2 suggestions to prevent massive halts in progress in chapter 10

[Project Moon Enjoyer]

Having just beaten chapter 10 semi-blind (i hadn't touched the game since 2020 and had intentionally forgotten most of it), i have come to the realisation that 2 things are capable of halting player progress for a long time.

1: The third plasma charge.
Y'know. The one in the SHIVA access thing?
It's hard to spot. A little TOO hard.
I had done EVERYTHING possible up until that point.
I simply had no idea what to do. I knew that there were unsolved puzzles but i couldn't solve them yet.
HOURS went by as i scoured every screen for something i missed.
Until i finally stumbled upon it.
That tiny little green circle, amidst the horde of other green glowing things.
The singular item grinding my progress to a halt.
This... needs to be made a LITTLE less hidden. It can't stay in that room.

2: Let players know they should be making note of karma stabilisation spots.
From the very beginning of the game, you're mentally taking notes (or taking ACTUAL notes) of everything you find. Something looks like it could possibly be a puzzle? Write it down.
Something seem a bit off? Make a note of it.
But one thing that is vital and also completely inconspicuous are the spots where you can use the karma stabiliser.
Tiny little dots that react to your mouse movement is, unfortunately, not enough of a signal that you should be writing down that location.
Hell, there's a karma stabiliser spot outside of the binary portal areas, all the way at the docks.
It is not very likely that a player will even THINK that they could be part of a puzzle.
As such, they WILL NOT write it down.
And as such, even when they get the karma stabiliser, they won't remember where they can use it. (Knowing what it does isn't too hard to figure out, since you'll have very likely messed with that one machine in that one room next to the cliffs portal, which is a critical clue.)
The idea that the player will make note of every location of each tiny glowing blue dot when they haven't the foggiest clue it could be part of a puzzle AT ALL is unreasonable.
Maybe make it so that when you hover over one of those, a caption comes up that says "The energy here seems unstable and broken..."
This would clue players in that this is something they should take note of and remember for the future.

A large amount of players who currently play this game were likely already fans of the series, and as such already know the solutions to a lot of the puzzles.
But i INTENTIONALLY avoided playing any of the games or looking up any solutions, effectively wanting to experience the games for the first time again.
And sub10 was brutal.
It's not a secret that it's longer than all the other games by a LONG SHOT, and requires a LOT of backtracking.
But those 2 things that i talked about can be GENUINE things that can halt player progress.
1 is an item that's much harder to spot than other items, and the other is a collection of specific locations that players will very likely pay no mind to.
Sure, these kinds of "progress-halts" can be present in ANY of the other chapters.
But the key difference is that the other chapters are a lot smaller, so it's A LOT more reasonable for the player to just go "ok, well clearly i missed something, so i'll just go back through the rooms and search."
Submachine 10 is big, and it's a huge time sink to just start wandering looking for the 1 thing you need.


If you really dont wan't to make the plasma sphere easier to find, fine. (It REALLY should be easier to find, but ultimately it's the lesser of the 2 problems.)
But the karma stabilisation points NEED to be something the player is aware of from the moment they stumble on the first one.
There NEEDS to be an indication that these seemingly random blue dots are part of something.
"But the fact that they are blue glowing dots is already an indication".
There are a lot of glowing blue things in this game. It becomes more of a background element than anything else.
The player NEEDS to know that they should keep track of those locations, otherwise they'll spend the entire endgame running through every single room in the game looking for a place to use their little stabiliser.

Puzzles are always a hundred times easier in hindsight.
Just because it seems obvious to you now, does not mean it will be obvious to a new player.
I intentionally avoided replaying any of the games in anticipation for Legacy, so i went in semi-blind.
Sure, I already generally knew how submachine worked and what the puzzles are like in general, but I remember not much of the actual details of any of the puzzles.
And those 2 things i talked about grinded my progress to a complete halt for many hours.
Even with some already-established knowledge, it was a complete time-sink.
Imagine how it must be for a new player who's only learning about submachine while playing this game for the first time. The first 9 chapters are much easier than chapter 10 and it's not even CLOSE.
So a new player could make their way through chapters 1-9 with some difficulty, but will likely be completely roadblocked by chapter 10 due to the difficulty spike.

Making those 2 simple changes would make the experience less frustrating for newcomers to the submachine games, while still making chapter 10 the pseudo "boss-battle" difficulty spike of the main chapters.


