Visual Cues, Tutorials, etc.

[Hectic Dialectic]

So, in the past few days I've had to ask for a LOT of help - and I see the same is true for the majority of posts here - players asking for stupid stuff that SHOULD be obvious fi they find themselves in the right place.

This could probably be solved with some hints on fail states - e.g. in the train when you fail the same thing repeatedly, the hint might tell you "You need to find a way to further delay the representative"

A game that constantly makes players feel helpless and stupid for simply not going around and clicking on EVERYTHING before trying ANYTHING is going to alienate players and push them away, because there is no sense of reward for solving these "puzzles" - they don't make you feel CLEVER - just like you've gone around and clicked on enough stuff.

The same goes for things like Lily Pads - Am I missing something? Should I be able to jump diagonally? I cannot see how to get to the other side of the apple maze and have been jumping around for about 20 minutes - someone will eventually point it out to me and all I'll think is "yeah, these graphics suck I couldn't see what I'm supposed to" - maybe the trees or shrubbery needs to be slightly transparent if that is possible? Or maybe just an option to turn on hint highlight colors or something for those of us whose vision is apparently insufficient.

The game is fun (although it does become a bad version of an idle game (because of needing to take a ton of time to spam art or craft goods)), but these aspects are total momentum killers - I find myself wanting to just sit in my shop and watch the numbers get bigger, as actually exploring the world is PAINFUL.

[BubbRubb]

Go to the very bottom and use those lily pads hidden behind a tree. Hahahaha

[ManaBrent]

I want players to think, explore, and engage with each other to figure out the secrets of the game. Overall this is working well, and most things do have hints in place. For the occasions where direction is lacking I'm patching in more in appropriate places, such as the train fail state you mention. I'll add a hint there in today's patch.

I would appreciate if you toned down the aggression, keep in mind this is a game made by one person and I am doing my best.

[Evolved]

I tend to agree. I'm roughly 6 hours in and constantly feeling like I have no idea what to do next or where to find the next objective. Another issue I'm having is I always feel like I can't get ahead on the loan. I'll pay it off down to around 17K, then all of the sudden it's back to 20K. Then if I miss some tax payments I'm locked out of my shop. I'm at a crossroads with the game. It's fun, and I can see the effort put in by the developer. There are a lot of neat things, but it's tedious at the same time. I think if the stress of the loan wasn't there, or lessened, it would be a lot more fun. I thought this game would be relaxing, but I'm often stressed out playing it.

[Blind Gardener]

Originally posted by Hwantaw:

I want players to think, explore, and engage with each other to figure out the secrets of the game. Overall this is working well, and most things do have hints in place. For the occasions where direction is lacking I'm patching in more in appropriate places, such as the train fail state you mention. I'll add a hint there in today's patch.

I would appreciate if you toned down the aggression, keep in mind this is a game made by one person and I am doing my best.

It's fine, really. I only needed help in a couple of places. Mostly you do a good job of directing people to the next destination

[Shattered Rift]

Hints for the train might be helpful since that's required to progress through the game. It took me a long minute to figure out which door to lock. (My first solution was talking to everyone, which got to the additional delay.) A line of dialogue from Odina like, "I wonder what it's like being cooped up in the same room for the whole train ride?" might have helped.

Likewise with making headway (or not) against the loan. But that's also a different situation... the struggle is important. The one thing that would have helped me was the reminder that the 5% is tacked on with each additional tax payment (or however it's timed). I wouldn't have let it get so out of control otherwise. Or an NPC pointing out that the loan was meant to be difficult (if not impossible) to pay and that a better solution would be needed, as I assumed the mail stocks were the necessary way. (I was also mistakenly thought I'd need to buy shares, sell envelopes, sell shares, then not sell envelopes, rinse, and repeat.) I also expected Mrs. Five to bust me for it and stir up trouble.

Grinding out additional art is still annoying, even holding down A. Increasing the cost and the amount of Inspiration would be nice.

Stuff like the lily pads in the Apple Garden, though? That's just solving some obscure stuff. Most of the apple chests in general are at the edge of view on a map in the first place.

One thing I'd really like to see is achievements being added and referenceable in-game. There are definitely a couple of things I've only done or thought to do because I checked the achievements.

