Feedback

[shewdy]

Just played the demo on linux and it played great! The only technical problem was that I couldn't click the in-game feedback URL, which is why I'm writing here. This works in other games on linux (e.g. Glyphica demo which I played earlier today).

As for the game itself, a few points:

- I found the wide random pitch range of the typing sound effect to be distracting. Maybe a slight variance would be ok. But since everything else about the game is trying to be a realistic typewriter, it felt out of place to hear a video gamey typing sound.

- To really emphasize the typewriter aspect, I'd like to see the "what you typed" show up as a classic typewriter font, with minor per-character variations such as vertical shift. This would be in contrast to the nice sans-serif and computery "what you're supposed to type next" font.

- Bonus points if you can have some clean animations for the keys coming up from the bottom and whacking the page, or maybe even needing to change the ribbon once in a while. (Perhaps your letters start to fade?)

- I'm not sure if the "word fading out when you start typing it" is intended to add to the difficulty, but for some unusual words like "Bistritz" I found it more frustrating than anything.

- While some of the punctuation is a fun challenge, other bits are just unnecessary roadblocks. For example, I got stuck for a solid 20 seconds until I figured out that there was a space in "P. M.". I get that this is intended to be old timey, but that felt just too literal and not fun. In fact, that's when I stopped playing.

- The piano music was a nice touch, but the selection of songs felt out of theme. Some of them were more saloon-ish than anything. I'd expect the soundtrack in a Dracula game to be a bit more dark and brooding.

- Lastly, I'm not sure how to resolve this, but there's a bit of an inherent conflict between the mental modes of "read and experience the story" and "type it as fast as you can". Doing the latter really well sort of prevents the former. And as far as I can tell, there's no in-game incentive to do the former. Maybe that's intentional? But then there's not much reason to play the game vs. any of the similar (and free) typing practice sites online. Having a reason to engage with the story would make it a much more interesting balancing act between the two mental modes.

Hope that helps, and looking forward to updates!