i like a lot of this, it reminds me of those old games like ogame but without the hassle of waiting (and paying).
designwise i have no issue about anything. (very rare)
- i like that tools can be used in more than one way (i found this with kettle)
- i like the overall info on every screen, and most importat there is a guide on how to get more tools (great idea)
the only smallest thing "i dont like" is the slotmachine design for rolls, but even there you have a resolve button so i can skip that
my general issue for a player is that "survival" alone is not engaging enough, this is also connected with the overall "skin" of the game. if dont really have a reason to comeback and play, even if when i'm playing i can chillax
my tip for more ideas might be dwarf fortress/rimworld (if you can play it), or somethignlike fallout shelter.
if i was making this game, i would delve deep in the melodrama of the crew: maybe 2 of them are friends/lovers and work better together, others are enemies so they dont wanna be on the same task. also you can have crews that start with some super bonus on X, so you wanna always use them for gathering mushrooms for example; other side of the coin, you have a skilled crew in an mostly useless task (in DF the classic is having a fishdwarf in a mountain)
more about meledrama and attachment: maybe consider a portrait for the crew (moddable so ppl can mode in anime girls) so ppl can have an attachment to them, if they are only names with no stats, no likes and dislikes, they feel like robots.
i can set people to work, but i couldn't find a "rest for the day" button or anything like that so it feels like my peoples' bars are always draining.
eating is automatic i presume? but what if one guy has lower bar than another? can i feed him more to restore his bar? everyone died of starvation on their way to water after i crafted a fishing rod and i didn't see a single motor or spirit, but i assume i'm just bad. gonna try again on easy.
trying to catch horses gives me grain? oh horses eat the grain, gotcha how do i discard cow dung? clear puts it back into my inventory and x also. where is the actual discard button? i still don't really know what "survive" does, but i got a little further into the game and found some crazy guy that gave me a mushroom recipe.
scavenging through a post-apocalypse is fairly well realized when you try it a couple of times, although i still don't know a lot. what's the ultimate goal of the game? (apart from finding 5 different foods; which i didn't manage)
:D Thank you for playing. I see I should make a few things more clear.
"Resting" is done mostly by keeping the person un-assigned. As long as there is food, they will naturally recover some health due to eating but not working. There are also some special rest actions to be discovered.
Ultimate goal is to beat evil, it’s at the end of the quest chain :)
you might want to hint that there is evil early on as a hook. kinda like how they suggest there will be winter and dragons in game of thrones. interesting game nontheles
It feels like there's a lot of hoops to jump through to get basic things going on. Trading for food? You better stock up on those otherwise your crew will munch through those at high priority before the delivery. He wants mussels? The coast biome was long ass way back. Trying to get water? Never seen any. Scavenging for old boots at 5 per day avg? You will get 0 four days in a row because rng. Searching for a specific biome to make a hammer? Be ready to uncover 50+ tiles without finding one.
The bar for unlocking more of the gameplay loop past basic survival should be lower.
UI could be better but it works fine as it is. When there's a tool allocated with no crew for the task I should probably be able to reallocate it without removing it manually, unless there are some idle tools.
I played for quite a while, but I think i got hung up on collecting resources and not really focusing on exploring, i didn't realize how big the map was until late in my playthrough.
Not particularly my type of game but it seems pretty neat and complex. Menus and everything look well thought out aka I wasn't really ever confused about anything.
Quite a compelling game with a good amount of content, I ended up playing for quite some time once I figured out how the systems worked. There's a nice variety of locations, activities, and resources which incentivize you to explore and keep moving around. Looking forward to seeing where you continue from here.
Played on normal difficulty. Some notes:
- There's some friction in the beginning when learning how to do stuff, perhaps the questline could be used to guide the player along more tightly? usually I detest overbearing tutorials but a little more guidance would've been nice. there are some major jumps between quests as well
- in between horse and car perhaps there could be some intermediate form of transport? or perhaps more variety such as wagons
- being able to leave and retrieve transportation was nice
- It took me a while to realize using a tool in one section would disallow usage of it in other sections
- Some things that players would expect to be easy to do, are quite limited or it's not clear what's required to unlock them. For example it's very easy to make the fishing rod/net in the early game but a screwdriver is required to dig up worms. Same with picking up water with the kettle, locked behind quicklime.
- A huge portion of the game was opened up when I looted some stuff from a hardware store by getting the screwdriver and crowbar and hammer but before that I was really limited
- My initial rope broke quite early and it wasn't until i found a screwdriver that I was able to make more rope
- there's no way to discard crew members
- There should be some way to designate which foods will be eaten. Mostly a problem with fruits, in the early game sometimes I wanted to save fruit for juice or whatever instead of eating it when i had other food options
- sometimes on a tile there are too many things and no way to scroll down unless your monitor is large enough
- When I'm missing one of the resources for a campfire recipe, it says I'm missing both (missing firewood, mussels) instead of just the one I'm missing (mussels)
Comments
i like a lot of this, it reminds me of those old games like ogame but without the hassle of waiting (and paying).
