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(+1)

Very nice game! I liked the narration most of all. It was also interesting with some options never being possible to select. Even if it probably related to content cut due to running out of time, it kind of became a form of narrative too. Like you can’t ask mother “why” in the beginning because you don’t have that ability yet. Probably never will get. Or perhaps that one was on purpose. I liked it a lot though.

I was about to give up in the first room, because I couldn’t open the door. This was because I had pressed so much Return in the dialog I forgot that F was the interaction key when outside of the dialog. Might be worth reminding players or make a bit of remapping so Return also works as F the same way F works for Return in the dialog/text options.

It was a bit hard at times to see when there was a lot of text where the current message started. Perhaps there could have been an empty line or some margin or something to mark it out a bit.

The game was a bit confusing pacing-wise. Leaving that first safe room, I got hit down to a sliver of health before reaching the healing station. That made me think, alright this game is going to toy with my emotions and keep me feeling like I’ll be dying all the time. And then the save feature said it might have saved. Which reinforced that feeling. But after that first close call, the game soon leveled me up enough I could hardly be hurt by the spacers.

The fighting was of course quite simplistic and with the random encounters, it was about to become a bit annoying but then I found the weapons module and could one-shot the spacers and then it was fine.

I only killed one of the people in the cryo-tanks, because it felt the right thing to do. The others weren’t going anywhere. And equally it was the most parsimonious option to reduce awake crew after having spoken to and learnt the truth from the one standing before the end thingy.

Lovely little game, very well written.

Playthrough: https://youtu.be/bttt5o0f_iY (there’s a pause where I restarted and got myself back to the door before I realized what key to press)

(+1)

Thank you for the extensive feedback. I appreciate the video as well.

  • Yep, the plan was to limit gameplay based on a permission system/free will theme – the permission to break down certain walls of the ship, etc., with Mother unable to take them back once given, thus very reluctant to ever give you any of them until it’s absolutely necessary. But the pace of these permissions is a bit rushed in the jam and I couldn’t get to most of the ideas. It’s mostly a bit of flavor with the disabled dialogue options now.

  • F for doors is definitely getting put in as a tutorial line as soon as possible after. I could have done that in thirty seconds had I thought of it, but it would have helped for a lot of people.

  • Not too sure how to interpret the current text message thing. It does grey out older messages when new ones come in, or at least it’s supposed to. In some cases it sends multiple lines without greying out the previous, but perhaps I should just increase the contrast, you can tell me what you think if you like.

  • The combat/pacing is what I most want to refine. The random encounter system was added in the last day, and only adds enemies to a random encounter pool when you kill others (spoiler), for lore reasons, with the intent of having pacifist/non-pacifist playthroughs be possible, kind of going for an Undertale approach. I also wanted Mother to encourage combat while the player was still trusting in her and incapable of speaking with the “bad guys”. But what it currently means is that players will blindly pick a few fights and flood the random encounter pool before they even learn they can heal. It’s tuned such that you should at least survive a couple battles but otherwise not intentional. Also didn’t have time for combat items, skills on level-up, etc.

Thanks again for playing!

(+1)

Oh, while playing I didn’t really notice that the previous message turned grey. I think either some more contrast there and/or extra space between entries/prompts should assist a lot.

I didn’t get that it was possible to do a pacifist run, but given that inspiration, it might be “nice” if there’s a genocide run too… maybe there is, had I only dealt with the two cryo that I didn’t wake up…

There’s not currently any special reactivity for it, but killing everyone/no one is possible… sort of. If you anger someone into hitting you, currently you can only finish them off. But yeah, it would be fun to take that further. :)