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SUGGESTIONS:
Hey Unnie, can you add a auto-consume toggle in the item's menu in a future update possibly?
Example: IF: Stamina >= 100, TRY: WHILE: Tablets >= 1 -> Use 1 tablet -> Tablets = Tablets - 1 -> continue, ELSE: Wake PC.
Also, perhaps a WAIT action in the menus during daytime to pass one unit of time on demand.
That’s oversimplifying it but I could do it. I don’t know if that is s reasonable though. I would like for the player to have some responsibility. Either way, next gameplay update will restructure stat economy, so I’ll see what it looks like and go from there.
I’m not sure about the ‘wait on demand’ action. It would mess too much with areas that don’t expect you to pass time and load content when you move into them.
Hi,
before reading, I quote many games moments, which can be felt as spoil for some people (I would).
But there's no hint nor puzzle solution, so read at your own risk.
I really like the game, the style, theme and puzzle design.
So far none of the puzzle felt wrong or bs, when you don't know what to do with something it's because you didn't find the info, if you can't find the info, it's either somewhere or gatekept, if it's gatekept, it's probably for later.
Therefore, what I'm concerned about isn't clues, it's directions.
In point&clicks, you have puzzles that matter now but you don't know it, puzzles that will matter later, and the one puzzle to solve your current bottleneck, you find most puzzle pieces while looking for the one you need right now. When you find it you can unravel / dominos other intermediate puzzles, then choke on a new bottleneck with new zones to explores and still leftover puzzles from previous zones.
The issue here : I don't know what I am looking for. I am seeing probable solutions to problem I don't have.
The diary idea is a good addition but it fell short :
- At some point I had the Kari entry running alone in the lab. I found Kari once, and the entry was removed.
- I had the Yuri entry. Explored the mansion find quite few things (opened the steel door and the paint door). At some point the entry about Yuri disappeared but I don't think I ever found her (maybe it was because I had the school dream with her, which I cannot do again).
- Now my dairy says "..." and I'm blindy reaching around. I'm not hard stuck, just very slowly testing things left and right in the different dreams.
The game is very open and that a great thing. But without direction it's quite frustrating to repeat half of what I did the night before, reach a point I can try something new, wake up or softlocking my night, get by the day, and doing it again. All without knowing I'm going toward the next thing and not following red herrings or doing things that won't matter before two to three hours later.
Maybe it's just the story implementation lagging behind the puzzles? Did I softlock my save? If it isn't, I am effectively directionless both in the waking world and in dreams. What if my MC is fine with their body and eating titshroom all night ? Did I win the game?
My biggest suggestion would be: keep using the diary to focus the player toward the next big "unlock". Maybe add intermediate entries.
other points:
- I believe at some point the games tell me I can "now hangout with Nanami and Kari", but Nanami says repeatedly that she'll only come up for the coffeeshop. I can't find her anywhere in the afternoon so I guess I misremembered ?
- - At some point Kari must investigate Nanami and find money solution to buy the ... thing for Rin. Did the story lines up for the coffeeshop scene to solve both point or did my game "eat" a scene ? I've worked there a handful of evenings but nothing happened beside stats changes.
- When Rin explain "like in a video game" how the white bar works at night, I can't remember if she explained a way to extend the dream. I ate all my bathroom pills in the waking world trying to figure out what they'll do. I only deducted from Yuri those were in fact sleeping pills. Maybe rename them "Sleeping pills" ?
- The orange "Card lv3" doesn't open the red 3 door. Isn't it just a Card lv2 ?
- There's timing limitations around using the computer, is that really necessary ? Sometime I cannot use the computer before night, but reading the diary and saving are things I would especially do before night.
- Objects descriptions are usually a staple in point&clicks, but so far you've managed without it. For me it's like platformers without "press A to pass through platforms", the bests manage without it and It's kind of a double edge sword anyway. Slow clap.
- I can't process waking world meat or eggs into protein shake, despite it not having to be complex and now I'm scared they'll mince me instead ;)
- (though "mince you instead" would reference their cold colleague's hand, but you cannot "shake" that hand either)
- Loved the Doom movie reference :D
Thank you for the hard work!Some comments in no particular order:
It looks like you know what you are doing!
I don't know Yume Nikki, but I like puzzle and exploration for the sake of it, I just think story bits can be a good tool to nudge the player in the right direction.
I've played quite a lot more since then and I am starting to feel I've reach the end of content (some "fillers" items, not a lot puzzle-less pieces nor piece-less puzzles, not much closed door left to open).
You really did a great job weaving the three areas together and it feel rewarding to loop around one and the other to try to bring stuff and states around. There's this feeling of setting up an insane route and trying to unfold it like clock work.
