☹️ Visited for the view - couldn't find a reason to stay

[Fig Newton]

Can't recommend this game. Sadly!

*EDITED*

Players will be struck by the beauty.

But also a probably feel impatient, frustrated, and above all: bored.

Great:

The atmosphere is a paradise 🌴. The game looks stunning. The nights are moonlight instead of annoying and pitch black. Actually if it was BRIGHTER then I could enjoy night voyages! Finally a reason not to use the bedroll to skip every night...

Plus the co-op works, and the building works, and menus work all decently. Most of the "basics" of the unlock-tree are there. That’s no small thing.

Nice to haves:

I have so many wishes.

I wish menus would list their shortcuts. Wish eating an item was instantaneous. I wish the jumping was much higher. I wish fishing had a real minigame. I wish the camera turned with my mouse immediately or the smoothing effect could be toggled.

I get players voting for any of that. Or crafting, climbing, and map QOL . Or better combat or story. (Not the game's focus imo).

I think a design deep dive reveals a much, much bigger issue.

Bored Voyaging

The game is about "voyaging" yes? I see it. The stunning titans and other points of interest out at sea. Sadly, I felt bored actually "playing" it.

🥱🌊

For starters there are no waves in the ocean. Much worse: the surfing and sailing have almost no gameplay besides turning left and right.

I felt tedium. I fear others will too. (Leading to less demo players and purchases).

Here, I hope Voyagers is *totally* transformed. I don't mean "tweaked". I mean totally overhauled.

There is no hook for this game. Right now, Voyagers of Nera fails to provide any reward for the usual tree cutting, monster clubbing, and hut crafting that we have been doing in other games for 20 years.

Let us look it what other *older* games have managed to do with voyaging.

• Windbound has a lot to teach. There is wind to manage. There is a dynamic sea. All of that is missing from our present game. Above all: controlling the sails is done at the same time as turning the rudder! Fun. Convenient. If Voyagers of Nera wants separate interactable parts of the boat — it needs to come up with a much better reason.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCNJgxWWuww&ab_channel=Broadbent
  
• Another game that shows how much more interactive the sea feels with wind! See: Valheim
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM0Cw92T1oA&ab_channel=Ubunaga
  
• Look at the difference it makes when the water is not endlessly flat. Look at the gameplay opportunity. See: Virtual Surfing
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGT5dAyfZnM&ab_channel=TmarTn2

I believe that, even if Voyagers of Nera got sailing and surfing to the similar levels to these games, they would still have a huge problem. But it would be start.

Re-Designs

Look. I’m not here to mess in the water. I'm here to offer free design labor actually lol

Here are some priorities, as I see it:

• Beginner ships and surfing can be slow, small, simple. Waters near the shores can be flat. All good.
  
  
• As soon as you leave the beach, the gameplay begins. And right now, I need to see more gameplay. And sea environments that create gameplay opportunities. 40ft tall waves that act like ramps for air — but you have to angle for a good landing or you get knocked into the water. Other surfing waves curl and tube — use them for speed but be careful not to hit the impact zone.
  
  
• Winds shift direction and power. "Windbound" had particle effects and "Valheim" even provided an icon to tell you about winds. Then players have lots of gameplay. In fact, Windbound let us simultaneously adjust: sails up/down, rudder left/right, and even sail tightness and looseness.
  
  
• When I am in the water, I need options to "push" awkward boats away from shore.

Those above features are crucial. Because they still wouldn't make Voyagers of Nera "New". It would make the voyaging a copy of other great games.

From there I hope and believe Voyagers of Nera could go FURTHER to add more gameplay and mechanics:

• The design is afraid to knock players off boats because there are no easy ways to get back on! So we add some ways. Maybe faster swim options and higher water jump to get back aboard. Probably the good ol' grappling hook to zip towards the mast would work perfectly too.
  
  
• Surf board body placement / magical stance. Press a button to stand up for more control turning, or go low for straight speed. Now surfing is about repositioning every second.
  
  
• Seas could get more complex still! First of all, with big visual rip currents and tides that act like highways.
  
  
• The clouds and air particles warn players of bad weather: And when a storm hits, it adds big benefits and negatives to your voyages.
  
  
• Giant trees that have fallen into the water and now act like big obvious but dangerous obstacles even at sea.
  
  
• We then add the ability where surfers can jump high over obstacles at sea. And a rare, magical ability for ships to jump too!
  
  
• To work alongside combat: a rare blob fish that jumps aboard and prevents turning your ship. Run over and bash it!
  
  
• Building more storage on ships. Please. Especially for this next part:
  
  
• To work along side crafting: ship could get different KINDS of damage. You need hull pieces for when you hit things. Sail patches for trying to sail in storm winds and making a mistake. Rudder replacements for getting too much air and having a bad landing.
  
  
• Your wind surfing board could work much the same way. BUT there is no way to store parts. So boards need to come equipped with magical, very temporary ghost pieces for damaged parts when you are out at sea.

The above is a LOT of work. But it would give the game so much more identity.

Do some of that, and you may still have a game that gets lost in the survival craft crowd.

Do all of that, and people will be talking about the fun and dangers of Voyaging in Nera.

Conclusion TLDR

Beyond surveys and positive feedback, I think an external design deep dive is rare.

I have tried to offer one.

Hopefully the dream here is to create a game that reaches new places. And for Voyagers of Nera, I can imagine so much more potential than I played in the demo. This game is in a great position to capture some of that feel of MOANA! Of mastering and exploring the seas.

I pray that the "Voyaging" in Voyagers of Nera changes. Drastically.

[glass zebra]

You can reverse with the boat if you keep S until you move backwards. Tree cutting and generally crafting and harvesting has more reward than in many other games, since you are also getting XP on top of the resources you want, which both progresses your character stat wise while also giving you new things to learn and build.

[TH Spacenorth]

Hey Fig! Really appreciate the thoughtful and well written post, even with examples! You've done a great job of summing up a gap we also see and have been hearing in other feedback about the demo: missed opportunities with seafaring, and boat gameplay feeling flatter than it should.

I have lots of good news on that front! The first, is that it's not a total surprise - there's a ton of stuff we want to do that we just simply didn't have time to tackle before the demo. But having the demo out has given us SO MUCH valuable feedback (like yours!) to help us get really specific on the most meaningful aspects to work on next.

For example, couple trends we've seen: players have broadly wanted a lot more to do with boats and on boats to hit the fantasy of being an ocean game, and to give them sharper purpose. Otherwise, people just use the skimmer instead of the ship (and skimmer has broadly been super positively received). Underwater spaces outside of the ruins are also feeling barren.

I can't promise we're going to do everything in your post, but boat gameplay, reasons to use it, and more to do in the ocean are all big focuses for us in the first couple months of the new year. Our original plans of having the ship be critical to travel to new biomes feels like too late to start getting exciting, memorable moments from the ships in our game.

If you want to hear a bit more about some of the learnings we've had and what we'll be doing next, we just had a dev stream with our game director Ryan and myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY8PPTzoW0M&ab_channel=TreehouseGames

Also, if you're interested in giving more feedback on experimental and buggy builds, we have a more frequent playtest group in our Discord: https://discord.gg/VoyagersofNera
We'd love to keep getting your detailed feedback. :)

Thanks again for putting so much effort into giving us your detailed thoughts!