"Marble Nest": bugs, notes and questions

[Koteikins]

Well, I've created this topic in RU-subforum, but I thought, it would be unfair if everyone else couldn't participate in the discussion. So, here it is, topic with bugs and interesting stuff found by the community and myself. Feel free to comment and add things you've noticed in he game.

I should mention, that I play with 'Fast' settings and I can't always tell which thing is a bug, which is a grafic issue and which is a thing, developers just haven't thought about.

Bugs and pseudo-bugs:

• Bachelor has some terrible problems with going up on stairs. Invisible walls just continue to appear, as if trying to tell something about epidemy. Moving backwards or diagonally is not helping either. Also, seems like walls appears more often at the streets (like, on stairs near Kains' house) than at houses (not counting Cathedral's stairs. They are a nightmare), but maybe I'm just imagining it.
  
  
• If you throw an item away from your inventory it could become a black hole and would not let you get unstuck from appeared sack.
  
  
• Can't use the tourniquets (or whatever they are called). Bandages and food work fine.
  
  
• A Pond near Eva's house. It's missing texture (problem with my laptop?; textures of water in rivers look fine for me, by the way), it's missing sound of walking on water (I can hear only default sound of walking on solid ground, it doesn't slow you down (I'm being a nerd, but I want realistic water), and, the most important part: Daniil is walking on water like an actual Jesus. I could imagine that it is actually not a pond, but a big, not very deep puddle, but I don't think it's the case
  
  
• Items stacks work weird. Example: a maximum amount of coins you could have in one inventory cell is 500. If you have, let's say, 498 coins and you would try to put another 12 coins in it, none of coins will be added to 498-pile. This pile will just be thrown away. I think, it could be more rational to add 2 coins to bigger pile and put other in another cell.
  
  Also, if there is a way to divide stacks, please, tell me about it, 'cause I haven't found it. UPD:

  Originally posted by J-Glob Phalanges:

  Shift-click to split stacks. I intuited that one because it's a shortcut common to other games.

  
  
  
• Animation of opening of some containers sometimes plays by itself, when character is to far away to even think about interacting with the container
  
  
• The only thing the matches do is making a cool sound and then vanishing (well, you can also trade them, but that's not what I'm talking about). Are they even supposed to have any practical use at this stage of the game?
  
  
• 'Scarecrows'(?) which spawn on the streets after 18:00, sometimes could spawn on you and capture you in the vile trap of getting stuck in textures
  
  
• Animation of NPCs' right eyes often breaks: they roll or move not in sync with the left eye
  
  

• Originally posted by Elleferia:

  A soldier who took children's lockpicks stand near a house that has no physical stairs. You still can go through it, open the door, but character lack agility to jump on it.

  
  

• Originally posted by Elleferia:

  All things that got confiscated from you by the soldier guarding a drugstore, reappear at one of the lockers. If you take the item for the second time and let the soldier confiscate medicine again, all of it would return to the locker, but soldier would vanish completely. Bug or 'working as intended?'

Commentaries, notes and interesting facts:

• I probably would not stop grumbling about new Executors design. Old version with so much better. Any other model I saw thus far (including concepts of characters who wasn't shown yet) were absolutely magestic. Except, maybe, Georgy (is this how you pronounce his name?): there is something strange in the way he looks.
  
  
• You can easily do parkour and jump over tall brick wall by using dumps, water barrels or house corners. This game is about time management in some way, so this could come in handy. Also, you can also 'use' wooden ladders (I've found only one yet, but still) and walk on the roofs
  
  
• So. Did Daniil actually started to see Polyhedron walls as mirrors and not as papers? Or is this a problem with my videocard again? Or is it an acrual paper, just not as yellowish as it was in original game? Or there are just no textures of this building in this version? Tell me, before I got lost in my own lore-theories
  
  
• I like the new quest journal with all parts of my souls, but, as for me, its design wouldn't fit Haruspex's and Changeling's personalities well. Will all character share the same journal design?
  
