Exhaustive list of tedious things that don't need to be tedious. (minor interaction spoilers)

[Empty]

Posting this so hopefully the devs see it and fix some of this, it's insane to me that there are this many but here we are. I probably spend over 2-3 minutes per run in unskippable, annoying, pointless, slow transitions that add nothing to the game except breaking my flow state and making me not want to engage with game mechanics because of tedium. Here is a list of things that bother me (moderate spoilers?)

-picking up gold, gems and keys spawns a hitbox that gets in the way of picking up other gold that lives for 2-3 seconds
-picking up most other items freezes the game for 1 second, you can cancel the animation of the item and description but there is a mandatory 1 second freeze which is very annoying
-digging up material with the shovel has a mandatory 3~ second fade to black and back, and then it has the above delay for finding an item.
-engaging with any computer terminal is utter misery as every single screen transition takes multiple seconds to complete, you also can't leave a terminal except by navigating to a screen that has 'exit' as an option.
-making a typo on passwords is annoying as it results in a 2-3 second delay before you can try again
-logging in remotely takes TEN SECONDS to load, it's actually ridiculous how annoying this is. Please for gods sake fix this. If you want it for flavor reasons, keep the delay only for the first time the player uses this mechanic. It's miserable because very powerful mechanics are gated behind this and it takes me out of the run every time I do it. If you fix one thing FIX THIS.
-the initial animation for starting a new day is absurdly long and unskippable. Again for the first day, fair enough. For days after that, skipping it should be possible, it's frankly ridiculous.
-interacting with safes and similar objects (breaker box, certain hidden switches) has an unskippable slow camera transition into place, and also an additional slow camera transition back after you complete the interaction, this is incredibly annoying every time.
-keys unlocking lockers and similar objects play a lengthy, unskippable animation that also freezes you in place as usual. annoying.
-opening foot lockers doesn't let you pick up items until the opening animation has fully finished, this takes a surprisingly long and annoying amount of time, particularly notable with the hammer.
-the pump room is kinda annoying, you don't have to do it often so this isn't a major complaint, but it is very slow.
-the secret garden is incredibly annoying if you wish to perform both interactions (7 separate cutscenes...), which you likely will do every time you enter the room once you are at that point in progression
-after enterring room 46 for the first time, it's probably not necessary to play the extremely long and slow cut scenes for antechamber doors opening. at least have them be skippable.
-there is a delay on the button for adding coins to the shrine so you can't mash it as fast as you like. considering how many coins you may wish to place there in the late game this feels like a very pointless input restriction.
-EXITING THE GAME REQUIRES YOU TO WAIT FOR THREE SEPARATE TRANSITIONS TO AND FROM BLACK. When the user wants to back out to the main menu and quit PLEASE OBLIGE THEM. I should not be ALT+F4ing your game to avoid 7 seconds of unskippable menu transitions!!!
-i'm sure many other interactions that i haven't found yet as the rabbit holes do continue seemingly forever.

The game is fantastic but these are driving me utterly insane. I hope the devs read this and other similar complaints, I would feel terrible leaving a negative review over this type of thing for such a fantastic game but this issue really is a major weakness in the games design. Please consider the fact that an average player is going to do most of these interactions hundreds if not thousands of times to complete postgame content. Those seconds add up.

Thank you for your time and amazing game.

[Empty]

bonus complaints:
-cutting a special key at the key shop is ridiculously long
-the action required to get the cabinet drawer keys is also ridiculously long for some reason? kinda minor complaint cause you only do it once but it's just so long? why?

[ChickenStrip]

There's a whole ton that makes it kind of tedious. There's a long stretch where post-credits where I felt like this was the single best Adventure I've played in a game since stuff like Myst, but then eventually the bad implementation of the core Roguelike mechanics becomes more and more of an issue, which led to me actively avoiding playing the game. I've still getting hints dripfed to me on Day 200, including to puzzles that I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ my way through 100 in-game days ago.

Play with Cheat Engine. Set the game to 2x speed. It is still too repetitive sped up that much, and there was one instance where I sped it up to a full 10x (when you know, you know).

[Winter Wolf]

I suspect the tedium is to emphasize how much of a thinking game rather than an action game this is. It promotes patience over efficiency and fast timing.

[ChickenStrip]

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

I suspect the tedium is to emphasize how much of a thinking game rather than an action game this is. It promotes patience over efficiency and fast timing.

Oh ♥♥♥♥ this. Deflecting crap. You can say that about any game with a glacial pace, but here it leads to hour-long stretches without any type of saving.