Oh. Also, like i said in a previous suggestion, add a notepad.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1564790/discussions/0/6367585249999341253/
Chapter 10 is huge, and a notepad to allow for easy note-taking ingame would be nice and would help keep immersion since you wont need to ALT + TAB just to check notes.



TL:DR:
1: The player needs to know that they should be keeping track of the stabiliser locations from the start. It's hard to tell that those tiny glowing dots are even a thing yo9u can interact with.
2: The third plasma sphere in SHIVA's area needs to NOT be in that room. It's too hard to spot.
3: Add a notepad. Chapter 10 is gigantic. We need to be able to take notes.

[HoloSam]

"But the fact that they are blue glowing dots is already an indication"
I agree with this unironically. Perhaps the stabilizer machine needs to have a little blue dot to make the connection more obvious?

[ROLO]

In the Flash version of sub10, I remember light spheres emitting arcs of electricity that spanned across the whole screen. In this remaster, they're simply floating in space for you to collect with no visual effects. I think it might be interesting to bring that electricity back, but use it to solve the issue you're facing. What if unstable objects that require the karma stabilizer had small arcs of electricity bouncing between each other? And even more, what if when you get the karma stabilizer for the first time, electricity bounces off of that too? Just an idea.
Maybe, for your first issue regarding the third plasma charge, what if all the lights inside SHIVA were flickering, but the plasma charge isn't?

[Project Moon Enjoyer]

I have been highly reccomending this game to my friends, and one of them actually decided to try it out.
We used steam remote play so he could play through my computer.
He took over and did all the inputs.
We started from sub1, and went through the entire game.
And turns it i was wrong. The karma stabiliser issue is even BIGGER issue than i thought.
I'll get to the details of his playthrough in a moment. Let me explain something first.

The very very first screen of the chapter already shows you a stabiliser point.
The problem? Since this is on the very first screen, players WILL assume that the only significance of it is "this was my arrival point". While this HAS the potential of making a player realise "oh wait, that means there was a portal here", this isn't very likely.
And even if they DO realize that, they still don't know how to even interact with it.

Remember when i said that "how to use the stabiliser" was shown ingame? Yea, after looking at it more, it doesn't really seem to be enough to make it clear what you should be doing. There isn't a clear connection between the little demonstration and the karma stabiliser. It's not horrible, but it's still a bit hard to tell what you're meant to do with the stabiliser.
I'm assuming the fact that the stabiliser glows in the inventory when in the same room as a stabilisation spot is MEANT to be a clue as to what it does, but that still hinges on the player opening their inventory while in one of those rooms.
Again, figuring out what to do with it isn't a HUGE deal, and i can certainly see some players just going "oh, that one little room next to the portal showed me that i can use karma stuff to fix things" and figuring it out, but that's not guaranteed.

And you want to know the absolute worst part of all of this?
There is an UNMARKED stabilisation spot in the game.
At the very start of the game, enter the building. Go down the stairs in the bottle fuse room.
You see that? PLAYERS ARE SUPPOSED TO MAKE NOTE OF THAT AND REMEMBER IT.
There is ZERO indication that this is even INTERACTABLE.
If you thought that me going "the blue dots are not enough" was just complaining, then i challenge you to explain how this one is justified at all with no indication whatsoever.
Oh also, there's a spot in the winter palace that doesn't even have any floating debris to indicate it's existence. it's JUST the dot. That MIGHT AS WELL be unmarked given how unlikely a player is to notice it.

Remember that friend i talked about? The one that used steam remote play so they could play the game through my computer?
Let's talk about his playthrough.
It was going fairly smoothly. There were some minor progress halts throughout, but everything was manageable. Sub9 was a bit tricky, but again, mangeable. Nothing over 7 minutes of no progress.
And then came Sub10.
The sheer size of the game made it challenging to remember what is supposed to go where (this could be helped by adding a notepad as i've suggested).
But as i thought, the 2 major roadblocks were the 3rd plasma charge and the karma stabiliser.
The plasma charge wasn't TOO bad, but certainly did not need to be that hard to find.
But The karma stabiliser was awful. It took about 5 minutes to figure out what it even did, and then my friend said, and i quote: "Wait, are you serious? Those freaking blue blips are ACTUALLY A THING? I saw one at the very start but i thought it was just a kind of decoration! I've been completely ignoring the other ones i saw, and i probably missed a bunch more because i thought it wasn't a thing!"
And yea, he completely glanced over multiple spots, and it took 35 minutes to find them all by randomly going through places.
And of course, the absolute worst offender was the stairway.
I had to TELL him where it was. His reaction was as follows:
"There wasn't even a dot in this one! What the HELL."
...yea.