  
• I also like the new system of searching through containers, but I can't say the same about the barter window. What even is this ugly red and green line at the bottom? It ruins everything. The system itself is kind of confusing too, but I can get used to it.
  
  
• Why time in the game completely stops specifically at 21:10? This number has an important meaning to the lore or devs just decided it to be 21:10?
  
  
• Huh. Looks like Block and Haruspex died horrible death in this version of reality. Interesting.

[Yeatsian metaphysical gyres]

Really liked it overall.

A few bugs I noticed:
1. The injured Odongh in the Steppe camp continues to move after he dies.
2. From a distance, the hair on NPCs appears white.
3. Container names appear to be broken. The name never seems to correspond to the container, and even changes sometimes upon multiple openings. For instance, on accessing the corpse in the chair in the plague house, the name was first "wooden Cupboard," then later became "oak Wardrobe." Also note lack of capitalization. Many cupboards and dumpsters I opened were named "Commode," etc.
4. During the first loading screen, the main menu music skips pretty badly when the loading process hangs up.

[Real cane sugar]

Alright, so I played the game through and finished the marble nest once, and so far I really like what I see. Character models and walking animations all look really good. There are certain small details I really like, like being able to see each individual raindrop trickle down a window. I also notice that when it rains everything gets wet, which is good. One thing that someone else mentioned that I agree with is that the sky and the clouds look very flat, and even though the weather changes throughout the game, it always just feels like a binary between raining and not raining, but you never experience actually seeing storm clouds roll in and getting that feeling that it's about to get wetter and colder soon, and it feels like it just starts raining immediatly, instead of raining lightly for a while before building up to heavier rain. I really like the atomoshpere that the falling petals create as you walk around, but seeing them fall, and not flutter as they fall, looks uncanny, and is also a reminder that there isn't any wind or breeze to make them flutter, which adds to the uncanny effect (unless this is intentional). Also i don't think I saw any rain pouring out of any waterspouts even though it starts pouring, I just wanted to note that since the waterspouts and the design of them is so noticable.

The way sunlight beams through windows looks beautiful, and I think if you mimiced this effect at night time with lights from bonfires or lamp posts beaming through windows to illuminate darker parts of houses would add a great effect to any scene you're trying to create. Also speaking of light, your sight has no light/dark adaption, sometimes making it difficult to look around.

One weird problem I've been having is whenever I click on anything that isn't really 'clickable', like a dead guy or a plant or whatever, my game will alt tab my mouse out of the game tab for some reason. I read a couple other posts and trimmed down things that were already mentioned, so hopefully this is informative.

Overall a really interesting game and I'm hyped to see where it goes.

[Jader7777]

Thank you for releasing this alpha to satiate my appetite for the game, I'm really enjoying it- though my old computer is chugging to keep up with it. It definitely feels like a modern game but while remaining faithful to its original concepts, you've truly resurrected your very own game of the year.

Talking to people feels amazing, an evolution and logical progression from the first game. Facial expressions are far more potent and believable, I especially like the strangely elastic skin of the new worms and their bulbous eyes.

The HUD symbols and prompts are very sensible but also quite moody. The map and its markings are perfect- far more expressive and direct compared to the first game. The inky stains and scrawled notes really make it feel like a treasure hunt in a morgue.

The audio design is interesting. I definitely prefer the newer, more ambient tracks that play as you explore. The sound effects and voices are ominous and fascinating; I was somewhat disappointed that the voice samples from the adherents seem to be missing, I hope they return in the full version.

The item management is fantastic, I love the grid system and how some items are more cumbersome than others. I'm sure that when buying and selling such items comes into play it will be a frantic headache to keep everything in order while your time runs away from you.
Overall the game feels a lot more smooth, the mechanics are very clear and the story elements easier to follow while still maintaining their cloying curiosity.

