itch.io

i'm sick of people trying to justify horrible design choices by hiding them behind "this is my vision"

As a player, I dislike when this happens as well, but I'm not convinced that's occurring in this case. It's obviously not a finished game, so rough edges like being unable to skip text (which has since been fixed, you can click the text boxes to skip dialogue) is to be expected. And many people enjoy narratives, in fact I usually don't enjoy narratives but found myself getting into this one a bit.

Also worth mentioning that this demo is free, and "narrative" is the 4th word of the description. You are free to avoid games which have a clear narrative focus if that's your preference.

I'm also not convinced that developers should always be obligated to make games that are optimized for their players. Is it wrong for a developer to make a game for fun, and post it publicly for free in case other people are interested? Particularly on a platform like Itch, where a lot of more experimental and unfinished games are posted? Should a developer be blamed for failing to placate the desires of voluntary players of a completely free experience? That seems rather harsh to me, but I don't mean to take a definitive stance to the contrary, I'm merely uncertain.

you want a narrative focus because narrative is easy. [...]

This spiel seems to mainly be about boring narratives specifically, with the insinuation that the game's narrative would be boring to most people. But supposing this is true, you never go into the specifics of how/why it's boring, or how it could be made better, except perhaps in saying "what's difficult is telling a story organically [...] and pacing [the game] well."

I can't help but wonder what the "organic" storytelling would look like in an incremental game like this, aside from dialogue (which the vast majority of the story already consists of), and things like your production being affected by events (eg. how the boiler exploding prevents you from constructing some things), or events being affected by your production.

Maybe your emphasis was meant to be more on the pacing part, perhaps you're saying that most people would want more gameplay and less story, almost regardless of the story's quality?

Overall, it's just very unclear what the developer is supposed to do with this feedback. I get the impression that you sent these comments more to vent your own frustrations (probably more about things that have very little to do with this game) than anything else.

Although I would be a hypocrite to claim that your aim shouldn't be ulterior, since I'm mainly posting this comment to avoid having it in the back of my mind that some poor developer is being insulted for (what I consider to be) unfair and irrational reasons, and no one can be bothered to bring a reprieve.