Mat.
Mateusz. You incredible artist and storyteller.
PLEASE.
If you really don't want to make the plasma charge easier to find, at the VERY LEAST do the following:

1: Make it obvious from the very first screen that those little blue dot things indicate something that will be useful down the line. Most players WILL notice the broken fragments and likely hover over it for a moment. This would be the perfect time to have a popup informing them that this could possibly be useful in the future. Some variation of "The energy here seems unstable and broken..." would be a good fit. It clearly shows that this is an area of significance, and you should make a note of it. You still don't know what it does, but when you see them in the future, you'll go "Hm. Another one. I'll remember this one too." Ideally also have the popup occur on the other ones just to confirm that they are the same thing. That way, when they get the stabiliser (and figure out what it does), they don't have to start searching for 30 minutes to find more tiny blue dots, they can just refer to their notes and get on their way.

2: Make it clear that the stairway is also a stabilisation spot.
At the moment it is COMPLETELY unmarked, and even IF they player manages to piece together what to use the karma stabiliser on, this particular spot has literally nothing that would make players think it's important. At BEST, a player might go there, inexplicably wait for a moment, randomly open their inventory, see the lantern glowing, and use it. This is... not a good thing.
Also maybe make the dot in the winter palace a little more apparent, as this one is also kinda unmarked as it's only a dot and no fragments. Or at least move the dot up to the 3 stones so players are more likely to hover over it and see the dot when they go to leave the room. (Since their cursor will likely be on the far right since they had to click there to even enter that room and will move their mouse near the 3 stones when moving their mouse to the doorway.)

The player NEEDS to know they should be making note of those spots from the very start, as they are PRESENT from the very start.

I really don't know what else i can say.
The third charge can kinda be hard to spot if you're doing the logical thing and looking for things that stick out rather than ingesting every pixel of every room, and can lead to a fair amount of time completely wasted.
And the fact that the player is going to likely completely ignore the stabilisation spots and forget where they are is a GENUINE problem that can lead to a LOT of random wandering around and headaches trying to remember where you saw that one tiny little blue dot that you completely brushed off as insignificant.

[HoloSam]

I mean, sure, this detail about chapter 10 could be better, but you seem a little agitated about it? You wrote 16 paragraphs between 2 comments, I don't think Mateusz is gonna read all that. Personally I care way more about all the typos in the notes; missing articles like "a" and "the" broke my immersion dozens of times. I thought he would have fixed them after 15 years.

[Project Moon Enjoyer]

Originally posted by OrchidAlloy:

I mean, sure, this detail about chapter 10 could be better, but you seem a little agitated about it? You wrote 16 paragraphs between 2 comments, I don't think Mateusz is gonna read all that. Personally I care way more about all the typos in the notes; missing articles like "a" and "the" broke my immersion dozens of times. I thought he would have fixed them after 15 years.

Typically when i dont write detailed explanations for observations or opinions people tend to ignore what i say ((or yell skill issue)).
It's a pre-emptive self-defence habit, sorry.

[Sora Hjort]

What might help for both issues, as well as for much of the game outside of chapter 10, is if there were a hotkey, that when pressed would do a sort of 'echo pulse' indicating available interaction points. Like say in Chapter 7, the core, the major reason why I wasn't able to find a lot of the Micro Stabilizers, was that they were in spots that you had no indication that you needed to click to "look behind it" to see where they were at.

Having an hotkey that would then indicate interactive locations? that would be much helpful. Whether it does the ol' outline highlight, or what will likely be more pleasing to the eye, a radial wave pattern (Echo Pulse).

What would also be helpful, for the Karma Stabilizer itself, is if there was an icon of it on the screen in the corner at all times after getting it, and it would glow if there was a point of interaction for it on that screen. Maybe even being also able to just click on the icon to hold it instead of having to open the inventory just to grab it.

[PurpleSongbird]

Originally posted by Sora Hjort:

What would also be helpful, for the Karma Stabilizer itself, is if there was an icon of it on the screen in the corner at all times after getting it, and it would glow if there was a point of interaction for it on that screen. Maybe even being also able to just click on the icon to hold it instead of having to open the inventory just to grab it.

