Review and suggestion (Demo)

[Collin Ramkay]

The demo doesn't contain that much. just a bit of conversation and the first puzzle. The artwork is fabulous and stunning. However, I do have problem with the puzzle.

A good mystery game should be easy enough for players to guess the answer without hints or little hints. The mystery in this game isn't like that. I never played or even heard about checkered before or whatever it is ( I believe many people know more about the normal chess rather than the checkered), let alone know that it was played with 5 pieces only. This kind of thing, only players that love to play chess understand it. When I see the chess board, I immediately think it's a half-played chess and Takaya need to continue to finish the game, however, then I got confuse, do Takaya play the black piece or the white one and I also see that the white one doesn't even has the king anymore which mean the black already won. So, it's really confusing. When I see the hint that Z is not included and such. I thought Z could be the way the piece move. Everything just too abstract. I often played puzzle games but this is one is just made to mock players.

If Dev try to justified themselves by saying that because Yui, the chara who make that puzzle is genius, still, Dev need to make sure players directly know when they see the chess board that it's checkered not chess. Perhaps Dev can directly make Takaya or the other guy in the scene said that so players know that this isn't the normal chess.

Shortly said, that's should be tutorial for the puzzle. It's too bad if a good game like this with nice storyline become bad just because of Dev's inability to deliver clear puzzle to players. In mystery game X Visual novel like this, it's very fatal for Dev to be able to represent the puzzle well and clear through conversation between characters or at least, allowing players to open log to re-read the conversation (no log system so far in this game, which is weird for VN), so players can solve that even without the help of hints or a little of hints.

I don't know if Dev will listen to this review or not, but I hope the final version will be good (especially for the puzzle). I like mystery games a lot (Played every series of Mystery Case Files, Detective conan, and such without walkthrough), but I'm a bit upset with this game's puzzle right now (and that's just the first puzzle, can't imagine the rest of them) and dont think it's worth buying when it's released. Perhaps I will buy the game, but after years have passed and walkthrough available.

Thanks

[Sun]

Anyone knows the answer for the puzzle?

[Collin Ramkay]

Originally posted by リサ:

Anyone knows the answer for the puzzle?

You can ask the game to solve it for u automatically after few failures or through hints. I forgot. been awhile since I tried the demo

[Sun]

Thank you! After some hints the game gave me the answer. Apparently I was on the right path and almost got the answer by myself, but forgot to rearrange the letters...
The answer was "PSYCH"