Dead In Bermuda NEEDS IMPROVEMENT and here's why

[Silver]

I'm glad I got this game free on origin rather than paying good money for it. This is going to be a rant, so if you dont like rants and consider them a waste of time, dont waste yours on this only to get upset. I am trying to offer constructive criticism though, hence my long post concerning everything that is wrong with this game:

Wood:
One of the most important resources in the game, and despite you being in a tropical jungle full of trees, wood is quite hard to come by in this game until you have set up the gathering tools building. Initially, you can only find wood in the plane, but this leads me to the 2nd problem:

Food:
Here is my problem with food: In the beginning of the game, you don’t really need all too much, but the survivor who gets sent to the plane brings back the entire on board menu which then all spoils in a matter of 3 nights from great, to good, to barely edible, to rotten. How about....I tell him NOT to bring food and instead to look for the other stuff, like wood and rope and stat boosting items? Oh right, I can’t. This is why you shouldn’t visit the plane too often in the beginning. But then you also have less wood supplies than you would otherwise have gotten, and so you have to resort to exploring and salvaging wood off crates or the fig tree or the ship etc. Considering how much metric tons of wood you need to get your buildings going (sleeping area, fruit basket, fishing rod, gathering tools), all the while feeding your fire, it is really not easy avoiding the plane.

Injury:
I can't believe that virtually EVERY SINGLE OBJECT in the game is guarded by a monster that saps 5-10% of your health whenever you fail the stealth check. But injury isnt so bad in my game because I found many painkillers. Even though it doesn’t heal when you sleep, at least injury remains stable (at least at lower levels). Which leads me to the next point though:

Sickness:
LOOK. In real life, people get sick and then get better. But in this game, sickness is a ticking time bomb. Every day it just keeps GOING UP and not down, even if you STOP doing the things that would increase sickness (like eating raw food). Hell, even if you keep the survivor in bed all day, their sickness level still increases. So how to cure sickness? Oh right, you can’t. Sleeping doesn’t cure it! How about exploration? Sure, you can keep exploring, HOPING to find a crate or box that contains a potion that reduces sickness, but that's purely based on luck. And when you do find that rare vial that reduces your sickness by 20, well, what if you're at like 70 sickness? You went down to 50 and in 10 days your back up there again! You can of course tell your survivors at the gathering tools station to focus on medicine but, again, GUESS WHAT???? They get maybe 2 or 3 medicinal herbs per half day and these only reduce your sickness by a handful points when consumed, usually only by 1 or 2. YOUR SICKNESS HAS GONE UP MORE BY THE NEXT DAY!!!! So this is an utter waste of time and the gathering tools is put to better use (wood, rope). tl;dr: if one of your survivors has sickness more than 30, GOOD LUCK LOL THEY'LL PROBABLY DIE.

Sickness is something that is pretty much FORCED on you because all your survivors have to keep eating raw fish because you/they JUST CANT survive long enough till you can get the fishing rod + cooking pot combo set up (which yields you a steady source of good meals).

The fruit basket is good because it yields food that doesn’t make you sick, and food that can be converted into water, but the problem is it ONLY has 2 slots and therefore the yield of fruit per day is usually no more than 5 if you keep it occupied non-stop and at good condition. But 5 fruit barely scale down your survivors' hunger levels (5% or so per fruit?) And you need them for water.

And finally, consider the fact that even though your intuition says “if I focus all survivors on work in the camp rather than exploring, the situation should improve for me” but the OPPOSITE is the case. Oftentimes you find so much good stuff out there that it offsets all time spent in the camp. And consider that the worse your levels are, the FASTER they go up. NOT FAIR! Beyond 50%, you are basically only prolonging the inevitable and NOT nursing your survivors back to health. Depression + fatigue means sleep, campfire, sleep, campfire which in turn means 0 productivity which in turn means no exploration, no wood, no food and no fruit which in turn means no campfire, no water and starvation. Wowee,

Bottom line is: I want to play a video game to have fun, reduce stress, lift up my spirits etc. but Dead in Bermuda does NONE of that. Look, I am a casual, so there should at least be difficulty ratings BUT THERE ARENT! This means the hardcore korean survival sim gamer is playing the same game as Joe Casual and so, Joe is in for a big disappointment. This game is a grindfest with a BAD ending until you figure out exactly what to do in every situation, how to level up, and memorize stuff. Is that fun for you? To me, it is just frustration and not all of us have weeks to kill on this game. So devs: You created a deliberately frustrating game. Make it easier.

[Turtler]

Jsut got this thing off Origin and am digging into it.

My gut feeling is that you're right about the plane, though I think it's worth only going there once per day at the start (especially if you use one of the prime scavengers like Yuri) and then you should just feed everybody as much as they can stand with perishables, just to get them down to zero or as close to it as possible.

That way you get the max benefit out of the food before it spoils. (Also, while dodging the plane is a bit too convenient I can understand from a meta reason why "just tell them not to bring back food" doesn't work; if anything the stuff should have spoiled a long time ago after day five or so).

As for stuff like Fish, ya I noticed tat. Though did you see that ya can cook it and thus transform it into bog standard food that won't give you illness? That'll help. Problem is getting sufficiet stocks of wood.

That siad, the stuff you mentioned about the sickness is damn unfortnate. I mean, I remember punching through This War of Mine by hoarding medicine and trading it while having my own slightly ill or injured people sleep it off, like happens in real life. that is unfortunate otherwise.

[Silver]

Originally posted by Turtler:

(Also, while dodging the plane is a bit too convenient I can understand from a meta reason why "just tell them not to bring back food" doesn't work; if anything the stuff should have spoiled a long time ago after day five or so).

I'd like to imagine the refrigerator in the plane, while no longer having electricity, still has a hermetic seal so that, if the lid is kept closed, the ice inside can still keep the food cool for more than a week or so.

