"There is no tutorial"

[piecewise66]

You know, after playing this for a short period of time I have to say this boast is really looking more foolish than anything. I understand not wanting to explain everything or spoil the greater story or set up of the world, but it really feels like this game could use an explaination of the basics, at the very least.

Because honestly, my first impression is that this feels like a bad phone game. Just sitting, waiting for timers to count down while moving cards around with little idea of what they do and not being terribly interested. They say we're supposed to explore and find things out but it feels like I'm both being rushed and slowed down by the game's pace and insistance on making you grind out interactions based on timers.

[CupCupBaconBox]

Thanks for your opinion.

[Ryan Dorkoski]

It weeds people out; you either stick around long enough to find the gem - or you quit.

[Simonson [29th Ret.]]

There is no tutorial when deciphering the mysteries of the occult. Great design decision. If you don't like it, play something else.

[Lequinow]

I agree that the game could use a few pointers on the technical side of things. A lot of the enjoyment comes from finding out what works and what will lead to more obstacles, that part they nailed perfectly. However, it's hard to get enjoyment out of trial and error if you don't have the tools to understand how you messed up. The tooltips are there to help with that. While some of them provide just the right amount of information, some are lackluster.

Aside from improving the tooltips, I feel like an overview of the UI could be helpful to players just starting out, especially around aspect icons, the main ressources (passion, health and reason) and everything cult related (mainly how to interact properly with the 'chat' box).

[GenericNPC1]

My only complaints about the game are kinda minor tbh. Basically the doble click glitch, and the size of the hit window on the upper right corner.

[Robrecht]

Originally posted by Ryan Dorkoski:

It weeds people out; you either stick around long enough to find the gem - or you quit.

Originally posted by No Limit Soldier:

There is no tutorial when deciphering the mysteries of the occult. Great design decision. If you don't like it, play something else.

Yeah, see, this kind of reply can just f- right the f- off.

For several reasons, but the main one being that you need to actually buy and play the game in order to discover that the 'no tutorial' thing doesn't just mean the game does not hold your hand, but actually requires you to wrestle the game to the ground and attach a car battery to its nuts before it tells you very basic information you need to know in order to play the game.

[Darkfiro]

I don't have issue with this game I just started yesterday and I already have my Sixth Mark (power) I have a Screenshot if you want prove.

[Simonson [29th Ret.]]

Originally posted by Robrecht:

Originally posted by Ryan Dorkoski:

It weeds people out; you either stick around long enough to find the gem - or you quit.

Originally posted by No Limit Soldier:

There is no tutorial when deciphering the mysteries of the occult. Great design decision. If you don't like it, play something else.

Yeah, see, this kind of reply can just f- right the f- off.

For several reasons, but the main one being that you need to actually buy and play the game in order to discover that the 'no tutorial' thing doesn't just mean the game does not hold your hand, but actually requires you to wrestle the game to the ground and attach a car battery to its nuts before it tells you very basic information you need to know in order to play the game.

And replies like this make me think you've never played a game that didn't hold your hand like an infant. Seriously, the game is pretty self-explanatory. If you're having that much trouble figuring out that the cards go in the slots (literally the only game mechanic), try watching a youtube video.

[Noktie]

I've barely started and it seems pretty simple with ramping complexity, if you think its too hard then you havent played it that much and can get a refund, if you don't like the game for not holding your hand then you don't like the way they designed it, personally that makes it part of the fun for me.

[Jo Moéstar]

I do think "haha go play another game loser" is a thoroughly unhelpful response when someone was clearly interested and put forward money to purchase the game.

That being said, I feel a lot of the issue is people are conditioned to avoid failure, because very few games reward failure in any way at all. Even in Failbetter's games (at least, Sea and Skies), failure is as much a massive inconvenience as it is a learning opportunity. So when you're thrown into CS blindfolded and you're fumbling about in the dark, it can be kind of unfun because you're pretty sure you are about to lose and that will just be a hassle.

Thing is, you've gotta let go of that. People will mock you for being afraid to lose, as if they're gaming veterans with eighty bajillion hours forged in the crucible of classic Megaman and won Halo tournaments with one hand tied behind their backs, but that's pretty silly of them, I think. Although I suspect they're a bit miffed at your rather dismissive view of a game that they think is absolutely genius (and I agree with that assessment of theirs), and that's why they're a bit hostile. I don't think it's unreasonable to be a little taken aback at the differences between CS and the standard gaming philosophy, but I would say to try to work past your initial frustrations and don't be so quick to write it off.

Cultist Simulator, if anything, REWARDS failure to an extent. Especially the loss of your first character, because nearly every option after the starter Aspirant is a better one. Seriously, the insane dude who decided to start painting his dreams is kind of supposed to go insane or get sick and die. I remember feeling like I'd ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up immensely when he went absolutely bonkers the very first time (exploring those streets under moonlight generated far, far too much Fascination, but I wanted to know what I could find), only to fall in love with my next character, the doctor who'd been stuck with this raving lunatic as a patient. I enjoyed the tale of him poring over the notes compiling the ramblings and rantings about Glory and Woods and Torments. I had figured out how to enter the Wood outside the walls of the Mansus (the Mansus has no walls) by just poring over text in Dreaming with my first character and thinking that maybe that little lore with the lamp would be good for "guiding" me in dreams... knowledge I took into playing my second. I like to think he read about an odd ritual in his notes, and tried to imagine his shock as the sight of the Mansus stretched before him in dream. It helped that I myself felt satisfaction at having replicated such a downright dramatic effect, changing the board entirely.

