique or Leopold up, since they're quite popular! And again, having lots of characters available means more people can pledge for a high tier.
And unlike the POV tiers, you don't have to worry much about people picking the same characters to dress up. Few people pledge for tiers that pricey, and one character could theoretically get more than one special outfit.
For the POV tiers... I'm just kinda worried there will be someone who buys one without messaging you, or two people will back it around the same time asking for the same character before you can update the description, or someone will change their mind halfway through the campaign... People are terribly inconvenient that way.
FWIW, Kickstarter quarantines sold-out tiers it in a separate section from the available ones. So if you use individual limited tiers, the amount people would have to scroll to see all the rewards would lower over the course of the campaign as the tiers get taken. If you're really worried about having too many, I guess you could also double the price and combine the TToW/TRoS tiers, so there's just one tier with two scenes for each character?