I still gripe about some of the expressions and choices you can make in conversation that seem to otherwise end the conversation where in my perception I thought there would be a follow-up statement- sometimes I just feel like I can't guess what sort of a reaction a selection will illicit and it can feel like I'm fighting against the writers logic as oppose to role playing my character. If I could suggest that more... opaque selections have a conditional prefix. Like if the Batchor is going to say some smarmy atheistic comment that unwittingly shuts down the conversation I would like a [End discussion] tag. Or if the Butcher is going to agree on something, which if I recall he might use some sarcasm that suggests he's not interested it would be nice to have [Agree] there. This is only to help clarify my decision as a player and not feel like the game just cheated me out of my intention, after all I love the writing in this game so much I just want to hear more and more of it.

These were the few issues I encountered in the game
- Occasionally there were spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, I hope Nikolay is not being selfish with the script. :)
- I found there were instances where my items refused to stack with each other, money and matches in particular.
- Sometimes rats phase through doors and rocks impudently ignoring corporal obstructions
- Occasionally sounds may cut each other off, especially in high traffic areas. Occasionally when I went to the northern steppe area I would hear a raven call that would cut out the background music and even the sound of my footsteps
- Some civilians that wander around the street seem to have strange pathing that may lead them to spin weirdly on the spot. I've also seen someone walk into a bon fire for no apparent reason.
- Sometimes I found myself getting stuck on stairs, especially if I moved diagonally up them.
- It was a bit difficult to interact with storage spaces, often I would completely miss a bedside table because no interaction icon would show up and other times I would basically try to jump inside a wardrobe to find out it's a special you-can't-open-this one that just happens to look like the ones you can open. I also didn't find any loose items on kitchen benches or on tables, this is sorely missed as it rewards exploration and makes rooms more than just 'a big square with containers in them'.
- I wanted to write something about the combat, but there really isn't enough to critique. You click the mouse a bunch and you win. It definitely feels raw and interesting but I just wonder how you can make it skillful, meaningful and practical.
- Also the plague music/effects are really annoying sounding. I get the sort of gritty mood you were going for but sometimes the sound is just 'too in your face', I actually turned down the volume which ruined the quieter experiences in the game.
- When talking to some NPCs sometimes the lighting effects on their face would 'flicker' on and off. Other times the Depth Of Field effect wouldn't turn on.
- There's no fall damage! I couldn't copy Eve :(

[sopopaospaohia]

Haven't had a chance to play yet, I'm waiting til finals are over/I get my desktop.
But I have watched a handful of random gameplays.

Here are my thoughts as someone who has not experienced it, but is just merely taking it in. I'll try to avoid things that have probably already been mentioned(?)

- Cutscenes. I miss them! I know it's only an alpha sample, so I hope they will be in the remake. Pathologic is story-rich. I personally liked the cutscenes because you can take a step back and look at what you've done. Ha. The old ones were also very atmospheric, coupled with the right music.
- NPC voices, another personal preference. Sometimes they were bad, but I see the potential for good. The old Pathologic did a good job with updating the lines that the NPCs would say. Sometimes they would be relevant to the progress of the story. Sometimes they would give you additional information, like how two characters are interacting. Sometimes they would just be fairly unsettling in a distant voice. That was probably my favorite :)
- This has probably already been said but the writing is excellent. Looking forward to the remake if it resembles this quality. In some rare instances it could've used some work (either wasn't fitting or just is downright out of place).
- Plaguefinder?? But I figured since weapons weren't yet equippable (I think) it makes sense it was not implemented in alpha. Not that I would advocate for a duplicate (as the Plaguefinder felt random/unexplained), but it was a special feature for the Bachelor. Perhaps another unique tool/attribute will be given to Bachelor?

Anyway, I can't wait to actually play it myself. And for the remake of course! It looks phenomenal.

[Ludovician]

Just wanted to say, I loved every single minute of the Alpha. I was excited before, but now I can tell that the final game is going to be something incredibly special. I really cannot say enough about what a treat this was, thank you so much.