I don't think there's anything wrong with hints here and there, really, but it's important to remember that in this game, failure truly is an opportunity to continue the story where you left off.

(And honestly the gameplay is indeed pretty slow early on when you have little to work with. That's partially intentional, as to avoid overloading players, but it can mean that you're staring at a timer for a few seconds longer than is comfortable. I thoroughly advise reading the text of cards you possess, even clicking those little aspect boxes on them. Information is the dough to Knowledge's bread.)

EDIT: As a hint, heh... clicking on the empty space of a window will cause any card capable of being placed there to glow for a second. In the same vein, double-clicking cards will cause anywhere they can go to light up. That being said, sometimes placing a card in a space has no real effect. Look for changes in text, and those often contain hints.

[Robrecht]

Originally posted by No Limit Soldier:

And replies like this make me think you've never played a game that didn't hold your hand like an infant. Seriously, the game is pretty self-explanatory. If you're having that much trouble figuring out that the cards go in the slots (literally the only game mechanic), try watching a youtube video.

It's less 'I don't know what to do' and more 'I'm doing stuff and I can't tell whether I'm doing well or doing poorly, because the game constantly tells me nothing useful about what's going on.'

Like... When I tried to do the easiest tier of vault, specifically one that requires Edge... And I've got 8 Edge stacked up and the text says 'We're definitely going to win'... And the next thing that happens is that all my cultists get killed one by one because apparently 8 Edge isn't enough despite the risk assessment the text gives me telling me it is all but guaranteed and once the first cultist gets killed, my edge isn't enough to complete the challenge, but I can't actually extract my remaining cultists until they run out of funds, which, it turns out, takes another three dead cultists to happen.

I still don't know whether the above scenario was just me getting unlucky on a random roll or whether I genuinely just didn't have enough Edge invested, because the game tells me nothing about that. Which means I cannot make an informed decision about it. Sure, I can try recruiting more cultists, stack up even more Edge and try again (and I probably will end up doing that), but if I succeed this time, I still won't know what caused that first failure.

And... Erhm... It doesn't help that a lot of the more straightforward bits of the game are boring... Like constantly having to drag things into the Work field in order to not die from lack of funds and having to keep the Dream field empty half the time for Dread, Excitement and Illness cleanup. Eventually these things stop being 'pressure' and start being the boring chores the game forces on you in order for it to allow you to keep playing. There's no challenge to it, it's just an endless cycle of 'drag card a to slot b' that you have to do over and over instead of doing stuff that's actually interesting.

Let's be blunt: This has f-ck all to do with 'hand holding' and everything to do with Alexis building yet another game where half the time, the game gives absolutely no feedback on why something isn't working. Fallen London was much the same in the earliest version and it took years to get that to a point where had the ability to make informed decisions about their choices without tearing half the codebase apart just to know whether the phrase 'you might or might not succeed' meant the success chance was percentage based or stat based for that particular option.

[Simonson [29th Ret.]]

>And I've got 8 Edge stacked up and the text says 'We're definitely going to win'... And the next thing that happens is that all my cultists get killed one by one because apparently 8 Edge isn't enough

Sounds like you figured out what to do just fine. You need more edge. I've actually never seen the game tell me that "I'm going to win" and then pull the rug. Usually it says something a bit more vague. This isn't the type of game that says "You need 15 edge", and for that I'm grateful. It literally took me two days and a couple sessions to figure out the riddle of the stag. I could have Youtube'd it, I could have complained that "the game doesn't give me enough information!", but instead I just figured it out through trial and error. When I did it was fantastic, and I felt like I'd really solved an occult puzzle. I was now counted among the know. Not since the 90's have I had a game experience like that, when you could be stuck on a game problem for weeks before progressing. It's not for everyone, especially this generation of gamers who need every mechanic explained in detail and nothing hidden. To some, the hidden, the unknown is part of the fun.


>I still don't know whether the above scenario was just me getting unlucky on a random roll or whether I genuinely just didn't have enough Edge invested, because the game tells me nothing about that.

And you may never know. Going to give up your quest for enlightment now? Life isn't a guarantee either. But I'm sure you have some idea about where you went wrong, and when you succeed you'll enjoy it more.

>Like constantly having to drag things into the Work field in order to not die from lack of funds

Work is tedious, and it's represented this way in the game as a design decision. You aren't supposed to like your 'mudane' job, which is why you're searching for occult power in the first place, which is also represented in the game's progression.

> There's no challenge to it, it's just an endless cycle of 'drag card a to slot b' that you have to do over and over instead of doing stuff that's actually interesting.

You fail to realize that dragging cards into slots is literally the game. All these other things you complain about, the obscurity, the lack of direction, is what makes such a simple mechanic interesting. The game is a puzzle, and all of these things combined with the imaginative writing is what makes it fun.

Sounds like you just don't like the game, which is fine because this game is not for everyone. All of your changes would make the game boring, and for me just turn it into what you describe.

Plenty of other games for you to play which tell you to go fetch 15 this or you need 34 this
to progress. Yay! You fetched 15 this! You're a hero.

[Robrecht]

NLS, can I give you a tip?

Cut it with the 'I'm such an old skool gamer' crap. People who were actually around for that era can tell how full of sh-t you are.

[AK]

This thread is getting ill-natured. Locking, and warning a couple of the grumpies.