Are there... dead-ends?!

[uka7777]

Well, I have finally acquired the game (thanks to the Holiday Auction!) - and, to tell the truth, I rather enjoy it.
However, could the developers please confirm if they have left all the dead-ends - things that were normal in 1980s, but are now anything but shortcomings?

For example, I did not spend much time in New-York because I was fascinated with my trip to California so that I sold my house and bought a ticket as quickly as possible. The captain did send me to buy a mosquito net though, so I discovered there is a store in town and bought some other items as well.
So, now I am in Sutter's Fort, and I have no idea what to do next. I checked the walkthroughs for the original game - it seems that I had to get some envelope from my brother (and I did not visit the post-office). Then I have to buy some gold pan - and I have no money as some clever people took it from me in Panama...

So - am I stuck in an old-fashioned Sierra-style dead-end so that the only way to get further is to replay the whole game from the very beginning???

[Sunlight Games]

Hi,

thank you for your purchase and the support for us.

It is no deadend inside the game :)

There is no need to play the game from new! :)

SPOILER:
The letter is no must-have for finish the game.
And you must not find a coin in Brooklyn to finish the game (it is the same as in the original). The coin can be found in Coloma (near of Sutter's Fort) too, if you havn't found it in Brooklyn. With the coin you can buy a pan in Sutters Fort.

[uka7777]

Thanks!
That is nice to hear :)

[Sunlight Games]

:)
If you need any more help or info, please contact us or write here.

[uka7777]

And how do I get to that Coloma?

It seems that I can't travel anywhere form the fort. There is a road, but it gets me only to countless screens of gold-digging (to the east and south), with or without mule. There are 'stage drivers', but when I click on them I only get a message "'boy' is not understood" - what boy!? There must be a bug as I don't use parser interface...

Here is the screenshot.

[Sunlight Games]

SPOILER:
-------------------
when you went out of the fort to that road to the first screen of the wilderness, go at the river a lot of screens to the east. Then you will sure come to Coloma.
-------------------

Oh, thank you for the info with that issue, we will fix it.

[uka7777]

Thanks, found it :)
Strange enough, but I tried it before with no luck - I went with the mule to the east along the river, but going east from 'EAST: 3' screen somehow used to get me not to 'EAST 4' but back to 'EAST 2' and to the fort again...
Without the mule I was finally able to get to the city though.

[Sunlight Games]

Hmmm. Strange. With or without mule we have no problems go to east, to Coloma and later other places... :)

[Sunlight Games]

Regarding the problem with the scene-changing:
Did you use Point&Click or the command-line mode? If P&C, where did click? And did you click one or use a double-click?

[uka7777]

I used Point&Click and double-click. Yesterday whenever I double-clicked the east side of a gold-digging screen, it led me not to 1-2-3-4... but to 1-2-3-2-1 screens.
I can't repeat that glitch though - today everything works fine for me with the same saved games :)

[uka7777]

OK, I have encountered this glitch again several times today :(
But it is not repeatable for sure - not always but sometimes when I double-click the right side of 'EAST 12' screen, I appear on right (sic!) side of 'EAST 11' screen instead of the left side of 'EAST 13' screen.

[uka7777]

So, about that bug - after such continous wandering 11-12-11-12... Jarod completely disappeared from the screen, so nothing could be done! You can check my save (https://www.dropbox.com/s/nba1rhs5tjaa1pz/8?dl=0).

[Sunlight Games]

First of all, a BIG THANK YOU for all those information.
We are currently preparing a new patch, with some new and more features and fixing a few small issues.
We will check that too and try to fix it.
We wonder, why we haven't any problems there in the past.

[uka7777]

I have finished the game finally - will play again only after the achievements will be available :)

I liked the first part of the game (New York and travel route) - but sadly not the second part (California). Too many bugs there that freeze the game or make travel impossible :(

And it seems to me that some solutions are rather illogical. For example: when I arrived to the fort and talked to blacksmith - he told me about my brother. But as I did not visit the post-office I knew nothing about my brother (and the blacksmith was talking as if it was the brother that I came here for - that sounded VERY strange). Maybe there should be some hint to visit the post-office before departuring?

Again, thanks to the developers for some steps to remove dead-ends! BUT - then some parts of the game become illogical. And it WAS logical in the original to die of malaria in order to get the idea to buy the mosquito net before departuring. Now I just buy it (as told by captain) and never use it - which is rather boring, is it not? So, finding the right balance between the good old non-linear puzzles and the good new no-dead-ends strategy is a very complex thing

[Sunlight Games]

:)
It would be great to get a positive Comment here on Steam, if you like the game :)

Hmmm, if you didn't get the letter, the story tells that you brother was gone 11 years ago and Jerrod misses him. We make it as in the original game with the Blacksmith and it isn't much illogical we think. The Blacksmith got his information from the brother, to look if there might be someone from NYC and give him information.
There can be a hint, yes. But we can't give for the most quests hints :)
Also if you want to get as much as possible points, then you know if you miss something.
In the patch 1.1 we will add also point-statistics as in the original so that you see, that you get xx points of possible 68 when leaving Brooklyn for example.

In the original you buy it and never use it too :) - if you have it, you will not get Malaria :)

Yes, that's right. But the original contains a lot of dead-ends and random-deaths and no one today want to have something like that in a game.

[uka7777]

Originally posted by Sunlight Games:

:)
It would be great to get a positive Comment here on Steam, if you like the game :)

Well, I only half-liked the game :) And as you can't write a 'mixed' review here, I would rather wait for the patch fixing all those issues to write a positive review, so there would be no need to mention glitches.