Here are some (unorganized) notes and observations, with the understanding that a LOT of stuff is yet to be implemented:
-The character design is flawless. I have zero complaints; I think I deviate somewhat in that I like how the Executors look now just as much as I did in the original. I think Georgiy looks great too; my only comment on him is that I think the camera might be zoomed in too close on his face, which may contribute to why some find him to look odd.
-The camera movement in the trading screen is WAY too much. I do like the idea of the trading screen having some movement, but not so much that it feels like focusing will lead to motion sickness.
-The game could do with explaining certain mechanics that aren't totally intuitive. It took me a while to figure out you had to right-click on food to eat it (which in retrospect was probably obvious, but it did prompt one youtube commenter to mention that it was cute that I was trying to feed Dankovsky by waving a cracker over his avatar). Also, I found out that you can move around during the fight sequence by holding the right mouse button entirely by accident.
-To that point, it wasn't immediately clear that fighting required input from the player as opposed to just being a cutscene. I think the mechanic is interesting and if it's going to be dynamic--something where you actually try to react to what the other character does, rather than clicking wildly--it could be something great. In its current state, however, the idea of having to have an awkward 15-second scuffle every time you bump into a looter (or more, considering the possibility of bumping into two or more of them) is a little too much for my taste.
-I ADORE the mindmap. It makes me think of the concept of the "mind palace" that's been used in popular media recently (Sherlock, Hannibal, etc) and I think it's incredibly appropriate for Dankovsky's personality. I do want to echo others in that I don't know that it would be thematically appropriate for Burakh or Clara, although I'm not certain what the alternative might be (my partner suggested Clara jots everything down on her hand and it's just an absolute mess, which is hilarious but probably inadvisable from a design standpoint).
-You mentioned this on Twitter, but Shrew's "nut tax" isn't really explained or intuitive.
-Gull's model is missing her left pupil.
-I thought it was really interesting that there are no loading screens, even for houses. I think that's a bold but phenomenal choice.
-I am in awe of the music. I was somewhat ambivalent about what a modern attempt to keep in the spirit of the original might sound like, but Kashnikov pulls it off and then some. The Plague indoors/outdoors tracks are my favorite, although the Polyhedron, Slough, and Horns tracks are great as well. All the vocal work is sensational too; the main menu theme (Healer is what the voice samples in the game files seem to refer to it as) is astounding, and the (I'm assuming) Simon & Garfunkel cover floored me. I definitely don't regret preordering the physical OST.
-House design and city layout is great and sensible. It feels realistic, and seeing how the house rows curl in from atop the Polyhedron is really great.
-I found an exploit to get around barriers which managed to allow me to get both up on the Polyhedron and to the Knots and Earth districts. It seems that leaping from rocks onto the bridge railing adjacent to the barricade allows the player to get around the invisible barrier.
-Jumping seems a little too quick. I think the jump height is appropriate, but it feels like the character falls too quickly.
-The Polyhedron is magnificent to stand on. The design is everything I could have wanted it to be, and looking over the town is incredible even with the current draw distance limitations. I can't wait to see what the structure looks like once fully textured.
-Love the design of the Lump. Also, very curious to see what the Theater (or at least I'm assuming it's the Theater) will look like once fully textured.
-Also, I'm curious about the trenches in the Steppe south of the Earth district; my assumption is that they're tributaries into the River Gorkhon?
-Also, the files for rotting food make it seem like food decay will be a mechanic. If this is so, it may be good to make hunger rise a little more slowly, as it was already a little difficult to keep hunger low without the added worry of food rotting!
-Having run around the entire unfinished map, I know that the game is going to be MASSIVE. I'm absolutely ecstatic and am dying to see what the finished product looks like. However, given how large it is, it might be nice to slightly increase the run speed; I feel like travel might be even more inefficient than in the original game.

That's everything I've got. Thank you so much again, it's been a fantastic experience.

[LamplightBlue]

Some more things I remembered:

1) When you're done talking to the Executor at the door in the initial 'dream' sequence, it flashes very blatantly before disappearing.