designwise i have no issue about anything. (very rare)
- i like that tools can be used in more than one way (i found this with kettle)
- i like the overall info on every screen, and most importat there is a guide on how to get more tools (great idea)
the only smallest thing "i dont like" is the slotmachine design for rolls, but even there you have a resolve button so i can skip that
my general issue for a player is that "survival" alone is not engaging enough, this is also connected with the overall "skin" of the game. if dont really have a reason to comeback and play, even if when i'm playing i can chillax
my tip for more ideas might be dwarf fortress/rimworld (if you can play it), or somethignlike fallout shelter.
if i was making this game, i would delve deep in the melodrama of the crew: maybe 2 of them are friends/lovers and work better together, others are enemies so they dont wanna be on the same task. also you can have crews that start with some super bonus on X, so you wanna always use them for gathering mushrooms for example; other side of the coin, you have a skilled crew in an mostly useless task (in DF the classic is having a fishdwarf in a mountain)
more about meledrama and attachment: maybe consider a portrait for the crew (moddable so ppl can mode in anime girls) so ppl can have an attachment to them, if they are only names with no stats, no likes and dislikes, they feel like robots.
For some reason it doesn't work in my browsers (all three of them), but it might be the problem with my provider.
(It just opens white blank page)
Oh, very odd. I will make sure to include the "native" build next DD :)
i can set people to work, but i couldn't find a "rest for the day" button or anything like that so it feels like my peoples' bars are always draining.
eating is automatic i presume? but what if one guy has lower bar than another? can i feed him more to restore his bar? everyone died of starvation on their way to water after i crafted a fishing rod and i didn't see a single motor or spirit, but i assume i'm just bad. gonna try again on easy.
trying to catch horses gives me grain? oh horses eat the grain, gotcha
how do i discard cow dung? clear puts it back into my inventory and x also. where is the actual discard button?
i still don't really know what "survive" does, but i got a little further into the game and found some crazy guy that gave me a mushroom recipe.
scavenging through a post-apocalypse is fairly well realized when you try it a couple of times, although i still don't know a lot. what's the ultimate goal of the game? (apart from finding 5 different foods; which i didn't manage)
:D Thank you for playing. I see I should make a few things more clear.
"Resting" is done mostly by keeping the person un-assigned. As long as there is food, they will naturally recover some health due to eating but not working. There are also some special rest actions to be discovered.
Ultimate goal is to beat evil, it’s at the end of the quest chain :)
you might want to hint that there is evil early on as a hook. kinda like how they suggest there will be winter and dragons in game of thrones. interesting game nontheles
It feels like there's a lot of hoops to jump through to get basic things going on. Trading for food? You better stock up on those otherwise your crew will munch through those at high priority before the delivery. He wants mussels? The coast biome was long ass way back. Trying to get water? Never seen any. Scavenging for old boots at 5 per day avg? You will get 0 four days in a row because rng. Searching for a specific biome to make a hammer? Be ready to uncover 50+ tiles without finding one.
The bar for unlocking more of the gameplay loop past basic survival should be lower.
UI could be better but it works fine as it is. When there's a tool allocated with no crew for the task I should probably be able to reallocate it without removing it manually, unless there are some idle tools.
I played for quite a while, but I think i got hung up on collecting resources and not really focusing on exploring, i didn't realize how big the map was until late in my playthrough.
Not particularly my type of game but it seems pretty neat and complex. Menus and everything look well thought out aka I wasn't really ever confused about anything.
I understand. It’s not really my own type of game either :DDD
Good to hear it feels easy to understand, went hard on that this time.
Quite a compelling game with a good amount of content, I ended up playing for quite some time once I figured out how the systems worked. There's a nice variety of locations, activities, and resources which incentivize you to explore and keep moving around. Looking forward to seeing where you continue from here.
Played on normal difficulty. Some notes:
- There's some friction in the beginning when learning how to do stuff, perhaps the questline could be used to guide the player along more tightly? usually I detest overbearing tutorials but a little more guidance would've been nice. there are some major jumps between quests as well
- in between horse and car perhaps there could be some intermediate form of transport? or perhaps more variety such as wagons
- being able to leave and retrieve transportation was nice
- It took me a while to realize using a tool in one section would disallow usage of it in other sections
- Some things that players would expect to be easy to do, are quite limited or it's not clear what's required to unlock them. For example it's very easy to make the fishing rod/net in the early game but a screwdriver is required to dig up worms. Same with picking up water with the kettle, locked behind quicklime.
- A huge portion of the game was opened up when I looted some stuff from a hardware store by getting the screwdriver and crowbar and hammer but before that I was really limited
- My initial rope broke quite early and it wasn't until i found a screwdriver that I was able to make more rope
- there's no way to discard crew members
- There should be some way to designate which foods will be eaten. Mostly a problem with fruits, in the early game sometimes I wanted to save fruit for juice or whatever instead of eating it when i had other food options
- sometimes on a tile there are too many things and no way to scroll down unless your monitor is large enough
- When I'm missing one of the resources for a campfire recipe, it says I'm missing both (missing firewood, mussels) instead of just the one I'm missing (mussels)
Thanks a lot for the extensive comment. Giving me a number of ideas for what to tweak.