Finished the game!
- It seemed like I could just click on everything in the scene without looking at the list of items -- it was way more efficient than actually looking for each item one at a time.
- What happened in the finale, and which conspiracy theory were you shooting for? I didn't understand this line: "cats control humans with a sarcophagous"? (or something along those lines)
Given that hunting for objects is the core mechanic, I do think that's very important to make perfect. The sound effect of finding an object, the small sparks, and the cross off animation are all great. However, many objects blend in with their backgrounds. I think the challenge in point-and-click is either
- make it obvious what's clickable and players figure out the interactions between objects (i.e., machinarium, samorost)
- hide the object in the clutter. The object is still easy to visually distinguish -- there's just too many objects to naively click on them all (i.e., hidden folks).
In both cases, I feel aesthetics drive the game, because staring at the same image for minutes on end has to be pleasing. Here, neither seems to be true, so I'd suggest either adding interactions between objects -- maybe I click on a couch to move it, or I open the window to let the pigeons in etc. -- or focusing on the art and adding more visually-coherent clutter. The contrast between renders and arbitrary objects here makes the scene okay to look at and not at the level of "pleasing".
Despite that, there's clearly a story and the gameplay is clear, makes sense, and there's a sense of completion. I do this it's missing the secret ingredient that makes point-and-clicks sticky though.