I found a glitch when you use ether next to the red ghost and get possessed, it kept the collisions disabled and removed the ether "leash", with this I found a hidden area I don't think I would ever found.
Clay doll crashed the game because I've just passed through decontamination (-1 index error on hip size).
I am stuck with a purple face huger despite going though all sort of transformation removal. I still not sure if there's layers of transformations that need to be peeled one by one and I'm still not sure what or when some transformations are kept through the day.
I am definitely hitting New game on the next update, try to rework my way there way with my notes.
Pregnancy shouldn’t persist. This is a deliberate change I made a long time ago, because it didn’t make sense story wise yet. I realize there are several **bugs **that let you circumvent this, but as long as it’s not straight forward I just let it be. I’m not sure it even works if you’ve managed to get it to transfer, but the month and remaining time are set at “conception”, and is different for each source. i.e Blue Maiden is set to 9 months and would take 2 days to either change to 10 months or to queue birth animation.
I personally like the birthing animations as a sorta, day time easter egg. The way you have them fully animated, and diverse depending on source, is one of the many things your games offer that I've personally not seen on another game on this platform. I already pulled off the ghosts' baby births, so I was hoping to see Blue Maiden's and Forest Maiden's. Guess those 10 days with Forest Maiden's was for naught :[
Any chance you might reconsider birthing animations, despite them not making sense for the story as it is yet?
"next gameplay update ready late April/early May." - That's nice, that'll be around the end of the current college semester :)
"the story isn’t that far off in introducing pregnancy either" - Honestly, felt like Yuri's Nightmare was trying to introduce pregnancy as part of the story, so even if that wasn't the intention.
I understand not wanting to touch the mechanics at the moment, just wish I knew they weren't fully implemented before I wasted a few hours trying to see a Forest Maiden birth... But, now I know, and we wait to see what April/May brings.
It’s been so long since I’ve last reviewed the intro I barely remember how it was set up, but I think it should force you to pick the last item if you’ve discarded all of them. There’s a comb, a pregnancy test, panties and a skull. Either way, you’re literally playing the intro, just reload an auto save. Those items are mostly there to show case appearances and have no impact on how the story progresses.
The wardrobe in your bedroom can often freeze your game when you try to use the full dress up function making you have to reload an earlier save as you cannot exit the wardrobe again. The quick menu outside works fine and for some reason also the pause/load menu when it otherwise freezes so it isn't game breaking but is annoying.
The new update appears to have somewhat broken character clothing with tears often appearing when they move. The ghosts also sometimes don't display their "copying your movements" act.
There seems to be food in the game you can't eat. There doesn't appear to be a recipe for cheese or fish despite them being in your fridge and I don't think you can eat them raw. Future updates may well expand the cooking system with more recipes/buffs though and the cooking/shopping for ingredients was surprisingly fun with some of the weekends when not at school spent preparing your meals for the next week to keep your stats topped off. Having the toilet stalls at school function like the one in your house for stat buffs along with the drinking fountains actually working to allow you to heal and stay healthy at school would also be nice from a gameplay perspective and give you something to do between classes other than just talk to people. Possibly also a cafeteria or vending machine to buy lunch though this could be avoided by making a packed lunch at home and bringing it with you.
They should sell milk at the Mall.
When working at the café and you go to get the order from the back room, if one of the other waitresses goes in as well you will keep on talking to her when you press interact instead of opening the menu to select what the customer ordered. They should stay out of that room while you are working or at least not be able to be talked to there so they don't get in the way.
It would be nice to be able to sort your inventory easier. Currently you have to drop items and then pick them up again in the order you want them to appear in your inventory which is very clumsy. The fridge has a sort of drag and drop system that works well enough if it can be used again. It would be nice to be able to close menus with the E key rather than the X key as it is more comfortably placed on the keyboard and you are doing it a lot. It would be nice to be able to refill the medicine cabinet in the bathroom with stuff from the shop after you have depleted it.
These are good suggestions. Some commentary and clarifications:
The wardrobe is very old code that will need to be rewritten at some point. Sadly the clothing system is such huge mess that the sheer amount of time to refactor it lowers its priority. As long as it’s “functional” I thin kit’s better to focus on other things.
Not sure about the tears and ghosts. I haven’t touched those at all. Perhaps there’s a certain body part size in particular that is affected?
The controls can be mapped to whatever you want them to be. I use “X” as one of the default cancel keys because it’s the RPG maker standard and is used in thousands of eroge. I agree it doesn’t really make sense, but too many people are used to it.
This is my new favorite game, so deep and so much content!