[Sigvuld]

Before I say this, I'm going to make myself abundantly clear.

I constantly need to look up guides, hints, and ask for help with my plethora of games, and have had to do so over the course of years and years. I am NOT a clever man - far from it, and I've found myself stumped by genuinely obvious """puzzles""" more times than I can count.

So, I think that should lend some weight to the following words:

Over 30 hours in, I've had exceedingly little trouble with this game. The longest time trying to get past something I was stuck on, that was reliant entirely on my input and not time passing, was when I spent 20 minutes trying to solve one of the floor puzzles.

I think it's a severe overreaction to react like this to just... being stumped for a while by what to do in certain spots. The plan on the train is, on paper, a convoluted one, yet all you had to do was just talk to people. That's it. Just... just interact with the very, very small number of people on the train. When you hit a snag, interact with someone you haven't yet, on one of the two characters you haven't interacted with them on yet. It hardly needs even more explanation than it already has.

I highly doubt running into a brief snag will completely alienate a player, driving them to say they feel like a helpless idiot, if they have even so much as a modicum of self control.

The fact your reaction to being told what you managed to miss is "yeah well the graphics suck and it's the game's fault" is just plain goofy, and completely unearned. I didn't even grow up on RPG Maker games, nor am I remotely able to claim intimate familiarity with them, as I haven't even played many of them on this engine, and yet I've never struggled so much as once to identify things in the environment, especially not things of importance.

Exploring the world is FAR from painful - if expecting you to explore a screen for more than a minute with a handful of button presses is painful, then apparently I'm a masochist, despite being VERY QUICK to feel as though I'm an idiot, when stumped, myself.

Adding hints is all well and good, but I agree with the developer's sentiment on trusting your player to figure things out for themselves that aren't even cryptic in the first place. I also think the tone of this thread is incredibly silly, and an overreaction.

(I'm of course not suggesting that the game can't explain a fair few things better. I was able to figure out 98% for myself, but there's still things that I agree could use a helpful batch of hints when you get into them, or refreshers contained in nearby notes like the craft bag/battlepass building, etc. However, the dev's working on this with everything they've got - try to make your feedback less accusatory and aggressive, and more constructive!)

Originally posted by Evolved:

I tend to agree. I'm roughly 6 hours in and constantly feeling like I have no idea what to do next or where to find the next objective. Another issue I'm having is I always feel like I can't get ahead on the loan. I'll pay it off down to around 17K, then all of the sudden it's back to 20K. Then if I miss some tax payments I'm locked out of my shop. I'm at a crossroads with the game. It's fun, and I can see the effort put in by the developer. There are a lot of neat things, but it's tedious at the same time. I think if the stress of the loan wasn't there, or lessened, it would be a lot more fun. I thought this game would be relaxing, but I'm often stressed out playing it.

Just to be super clear, I don't say this from the perspective of someone who's experienced with games like this where you manage finances, min/max shops, etc., I'm actually quite bad at these. So, just please bear in mind that I'm NOT saying "lol just dont play bad, idiot" while having 10+ years of experience playing this genre like some encounters on Steam discussions can boil down to - I'd like to help you relax on running your shop!

You have Elora to remind you of what you're currently doing, in these early stages. The way to stay ahead of your loan is to secure your seven products as soon as you can - the game is expecting you to take Elora's advice and explore the city to find products to sell, which you will inevitably do if you just explore. Your loan is INTENDED to be stressful, but only to a very bearable degree - you're pressured to focus your efforts on making money ASAP, and it's not even in the ballpark of unfair. If you just work with Elora and make sure to focus on getting your product lineup complete, you'll be able to make very reliable progress on your loan. If you REALLY need the help, you can actually go back to your shop in Tunetown to build up some extra funds. It'll still add to your current TAX in the city, but as far as I've been able to tell, you won't have the Representative coming in and adding that 5% markup on the loan since they're not collecting tax while you're in Tunetown, selling things there.

I hope this helps at least a bit! It seriously will only get easier the further you get, and if you have to restart even once (which I doubt, but still), I guarantee - if someone as foolish and easily befuddled as I can make it on my first try, you absolutely can.