I remember when sub10 came out, and there was an inventory that you could see all the time at the bottom of the screen (plus a backpack for the stuff that didn't fit, but that's beside the point). When you got the karma stabiliser, it would glow if there was something on-screen that it could fix. Iirc, just after you got it, there was a little spot on the roof of the lab that you could fix that kind of showed you the concept of what to look for.

A lot of the puzzles across the games are much clearer to solve in this remaster compared to the original flash games, however, I think this is one puzzle that is much more confusing because of the inventory system. I think the idea of an icon that is there permanently (like it used to be in the flash game) giving a clue of when to use the karma stabiliser would improve this a lot.

[HoloSam]

You're right, in the original you could see the stabilizer glow, but now the inventory is a separate gui

[revoblam]

I feel also having a proper indicator of movement options would help a lot, something like an assist feature that marks intractable objects would help dumb asses like me who don't even realize some areas can be moved into

[Kituss]

Originally posted by For whom the bell Joes:

Originally posted by OrchidAlloy:

I mean, sure, this detail about chapter 10 could be better, but you seem a little agitated about it? You wrote 16 paragraphs between 2 comments, I don't think Mateusz is gonna read all that. Personally I care way more about all the typos in the notes; missing articles like "a" and "the" broke my immersion dozens of times. I thought he would have fixed them after 15 years.

Typically when i dont write detailed explanations for observations or opinions people tend to ignore what i say ((or yell skill issue)).
It's a pre-emptive self-defence habit, sorry.

While I understand, you definitely should at least write a TL;DR - despite the fact that everything you've written is a valid complaint + suggestion, reading all of it and parsing the main info from it is a lot to ask people and a dev who's known for not reading Steam discussions :(

I still hope your point gets across to him!

[rick diculous]

The hidden green plasma sphere genuinely made me angry. I think a broader fix for accessibility would be an option/key to highlight interactables - like most modern Adventure games offer. When I warn people about negatives of this game, pixel hunting is one of those issues. The second is hidden/hard to interpret exits. This option would solve both problems.

The stabilization points is part of a bigger issue - Chapter 10 grew to big to work. This chapter is bigger/longer than most indie full games. Having no map/fast travel isn't a big issue for most of the chapters, since they're reasonable in size. After 3 hours into the chapter, I had no clue where to place the fuses or where the stabilization points were. This level is just awful navigation.

I looked at a few playthroughs of the older games and can appreciate the subtle changes made to make some chapters more intuitive and logically link locations that really didn't have a link before. The indicator lights on a steam pipe is a good example, it shows that it's tied to 3 object and we've seen 3 pressure indicators elsewhere. The last parts of Chapter 10 is just unfun and finding the random area to go isn't satisfying. It would take a lot of helpful cues just band-aid over the issues.

[Project Moon Enjoyer]

Originally posted by PurpleSongbird:

Originally posted by Sora Hjort:

What would also be helpful, for the Karma Stabilizer itself, is if there was an icon of it on the screen in the corner at all times after getting it, and it would glow if there was a point of interaction for it on that screen. Maybe even being also able to just click on the icon to hold it instead of having to open the inventory just to grab it.

I remember when sub10 came out, and there was an inventory that you could see all the time at the bottom of the screen (plus a backpack for the stuff that didn't fit, but that's beside the point). When you got the karma stabiliser, it would glow if there was something on-screen that it could fix. Iirc, just after you got it, there was a little spot on the roof of the lab that you could fix that kind of showed you the concept of what to look for.

A lot of the puzzles across the games are much clearer to solve in this remaster compared to the original flash games, however, I think this is one puzzle that is much more confusing because of the inventory system. I think the idea of an icon that is there permanently (like it used to be in the flash game) giving a clue of when to use the karma stabiliser would improve this a lot.

Actually yea, an always-on-screen indicator for when the stabiliser can be used would be nice.

[d_wdm]

Although it may be technically difficult, I thought it would be effective to have the mouse cursor light up in scenes where the Karma stabilizer can be used.

[Project Moon Enjoyer]

Bumping this again in desperate hopes that Mat notices.
Chapter 10 is a MASSIVE difficulty spike when compared to the other chapters due to it's length and complexity.