How do you feel about the literal multiple puzzles that require sitting there for 20 minutes for time to pass?

In theory, this should be faster than the average Adventure game, because of how much of the stuff is repetitive and redundant. Instead, we have something that is wildly slower than average for the genre.

[Malkav0]

All of this seems legitimate to me, after ~180h. I'd say, it's bearable, as it's a thinking game, BUT it gets to a point where it reduces the value of the game experience. All of this listed here would benefit of a "Fast Mode" in the options to cut it, perhaps something available after you reach room 46 or clear a further step. That way it can even be integrated in the progress, like the trophy transfer.

[dmeister]

You could probably condense this into just a couple of general things:

- Have an option to speed up animations (e.g. picking up items). In particular with the items once you know what they do there's no need to flash the description on the screen, just put it in the inventory and if the player wants to see what it does again they can do it by clicking on the item there.

- Once a combination lock or other unchanging puzzle is solved make it be solved permanently. This is mainly for the combination safes, there's nothing particularly engaging about reopening them in later runs once you know how to open them. (On the bright side the game does make a lot of things permanently solved once they're done like opening various locks and doors and powering certain machines, etc. So this really is mostly just the safes.)

- Oh yeah, and not being able to save the game mid-run is kind of annoying. Runs take up to an hour, it would be nice to be able to save mid-run if you have to leave unexpectedly.

[Winter Wolf]

Originally posted by ChickenStrip:

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

I suspect the tedium is to emphasize how much of a thinking game rather than an action game this is. It promotes patience over efficiency and fast timing.

Oh ♥♥♥♥ this. Deflecting crap. You can say that about any game with a glacial pace, but here it leads to hour-long stretches without any type of saving.

OK so your complaint isn't the delays themselves but the fact that there is no save to quit? That IS indeed an irksome feature. I do not quite understand why it is set up like that except that maybe they thought people would play this on their coffee breaks? No idea. Hopefully at some point the devs will realize that it isn't a + and add a real save to quit feature without wrecking the days progress.

[(Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr]

The only ones that honestly annoy me at this point are the cutscenes for riding the boat across the reservoir.

[ChickenStrip]

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

Originally posted by ChickenStrip:

Oh ♥♥♥♥ this. Deflecting crap. You can say that about any game with a glacial pace, but here it leads to hour-long stretches without any type of saving.

OK so your complaint isn't the delays themselves but the fact that there is no save to quit? That IS indeed an irksome feature. I do not quite understand why it is set up like that except that maybe they thought people would play this on their coffee breaks? No idea. Hopefully at some point the devs will realize that it isn't a + and add a real save to quit feature without wrecking the days progress.

No, there's tons of tedious stuff, and runs sometimes getting to be an over an hour long is a huge problem when semi-completionist runs are going to be like 150 days.

It's a really, really, really slow game.

[Jeris]

None of the stuff listed bothers me personally. If this is the intended pace then so be it, and each of us can decide if we are willing to live with it.

I'd rather they stick with their intent than just cave to player wants when it comes to changes.

[Vercci ]

The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Drawing Room safe still needs to force me to stay still and turn to the left to watch the safe open every time when the office doesn't even point out the switch is opening the safe and I missed it the first time (or specifically that the switch revealed the safe and wasn't there the entire time)

[Swede]

No mention of the Rotunda rotation animation? The room is decently good, but for what, 3 gems..I still I have to suffer through that time-waster of a rotation? Please god no.

[nicolai490]

My suggestions for easy fixes:
- add an animation speed slider to the options (for things like camera pans, item pick-ups etc.)
- make all cutscenes skippable (and make the boat ride part of that skippable cutscene, obviously)
- double the rotation speed of the rotunda and increase the movement speed of elevators by 50%
- remove the time delay on fade-to-black sequences (digging, crafting, special key...)
- integrate the "Save & Continue" and "Save & Quit" buttons onto the summary screen so there is one fewer click + transition
- no fade to black / delay in the main menu
- make the network connection timeout setting also remove the delay for remote terminal access
- make the hidden third wheel in the Secret Garden turn the entire weathervane instead of just the top arrow

[vorchun]

Game should be sped up about three times, random things should be twice less random, all those stupid fade-to-blacks transitions etc that waste player's time should be removed, maybe it'll become bearable to play.

[Mouse]

You can actually speed up the boot up animation of the remote log ins by changing the server reset time in the blackbridge grotto