2) When the fight ends, you're teleported away from where you were standing. Maybe to the spot where the combat started?

3) The jump animation isn't great at the moment. I'm not going to criticise how high you jump, although I can see why some people would find the teeny tiny jump a bit excessive, but the main problem is that it's very choppy/unnatural looking. Could be a lot more fluid.

[Real Sandwich]

Originally posted by LamplightBlue:

The jump animation isn't great at the moment. I'm not going to criticise how high you jump, although I can see why some people would find the teeny tiny jump a bit excessive, but the main problem is that it's very choppy/unnatural looking. Could be a lot more fluid.

I would have to agree on this - the falling speed also seems to be a tad bit too quick.

To be completely honest, I'm not really sure why jumping is even a feature in Pathologic at all. The original game had it - mostly due to tradition rather than functionality - and I know Dybowski got lots of flak for suggesting its removal in the remake. I have to say though... I think he's right.

First-person shooters benefit from added mobility but Pathologic is not a very vertical game, movement-wise (and the ability to bunny hop all over the place quickly destroys immersion). Games like Alien: Isolation work excellent without jumping.

Anyway, just my two cents.

[Pancakes]

Originally posted by Real Sandwich:

Originally posted by LamplightBlue:

The jump animation isn't great at the moment. I'm not going to criticise how high you jump, although I can see why some people would find the teeny tiny jump a bit excessive, but the main problem is that it's very choppy/unnatural looking. Could be a lot more fluid.

I would have to agree on this - the falling speed also seems to be a tad bit too quick.

To be completely honest, I'm not really sure why jumping is even a feature in Pathologic at all. The original game had it - mostly due to tradition rather than functionality - and I know Dybowski got lots of flak for suggesting its removal in the remake. I have to say though... I think he's right.

First-person shooters benefit from added mobility but Pathologic is not a very vertical game, movement-wise (and the ability to bunny hop all over the place quickly destroys immersion). Games like Alien: Isolation work excellent without jumping.

Anyway, just my two cents.

It could be helpful if needing to get over some small obstacles and clutter potentially in the streets. Crouching would be handy to get a good look at things in the world and for low down containers/cupboards.

It would be interesting to have the ability to climb over walls at a fatigue cost to be able to take a shortcut.

Still hopeful to be able to sit down on a chair at the end of a day in Daniil's lab and quietly eat some bread, waiting for nightfall.

[LamplightBlue]

Originally posted by Real Sandwich:

I would have to agree on this - the falling speed also seems to be a tad bit too quick.

To be completely honest, I'm not really sure why jumping is even a feature in Pathologic at all. The original game had it - mostly due to tradition rather than functionality - and I know Dybowski got lots of flak for suggesting its removal in the remake. I have to say though... I think he's right.

First-person shooters benefit from added mobility but Pathologic is not a very vertical game, movement-wise (and the ability to bunny hop all over the place quickly destroys immersion). Games like Alien: Isolation work excellent without jumping.

Anyway, just my two cents.

I'd actually pretty strongly disagree with removing it. If you bunnyhop all over the place, then ruining the immersion is on you, not the game or the mechanic -- it's not exactly about trusting the player, but it's the player's business what they do with it, and not the devs' responsibility to regulate it. And either way I'd argue that Pathologic isn't so fragile that it'd be ruined by that. Ultimately including more options, as long as they could realistically exist, is always a good thing.

I managed to find some uses for it in the demo as well, like shortcuts, specifically to the steppe camp.

We seem to also have had opposite experiences with the walking speed, haha. I felt like the demo was balanced for sprinting to the point that the walking speed felt kind of hopeless.

[KuroMaboroshi]

I encountered something minor that relates to the various item issues:

When recieving an item from an NPC while having an already full inventory (in my specific case, the lockpicks you can get from a guard in front of a house), they simply vanish entirely and there is no way to retrieve them in an way as they neither remain with the NPC, nor do they fall to the ground as far as I could tell.