And yeah, This War of Mine is far more enjoyable and even easier than this. Also it has a consistent difficulty while Dead in Bermuda gets very easy once you have the cooking pot and fishing rod combo and none of your survivors have more than 30 sickness.

[himrahill]

Hey,

Thanks for your feedbacks. It seems to me that you played a lot of the game, so did you really get bored so much? The game seems to have challenged you, and you seem to have find solutions to what seems at first like impossible problems, so for me it's kind of the fun I like in games, but I guess it depends on people :)

The game IS hard, like survival should be. And it's true that the game is really hard in the beginning, but after you settle up it becomes easy (even too easy). Like survival should be.

It's kind of opposite of what we are used to in games, but well, we tried to convey these feelings. And being a small team, we couldn't put everything we wanted (we would have love to implement several difficulty settings, but it was just not possible believe me)

We added an "easy" mode, maybe you missed it it's in the option menu while you are playing. You can activate/de activate it at anytime, it only lowers dramatically bad states values you will gain.

The game is far from perfect, we know it very well and we'll try to make the best possible sequel based on player's feedbacks.

But just so you know, a post with a title like that on our steam page hurts us small developers a lot, because it's very visible. It's even more sad that you apparently got the game for free, so...

To conclude, if you liked the overall gameplay I think you will like the sequel we are working on, so keep tuned!

[Silver]

As per your nice request, I've changed the topic of the thread. It was Origin who put your game on their monthly "on the house" offer where they give away 1 game for free. Truth be told, I think it will get you more sales for your upcoming sequel, now that far more people know about this game series, than if it hadnt been.

I think this game can be a more fun experience if you tweaked a few things in an additional update, also making the meat dryer a little cheaper or the giant marble statue not worsening all your stats like crazy if you drink from it. And finally I felt like doing the actions marked with a question mark (?) did not have any effect on the story, it would be great if they tallied up to for example an alternate ending.

[himrahill]

Thanks :)
We'll see if we can make some adjustments in the balancing for a later patch.

[b.robin]

Got a free game and still complaining, so its good that he can't write a bad review here on steam AHAHAAAA

[GiantPixie]

Originally posted by b.robin:

Got a free game and still complaining, so its good that he can't write a bad review here on steam AHAHAAAA

Getting something free doesn't give that something a free pass for complaints.

[[Ger] Daen]

I'm a Joe Casual as well. I work most of my spare-time and today I was a little bored an started to play this game. I was hooked from the very beginning but for me it is too difficult as well. As they we're saying: I play games for fun and to have some enlightment right before geoing to bed. The sound is nice, the chars are cool, but it feels so bad to loose over and over again.

Maybe add an achievement where the hardcore-players can celebrate their skills (and endless spare-time) and add an option for the gamer-peasants like me to choose a after-Work-mode in which I can sit with my coke in one hand, my mouse in another hand, chatting with my wife (as she loves the sound and my stories from the game) and let me do something hearthwarming before going to bed. :D

Sincerely, Joe Casual (who is old enough to grow up with nintendo-hard Games on NES and endless time, but now just plays games to get bed-ready ^^)

[himrahill]

Hey, there's an easy mode in the option menu (you must launch a game to access it)

It doesn't do anything more than lowering the states penalties you gain, so don't hesitate to put it ON, you won't miss anything.

(we should really have named this mode "normal" and the other one "hard"... And make it more accessible. Our bad!)

[[Ger] Daen]

Ooooh, I see, it is well hidden. :D
Okay, now I advanced to day 12, the noob I am. :D

And you were saying there is a sequel in developement? Nice!

[Voidmonger]

I'm liking the game a lot, perfect "just one more turn" addiction
BUT it really needs an option to automatically skip dialogue you've already read, and to have results sped up automatically. (and enter key to skip is an awful key!)
Movement between screens should be done with something different than directional keys (something on left side of kb! or custom remap ;) )
a hotkey to bring up char skill screen would be nice too
clicking on an item should bring up a character selection screen for application, showing all characters relevant skill/condition numbers
using an item should ask for confirmation :)
maybe an option to reduce fire/water warnings to only when they are actually below treshold (30% - 1w per person)

[⎛⎝Jessie⎠⎞]

I absolutely love how hard it is. It took me well over 50 tries. It's a breath of fresh air to find something that has a challenge. don't make it any easier please :)

[Hina]

I'll admit the game was hard but I actually liked the challenge (even if the difficulty had me starting over repeatedly and trying different things to get further in the game!). But i definitely agree about the dwindling fruit and wood supplies. i always seem to find a lot of healing items but not near enough food and wood.

[Ultrazen]

My biggest beef with the game, is that even when I have 2 people on a resource, wood, fishing, fruit, I can still end up only pulling 1 quanity. That's just ridiculous, and pretty frustrating. Last game I played I had 2 characters with pretty high skill, and was rountinely pulling 1 or 2 fish/wood/fruit. It makes it literally impossible to sustain.

/shrug. I've tried a few different strategies, killing a few people off quickly or not etc, and I just can't seem to get past the RNG of how many supplies you get.

As per usual, the solution to stuff like this are settings the player can adjust to their level of ability.

[himrahill]

There is an easy mode, during a game go to the options menu and there it is (you can't select it from the main menu). It's rather hidden, sorry.

Other factors come into play when you put 2 people on a station: their opinion level also gives a bonus/malus to the outcome, and the more you use a station, less resources it will bring over a large period of time.

AH! And you have also to check the condition level of the station (the XX% number). It gives a flat malus to what you'll get, ie if the station is at 50% condition you'll only get 50% of what you would normally have, after all bonuses/maluses. It can easily turn a 3-6 to 1-3, with the rounding.