prof run (0.83) feedback

[cradoi10]

- I really like this game more and more, the prof feels different, the combat makes me wanna take fewer chances (fitting his wimpier build but science lore, for lack of a more nuanced word)

- I also love how sanity is a real danger to him in the beginning. I really hope you're considering something: without spoilers, if sanity acts like a second lifebar that needs to be managed, you should consider putting it on the screen during play. As it stands, it's neither informative more than "eww...too many crazy tendrils"...nor is it fun to check "did I have more than the last time...?".

- There was a sequence with the chalkboard, super cool. I now understand the only logical thing to do is burn down the building and kill all my colleagues.

- If sanity does something more than just kill you, stuff like that's gonna be a treat. If not, y'all need like 100% more text interactions, because after the 3rd or 5th playthrough with the detective, I knew which the "good" and "bad" interactions were, and I was glossing over the writing. Sanity is gonna become something trivial, to be managed, the way it's going, instead of it being engaging. Not sure whtat to say more...don't wanna seem like I'm fishing for info....I just hope it's not like the stress in dark souls, that was again, one of those, here's an artificial diff limit.

- I hope prof gets gadgets that change the game's UI, or the info amount he gets, or who knows. There're a wealth of possibilities here with items and effects, given his playstyle.

- Lab Coat vs Mother's Embrace, had to make a choice, for him it mattered. That was cool....but I think that there's gotta be a way to make these choices LOOK more significant. It'd take an on purpose willingness to change, but maybe if the proportion of the lifebar was bigger visually, then a "huh, yea, that does give me a bit more health" turns into, "ok, that's a large, visibly 1/5 chunk".

It would also make the fights feel longer, the lifebar's just too damn small now. I basically just keep track of how many times I'm hit, which really means your game has a 3 lives you're done rule disguised as a life bar.

TO RECAP THIS POINT: NO, NONE, NO changes to nrs (that'd be silly), just the visual proportion. It's not like you're using the screen real estate for anything else now, and it'd make it easier to "see" the impact an enemy has on your life, thereby making the chars feel diff.

- I'm glad his explosion ball doesn't hurt him, that'd have been too much imo.

- The electrical crackling noise is dreadful. Like, read that with a joking tone. And then read it with a serious one. Because the inventory isn't a "paused" state, that God forsaken cracking persists when you're looking at items, etc. If that's intended, ugh, congrats, it's "maddening". If not...it's kinda very annoying.

- I don't get if Altars are subbosed to be more than a side benefit, or a large, meaningful choice. I've been running around with shub niggurath's one, and I can't tell a differnce in how I have to play. It's not that I'm asking "what does it do". Whatever it does, in this case, with the prof, and the lab coat on, it's not making an impact on whether I care I have it or not. A lot of them feel that way to me....Like it's not a hear wrenching....do I DARE unleash the eldritch horrors, it's more of a "meh, I hope it's not something dumb like take a quarter life away and kill me, otherwise w.e...."

- I really love the constant management between shield energy and exploding ball energy. Really well done.

- Just like with the Detective, where the boss' room was a random one below the prof's....unlock spot, I just walked into a boss room in the lab with the prof. I don't like this, even Dark Souls had that mist up to let you know you were gonna get wasted, I know bosses are gonna change but this isn't cool as it is now lmfao

- DAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN A MINE KILLED ME, that radius, wtf......I've never used one before and I was sure it was goona be wide.

- Prof. was more fun than the detective, I assume as a result of being developed with feedback and the exeperience of the detective. Logically speaking, the other chars should be a lot of fun to play, as they'll be even more polished. Overall pleasant experience.

(PS: ok....so the map gets a new seed on death...so here's my closing just like the last time. I played about....maybe 15 or 20 mins. I died, it was fun, gonna do it again, no way in hell you could pay me money to hit restart. Here's why: you took everything. So when you die, the player experiences this awful "there go the last 20 mins of my time" because there aren't even checkpoints. It's not an RPG, ok, it's not a true rogue either, so this level permadeath can't be the only way to avoid having the player cheese items. I don't wanna be negative without suggesting, so, IF y'all HAVEN'T considered checkpoints:

script a room, ONE room (the per run times are great IMO), to spawn exactly.....(hear me out)....halfway through the level. Or something. Yea, the counter is that you kinda let the player know that they've unlocked 50% of the rooms by finding it. So what? Room # (forgive the analogy) 51% could be the boss room. It's a rogue-lite. I think, if I understand how you set your engine's map generation rules.

Now, in that room, the game would create...some kind of save state, where the exact same player status could be returned. Here's how, and again, I'm not a coder, so sry: from level to level, you carry the player's inventory as a condition to their character's existance. So that means there's a temporary value somewhere. So why can't it be created at the INSTANT that checkpoint room's found, and ONLY be overwritten once the level is finished. A player couldn't save scum, because on death, the engine redraws the map.