[Nikor]

Originally posted by LamplightBlue:

Originally posted by Real Sandwich:

I would have to agree on this - the falling speed also seems to be a tad bit too quick.

To be completely honest, I'm not really sure why jumping is even a feature in Pathologic at all. The original game had it - mostly due to tradition rather than functionality - and I know Dybowski got lots of flak for suggesting its removal in the remake. I have to say though... I think he's right.

First-person shooters benefit from added mobility but Pathologic is not a very vertical game, movement-wise (and the ability to bunny hop all over the place quickly destroys immersion). Games like Alien: Isolation work excellent without jumping.

Anyway, just my two cents.

I'd actually pretty strongly disagree with removing it. If you bunnyhop all over the place, then ruining the immersion is on you, not the game or the mechanic -- it's not exactly about trusting the player, but it's the player's business what they do with it, and not the devs' responsibility to regulate it. And either way I'd argue that Pathologic isn't so fragile that it'd be ruined by that. Ultimately including more options, as long as they could realistically exist, is always a good thing.

I managed to find some uses for it in the demo as well, like shortcuts, specifically to the steppe camp.

We seem to also have had opposite experiences with the walking speed, haha. I felt like the demo was balanced for sprinting to the point that the walking speed felt kind of hopeless.

Actually, this jumping issue may turn out more divisive for the player base than it looks at first sight. If I remember correctly, the reasoning behind the suggested removal of jumping from the remake was somewhere along the lines of "In real life, do you really jump on a regular basis?" And I have to admit, this is a valid point, IMHO. Besides, using jumps to access shortcuts goes against one of the latent mechanics of the game, which is traversing the mazes of sidestreets - pretty big deal in the original.
As for the walking speed, the only issue I had is constantly having to press the shift button: most new players will probably sprint around the Town, so why not make it a default option, with shift button responsible for slowing down? That way, the game will kinda have sprint and not have sprint at the same time.

[Real Sandwich]

Originally posted by LamplightBlue:

We seem to also have had opposite experiences with the walking speed, haha. I felt like the demo was balanced for sprinting to the point that the walking speed felt kind of hopeless.

I actually wrote falling speed, as I pretty much agree with you that the walking was perhaps on the slower side. Interestingly enough, people like to criticise the speed at which you walked in the original, but it was actually quite fast. It just happened to be coupled with a really big town and the lack of a sprint button.

In other words, my personal preference would probably be a fairly quick walking pace (requiring little to no stamina), and an option for a faster sprint if you're in a hurry or find yourself in a dangerous situation (with a higher impact to stamina and exhaustion). Perhaps sprinting through infected districts could have a negative effect on your immunity/infection levels, as you breathe quicker and inhale bigger volumes of poisonous air during physical strain.

On the other hand, I do like how the more leisurely walking pace allows one to enjoy the sights and take in more information about the town... this is a tricky one, for sure.

[Our Lady of Fraudulence]

Eating food in the Shop menu (i.e., buy some bread, immediately right click on bread) will consume the item but not affect your hunger meter. I was unable to test this yet with other stuff.

Item movement is strict and unintuitive. Better UI design for inventory/item movement: allow players to click-drag items. UI feedback should include Hover, Hold-Click, Picked Up (i.e., what it looks like when single clicked). Best way: brighten item icon and background on Hover, turn background a desaturated blue or bright yellow but stick icon to cursor on Hold-Click, current behavior for Picked Up. Also: indicate stack/destack and other important but non obvious behavior in the inventory through tooltips. Basic way of doing that (pseudocode):

If tooltip.source = stackedItem
Then append stackHelp to tooltip.source

Doors should function the same way opening cabinets does: hold to open, with animation. The current system gains me no time in opening them -- because it's so sudden, I still pause before going through. I wouldn't pause if the door were opened in an animation; hold-to-open encourages consistent interaction. QoL fix, not important.

