Feedback / Suggestions

[madcucumber]

Hi!
I've just played through what is currently in the game, and I have a few things I would like to go over, making some suggestions for further development and giving feedback along the way.

1. Story

The setting of the game is not unique, but nonetheless interesting. It reminds me of Orwell and Papers Please to only name two. Especially Papers, Please has this in it of itself boring gameplay loop, where, in essence you just say yes or no. But what makes that game interesting? In my opinion, because you tell the story THROUGH GAMEPLAY. See, the actions you take during gameplay affect what happens around you.
Now, how does that compare to Not for Broadcast? Here, there is gameplay, which is most certainly a lot of fun. It offers interesting twists and mechanics, but then again, there is this private story, which does not seem to be related to the gameplay in any way. Even if the decisions you take in either the control room or at home affect each other in any way, this is not obvious to me after one playthrough.
I don't think that fits. After controlling the programme, having to sit through multiple walls of text for minutes was very annoying, even if the story itself is well-written and interesting. But that does not fit the gameplay. I see how what you censor and what not might affect the written story, but I don't think it is really neccessary.
If you want to cramp a story in there, fine, but at least please make it shorter. The gameplay is waaaay too much fun for me to sit through all of this for minutes.

2. Gameplay diversity

Sure. The game is in early access, and you clearly had a lot of funny ideas for what happens on air that you wanted to put into the game. But I'm sure, even if such incidents happen during live shows, certainly it does not happen during every film they show. The sports thing was hilarious in it of itself, it did not need the naked protestors on top of it. Most of the time, you should be able to feel the monotony of that job, which means controlling a "normal" show without incidents. That's what you do in Papers, Please most of the time anyway, and it really helps getting excited about the incidents that DO happen. Trust me, with this much fun in gameplay, you really can afford to calm things down A LOT.

3. Production Quality

The actors did an incredibly awesome job, it was very good fun to watch them.

4. Nudity

Yes, that naked protest was funny. But: this is supposed to be a live show. So why are they pixelated? I totally understand the reasoning... So let me frame it differently: If you have to censor the nudity (or want to, I don't really care too much about the difference), why put it in there in the first place?
One of the core gameplay elements is the censoring of audio. The fact that the video signal is censored, really breaks the immersion. I'm not a pervert who desperately wants to see naked people however, so I would like to see them removed completely or unpixelate them (maybe even put a SFW ticker box in there as Papers, Please has done (sorry for comparing your game to that a lot, I just think it fits so well)).



These are the main things I wanted to focus on, what's good, and what can be improved upon. You have an awesome concept here. Just calm it down a notch, it won't hurt you, I promise. I don't want to remember this game when it's finished as being too over-motivated if you know what I mean.

[Nythil]

Hey, I'm not the devs obviously, but I just wanted to weigh in.
I really don't think you can compare this game to Papers, Please. They have similar themes, but Papers, Please is a commentary on the Berlin Wall and doesn't really cover censorship as a main part of the game. It focuses more on how things change depending on who you let pass into Arstozka, and your character doesn't choose what goes into the news.

The devs have said that the inbetween text parts will branch out and show cause and effect. It is early access, so that's going to be limited. Right now it doesn't show much, but it hopefully will.

Side note that the incidents happening during broadcasts aren't an every day thing; the text breaks show many days passing between the three levels.

I'm not sure what you mean by over motivated?

Happy Whatever,
Nythil

[madcucumber]

Hi Nythil, thanks for your opinion. It might not have become clear, but the reason I point out Papers, Please so often is that in my opinion, the developers of said game have found a way to make really boring, repetitive gameplay into something worthwhile.
Playing NfB, it at times got me into the same feeling. I don't want the devs to copy what P,P has done and I understand the differences you point out. There are just a couple of small design decisions game developers can make in a simplistic game (gameplay-wise) that walk a thin line between boring and awesome.

In the meantime, I also learned that the devs already commented on the text thingy. So I don't want to add anything new to the palette. Just, "hey, I think the same way".

And yes, you are totally right in that incidents don't happen every day in game, but so far, they happen every level. Which sometimes feel like every day. To emphasize that these don't happen every day, my point is to add a couple of normal broadcasts in between. Which I know, given the production quality and subsequent effort and money it takes to produce these, is a lot to ask for.

By over-motivated I mean the following: The devs seemed to have an awesome idea for a game. Gathered an amount of money in advance to produce a couple of videos they had ideas for to really show off their creativity and effort. Which worked. My worry is that as money gets made during early access, the developers use it to produce even more over the top video sequences. They are, no doubt, absolutely hilarious, but a bit too much if you ask me, thinking about a bigger number of levels.

[Khaotk]

Hi Madcucumber, thanks for the feedback, and glad to hear you've mostly enjoyed the game so far. A lot to unpack here!

1) As both yourself and Nythil have pointed out, the Incident System is something we've addressed a number of times already, so I won't go into too much detail here - sufficed to say that we'll be cutting down how much text appears between each Broadcast, increasing the breadth so the consequences reflect decisions more, and you'll see more of this happening as the game progresses, but it's hard to show this with only two sections so far :)

2) The naked protestors are there from both a gameplay and narrative mechanic. Gameplay wise, it's to make the player cut away from rather than to specific shots now. From a narrative perspective they represent an admittedly light hearted and funny, but still important, protest against Advance and their policies being enacted. Without wanting to spoil, this will become very important later on, and the protests will become darker and much more serious in tone. Episode 1 is mainly tutorial and world establishment, so we didn't want to go too deep dystopia too quickly (besides which, of the points of the days skipping is to show time passing - government policies and radical nation shifting change doesn't happen overnight!).

3) Production quality was a huge focus for us, as the founders here at NotGames all have an arts background as opposed to real Game Devs, so I'm glad to hear that's come across :)

4) Nudity was censored for legal reasons. The game had originally been designed non-pixelated and we found out relatively late in the process (long after we shot Sportsboard) that we needed to change it. Originally the game would ask you at the beginning when you start it up whether you wanted to censor nudity or not, and this would be an option in the Settings from then on. Time it seems makes fools of us all however, and we had to remove the uncensored version altogether.

With regards your final concern; we of course are very grateful for the funding received from our publisher, and we couldn't have made the game without them. However, the main story beats and progression for the whole game was designed and planned before we received any money. While we haven't written all the scripts yet, gameplay loops and narrative has a rough structure in place already (with feedback from the community of course helping us to mold bits here and there). I understand your point about monotony and what we've seen so far not being everyday broadcasts (another thing we hope the days going by signify - the player is seeing the most interesting/important ones). However, the principal a lot of the writing and planning has been focused around is the same as writing a book: "Is this the most interesting thing happening to the character? If not, why are't you writing about that?". While you need lows to augment and emphasise the highs of course, there's always a balance.

Hopefully as the story progresses you'll see this play out, but we are of course taking feedback on board so will bear this in mind :)

[AzzaUK]

censored sigh it sonly naked bodies let us see ha

[AzzaUK]

i played the game but saddened me to realised only 3 levels ill pay late ron when more levels added great game though