This assumes the map is seeded, which I assume it is. If it's not, this was a waste of your time lol, sorry.)

[Blini games]

Thanks again for the extensive feedback. I´ve been playing/testing the professor a lot these days, also I´ve started testing the Twitch channel for some future official streams :)

I left a short video of a play that I just did of the first level and the second until I died. No comments, just gameplay Click here in case you want to watch it[www.twitch.tv]. At the end, it lags really bad, but we are still setting things up. Still enjoyable, imho :)

As soon as I fully test the channel and the stream quality, I´ll start commenting, etc...

Answering to your questions...

Originally posted by cradoi10:

I also love how sanity is a real danger...

SANITY: We want to leave sanity meter as it is... I mean, not that visible. Sanity is such a subjective concept, but putting a bar in the interface would be really mundane and mainstream. In our opinion, it feels really dark having just that red warning in picture of the character, and the fact that starts gibbering and saying random phrases when she/he is about to lose it completely, works pretty well. Additionally, we will add a sound effect everytime that the character loses or gains sanity, that will help the player to understand how close is to become mad.

Originally posted by cradoi10:

- The electrical crackling noise is dreadful. Like, read that with a joking tone. And then read it with a serious one...

I see someone losing sanity here... :P

Originally posted by cradoi10:

- Just like with the Detective, where the boss' room was a random one below the prof's....unlock spot, I just walked into...

Myself Im double minded here. On one side, I know the feeling, and even roguelikes like Binding of Isaac have a special door for the bosses... On the other side, ain´t that cool not knowing what´s behind the door number 2?

Originally posted by cradoi10:

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN A MINE KILLED ME...

Mines are tricky but very powerful, but so are the explosives of the detective. You don´t want to throw a mine, if you know that the enemy is next to you, right? But... against solo bosses, they work like a charm. Get your distance, throw several, lure the boss to your position and see it go BOOM!.

Originally posted by cradoi10:

I don't wanna be negative without suggesting, so, IF y'all HAVEN'T considered checkpoints

No checkpoints in mid-level. Go hardcore :) Now seriously... I know the feeling, but look at it the other way. In the pure Rogue-likes, when you die, you die, no matter what level you are, and start from zero. Here, at least you have the restart, to continue from that level, and the Strange Place to keep items...

When you play several times the same level (believe me) you start understanding the structure, and even know where the boss could be, where can be a mortal room, and an easy one, and you can play a location, almost as if you knew the map before hand.

:) I so much like reading your posts... Thanks a lot again!

[cradoi10]

As long as all the stuff about the boss door and balance with regards to no chekpoints are intentional, that's 100% understandable. It's not a...like a design faux pas. I don't think the game's long enough not to warrant multiple runs, and I think they'll be more enjoyable in the final product because of the stuff with the store balance and what I think is a fairly definite idea of what you want the learning curve to be.

Yea, the mine was funny, first time I used it, I was 80% sure it'd get me the way it did, and there was nothing wrong with it. It was a perfect example of next time, I know exactly when to drop it time-wise.

Boss rooms.......in that case...so the reason why I brought it up, is because in the detective's first level, and I keep saying that because it's the first experience a player has with your game, you tread very familiar ground: kill baddies, get key item A and B, (squid and anchor, if you get to the door first it doesn't matter because it's obvious what you need), and then fight boss. Standard gaming. Hospital (detective): kill baddies, find huge sealed vault door, assume it's like the first level, that's the boss room, and then bam, screw you Calin, the boss was in a random one lmfao. That's the only thing, I think the mansion sets up expectations about mechanics that're inconsistently followed.

Kinda like I'm gonna say below (cause I wrote that first lol) f***it, in that case, even random-er boss rooms is 200% a difficulty gimmick I support, unless they're gonna need some kinda gimmick item from the level. I kinda like the idea of "room 2? Yea, it's boss o'clock." (Because the next seed is new).
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Here's a thought about the sanity then. I dind't realize the red flashing was THAT. I thought it was like status effect or something, maybe a weird health pop-up, and here's why: the player starts with the detective, who unless I'm mistaken, doesn't face as many sanity dangers. So in this case, it's even worse I think, because all I care about now is making sure I choco up ONLY when the red flash happens. Cause since monsters don't do sanity damage (like they kinda should imo....now that I think about it....) I know that the only time a presumed sanity death (which I'm still only assuming is a thing mainly because I heard it somewhere, I've never gotten one) is a problem, is when the red flash happens.