It's easy to lose your narrative sense of direction and hard to keep track of time. What I mean by narrative sense of direction: I have gotten to a point in the game where I have several marks on my map and have exhausted all dialogue there (i.e., all NPCs involved repeat themselves endlessly or are noninteractive) and examined the entire area in depth. I have no idea how to proceed. A classic Journal system together with the mind-map would be a better method -- the classic system for hints/reminders and exposition, the mind-map as a "quick and dirty" quest log.

The other half of the above, keeping track of time, is difficult for two reasons: there's no visible sun-disk in the sky and the UI clock is in a location (status menu) the player would probably not want to check often -- for the most part, you are warned in the upper right corner when your bars drop below a certain level. It would be better to fold that menu into the journal/quest log menu or into the inventory screen. Furthermore I would suggest putting the clock either on the map (time is a motivator for orientation) or on the HUD (constant reminder). Finally, I'd also recommend adding, on top of those fixes, a dynamic day-night cycle with moving sun/shadows. This will help keep the player aware of how much time has passed without the "specificity" of adding a digital clock directly to the HUD. They can still check the exact time however you'd want them to go about it.

Both of the two above are a big deal, but not 100% crucial fixes.

I'm unclear if the "fight" in the prologue chapter was controlled or a cutscene. If it was controlled, then that's great, it looked great! But add an indicator to it; tell the player "you are now in danger of death". If it was a cutscene, change nothing -- I frantically pressed buttons in a dazed frenzy and it felt unusually desperate and intimate; the feeling of "winning" was a good one, even though I realized dimly it was possible I contributed nothing with my button mashing.

Overall, there are no deadly design decisions, just a few irritating bugs, some QoL changes and UX changes that would be nice to have done, a doxen or so minor typos, and a bit more difficulty than perhaps intended due to poor signposting (something that I have no doubt is due to the demo needing to have no narrative overlap with the final product).

For an alpha, this is good stuff to be sure. I can't wait to see where you take things from here...

[oga]

Originally posted by GhostQlyph:

The other half of the above, keeping track of time, is difficult for two reasons: there's no visible sun-disk in the sky and the UI clock is in a location (status menu) the player would probably not want to check often -- for the most part, you are warned in the upper right corner when your bars drop below a certain level. It would be better to fold that menu into the journal/quest log menu or into the inventory screen. Furthermore I would suggest putting the clock either on the map (time is a motivator for orientation) or on the HUD (constant reminder). Finally, I'd also recommend adding, on top of those fixes, a dynamic day-night cycle with moving sun/shadows. This will help keep the player aware of how much time has passed without the "specificity" of adding a digital clock directly to the HUD. They can still check the exact time however you'd want them to go about it.

There is a moving sun in the sky and shadows. It's just that it becomes overcast pretty quick, so the shadows disappear and the sun becomes occluded, and it stays that way to the end of the day.
I could do with the clock being in the mind map and map myself, but I guess I probably wouldn't mind too much if it stayed just in the status screen.
They could do a dedicated "check time" button... Then the respective character retrieves their own method of time-telling. Could be a neat little characteristic thing. Don't know if it's a good design idea though...

[Our Lady of Fraudulence]

A dedicated check time button isn't a bad idea necessarily, though it would require some amount of development effort to make the implementation worthwhile. Combination of quick/easy information check, characterization aid and eye candy. These are also the roles of things like title cards for introducing characters a la Borderlands or Onimusha 2 -- it's not an "easy" thing, though in this case you can get away with a single asset if you have an animator who wants to put in the extra effort, and so forth.

The shadows never seemed to move for me, and I watched them quite closely (though not too closely due to time limitations). For it to really work as a makeshift time-piece, the shadows have to be moving at all times, not just on a ticked "schedule". Also: the sun casts shadows even through heavy cloud cover IRL. It's not like you could recover the exact minute or something, but you can get roughly half-hour resolution even in a rainstorm if you know where north is and have a stick and a patch of flat ground.