I completely understand where you’re coming from with the difficulty. I’ve wrestled with that quite a bit in my own jam games, especially trying to find that balance between making something challenging and making it rewarding.
It’s even harder in a jam because you basically get one chance to introduce players to the mechanics and get them invested.
And I actually agree with your concern about replaying the officers’ signals.
Part of the challenge is observing them, keeping up, and recording what they’re communicating. If players could replay every signal indefinitely, I think you’d lose some of that tension. It also makes sense within the interrogation scenario that the officers aren’t going to patiently repeat everything until you get it right.
One thing I’d clarify about my original feedback is that I didn’t necessarily find the puzzles themselves too difficult. They were time-consuming, and figuring out how to interact with the game took a while, but once I understood the system, everything was manageable. I actually enjoyed having to pull out scratch paper and build my own translation chart.
To me, that’s a sign that the game has engaged the player enough to put in some real effort.
I also thought your conversion sheet worked well. I wouldn’t necessarily change it. The biggest opportunity might be how you introduce players to using it.
What if the first interrogation always started with something simple, like NAME? That’s only four signals to recognize, and it makes sense as the first question an authority would ask.
You could use that first exchange as a sort of guided introduction.
Maybe the four incoming symbols are automatically recorded on the in-game paper, and when the player opens the conversion sheet, those particular symbols are highlighted. Then, when they need to respond, you could briefly demonstrate how holding the corresponding number keys produces a letter.
That way, players experience the entire process once:
- receive a signal
- translate it
- find the answer on their credentials
- transmit the response.
After that, you can gradually take away the assistance and let them work independently.
I also wonder if the difficulty could ramp up naturally through the interrogations. Start with a short question, then introduce longer messages and more complicated answers.
If you ever expanded the game to multiple encounters, you could even increase the starting difficulty of each encounter, so players feel like they’re becoming more proficient with the semaphore system.
I think that would preserve the challenge you’re going for while giving players a better opportunity to develop the skills needed to enjoy it.
As for the note-taking system, I really wouldn’t worry about players using actual paper. I thought that was part of the fun!
I wouldn’t necessarily replace it with something more automated, outside of perhaps using it to help teach that first exchange.
The more I think about it, the more I feel like the core mechanics are already in a good place.
I wouldn’t want you to simplify them so much that you lose what makes the game interesting. I think it’s more about helping players get that first successful interaction under their belt, then gradually asking more of them.
There’s a lot of potential here, and I appreciate you being so open to discussing the design!