So hide the flashes too. I'm tempted to say hide the tendrils, but seriously, f*** it. Can they spread around the inventory? Just a subtle purple thing, here and there. I don't have a good clear idea, but going with your philosophy: if you want that creeping sense of madness, I think even the way y'all show it now is too obvious.

Replace with a scale of 1 - 10 (for example) and have a set of things the chars all say, just LIKE random mutterings. For example:

I'm gonna use [0 as Sane] and [9.9 as one thing away from...what, death? as the system works now.).

Lvl.1. (Sane, mundane observations about the epistemological, like, natural observation, Plato science things. "Grass is green.")

- This mansion feels drafty. / Cheap looking doors for a rich guy. / My old friend had such good taste in plants.

Lvl 4. (Worried [barks start to be class specific]).
- Good thing I have some more ammo (please use accurate gun language) / A switch here, a calibration there....it'll work, I'm sure..... / {haven't played witch yet, don't know tone} I hear you spirit, though I wish I didn't....

Lvl. 7 (Frightened)
- Ugh...jammed again....what was that sound? / Wait....the math is right....no.... / If you won't hear my call, I'll have to yell louder! SPIRIT!

Lvl 9 (Near mad/paranoid)
- Gotta keep goin ftaghn.,..Legrassee..THAT DEMON..... / I don't care, they CAN ALL BURN!!!!! / {the witch and ghoul at this point should gibber, I don't know squat about the thief? I'm not even sure that's the class.}

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Having multiple barks per level of sanity will keep the player guessing after awhile, cause seriously, if they're well written, I'm not gonna wanna wonder if statement X means 6 snaity or 7...I'm gonna be like "uh-oh...that sounded ominous" to "crap...that sounds real bad....". As it stands, I check the inventory every now and then to see if I need chocolate, that's about it for sanity. Need chocolate? Eat. Don't? Check later.

You don't need fancy effects like that one game for the Gamecube...forgot the name, it bombed cause that was the gimmick. But it's underwhelming right now...I'm curious to see how it'll impact later builds.
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I don't know if it's feasible, to write the code for barks like that, but if you'llforgive me for armchair designing, it's all y'all's if it helps. That's what I loved about Darkest Dungeon, they said some dreadfull things sometimes, without being like....edgelordy and cringey about it, if those translate well. You'll lose younger folks for sure, although Lovecraft wasn't considered too serious of a writer even in his day, but your core audience seems to be literary fans?

I'm glad the posts are both enjoyable and helpful, I got a lot of time on my hands waiting for an interview reply this week and a light court schedule lol, so I got lucky and have a buncha time. I'll try and get to the witch and see how she plays.

BTW, it sounds like a shill thing to say, but I wish I had more FB posts from y'all to share lmfao, the pics are awesome, and the passages are apropos lol.

[cradoi10]

More prof feedback, don't wanna start a new thread.

- Whoooa whoawhoawhoawhoa. Blue slimes? Dafuq? Y'all are tricky, I like it, hope to see more similar type of enemy tricks. For a second I thought it was a glitch, that's the idea, madness. Won't be more explicit, it's a small reveal but it screwed with me for a second lol.

- the boss fight in the hospital is INCREDIBLY tight. In the balance sense. This time, and I'm currently on my second consecutive playthough with the prof, I died too quickly lol. However yea, everything about it it timed great, the instances of boss movement vs reload time (unmodified weapon) vs attack patterns seeming random, all well done.

- I had an excruciating choice to make. Got golden bug(-ed) out the room, and then I had to go back to the store. (Which I knew was gonna spawn next to the other one, so it didn't seem like sloppy coding/RNG right, that was good, I had a strategy.

1. The boss does acid or posion damage.

2. I have 10k "money". Doesn't matter what kind.

3. Do I buy mines, or the weaker medkit? Neither is particularly key, the fight told me attrition was the problem, so I needed both survivability and damage.

I bought 5 of each, but you know what? I had to sit and think about that choice for a split second. It was fun. I hope the rest of the planned interactions feel the same, it's a lot of pieces to fall into place, but if you need an example of where basically literally everything y'all have been incredibly nice enough to tell me about the design philosophy, I think this moment nails it verbatim.

If this is what your game can feel like in EA, I'm excited.

EDIT: Hahahahaha the prof blows himself up when he dies of "magic damage" lmfao

[Stallker]

Hi.
Thank you for the feedback.
Many things that I have read here are not devoid of common sense and we will discuss with the team how to make the most necessary of them.
Stay tuned for updates.

[cradoi10]

with baited breath lol, that's probably one of the nicer things anyone's ever said about my writing, inlcuding the one time in law school where the prof told me she'd drop an entire letter grade for each extra page I'd go over the limit lol, most folks find no common sense usually. I'm super happy there's useful bits in betwwen though, all jokes aside, spasibo