Suggestions:
1. A skip button for scenes that have been played before would be nice.
2. Non energy saves cost. (the diary cost is fine).
3. Functional water fountain in school.
4. Going to male or female toilet and using it, affect the (blue psyche)
5. Bench in the park for relaxing. (maybe water fountain too)
6. Brushing teeth. (The dentist must have like 5 mansions by now :D )
7. Some sort of reaction from the NPC if your genitals has switched.
Firstly, make a text forcing the player to go to a specific location to avoid missing the next transformation needed because on my second run, I found 2 transitions I had not seen and found out they were part of the story. Secondly, there is no day cause I can not figure out what day it is. Lastly, which areas are possible to complete I find in the mansion the maze is unfinished so I don't know if the mansion is possible to complete or not.
Edit: I should also ask how I can go back to normal cause I am stuck as a bunny upon going back to sleep and I can't figure out how to get rid of the bunny and can not progress with lab.
I got a few things to suggest in no particular order:
It would probably be a bit difficult but would it be possible to link the fridge's inventory to the various cooking implements around the kitchen? I do enjoy the little mini game of cooking and such to maintain health and such but going back and forth through the different UI's to first check what ingredients + quantities I need, then going to the fridge to collect the ingredients, then going back to the cooking UI to cook the food is annoyingly lengthy to the point where I find myself just buying sandwiches from the store to avoid the system all together.
The drinking fountains at the school would be nice as a source of water.
Sound design wise I think in the dreamstate if you layered two audio tracks for ambience together and subtly pitched the volume up on the more energetic/percussion track as the player gets closer to waking would be a great way of dietetically informing the player of the their time slowly ticking down.
Removal of the time loss from reading notes in the forest would be nice. I like rechecking information and it feels like the game is punishing me for using the resources provided. This could also apply to any information giving aspect of the game since information is one of the most important things in a game like this it feels bad to be punished for rechecking it
Some kind of indicator that the computer in your bedroom is how you save. I spent four hours of gameplay without realizing it especially since during the opening segment of the story mode you are prevented from using the computer. I would honestly suggest potentially tagging in a short part at the beginning of the story mode where the player is directed to use their computer to check their journal (which would then also show thats where you save).
Discord?
The cooking mechanic is a little annoying by design. I guess my philosophy was to annoy the player into skipping food, but the “death” mechanic was so poorly implemented that it became more than just a nuisance. But if I simplify it that much, might as well remove it altogether, don’t you think? Anyway, Hunger/Thirst will be a lot more forgiving in the next update.
Will add a fountain, but again, Hunger/Thirst will be a lot more forgiving in the next update. You probably won’t need it.
Not a bad idea, but I don’t think it’s high on the priority list. There’s much much more pressing sound work that needs to be done first. Basic stuff like doors opening, fridges humming, tentacles squirming.
You’ve partially convinced me. I’ll remove stat loss from reading the journal. Though to be frank, minor stamina gain like that (time loss as you put it) is insignificant enough that it’s more of a red herring that obfuscates that there are bad/incorrect puzzle solutions or that some puzzles should be done on separate runs. You might save up 10 stamina points by optimizing which doors you open and don’t, but that doesn’t affect a ran at all in the grand scheme of things.
Probably a good idea. Not sure if I’ll add it in the next update though. I’m already running late for the updated and there’s still so much to fix.
Discord? Maybe. I don’t know the first thing about running a server. As you understand, everything consumes time.
I can help setting up a discord server (actually already started lol). Its not too hard to run a sever if its kept small especially given it'd be for your games. Also might help with bug reports and also just generally gauging interest in stuff! Here, this is a temp invite to the server I threw together. If you do hop in give me a ping, I'm Marionette https://discord.gg/FtucQWdJ
JFTR, I second the motion for an official Discord server. It could help bring together players from ITCH.io, Steam, and whatever other sites you're currently posting to.
Some channels I personally would suggest: idea submissions, community polls, bug reports, spoiler chats (new players ask vet players for help), and of course a general chat just for discussions.
Down side of course, would be that yes, it would take time to get setup. Additionally, it adds one more location where you will be receiving messages you may choose to read when not 'putting in the work'.
i understand that the time moves on when you read pages, but my bad memory and bad puzzle solving makes me just reload the save, or just take a screenshot of each info that i've gathered (this is exatly what i did). maybe time loss could occur the first time you read a note/page and after that be free?
Honestly, my short term memory sucks. I personally had to keep physical notes of my run unique data (passcodes, coordinates, firmware, etc.) and for the really complex stuff I mad a personal step-by-step (adjusting when things went as I intended) in a digital notebook. I remember one sequence that took an entire Cornell note sheet, before I managed to streamline with newly obtained information.
Honestly, I already got everything I just can't seem to lick the library puzzle you also need a lv 4 keycard to look at the restricted information and to make some things with alchemy. Which Idk where the alchemy station is, someone told me that brewing things just waste them so idk if that's intentional just to fill the white bar or if it was originally supposed to do something, but they took it out.
