My First Game

Just uploaded my new game, be awesome to get some feedback:

http://www.sharemygame.com/share/eda32d3c-0eee-40fb-b58c-525160f08f37

and try your best to ignor the typos I’m not the best with spelling :smile:

Hi Chloe,

Well done for completing this section of the course and publishing your game! :slight_smile:

Feedback as requested;

  • I got momentarily confused during the narrative as I had missed the “The day before” sub-heading, so I went from reading a letter, sitting in a chair to opening a gate - I actually reloaded the game in the browser to double-check I hadn’t missed something else. It may help to separate the sub-heading with an empty line before the story text continues, or, to try to include it in the narrative so that the reader doesn’t miss it.

    Note: This happened again later when I “check the tools”, but this time I spent an extra second to look up at the sub-heading, which I had again not paid a lot of attention to. One thought on this, each state has a sub-heading, effectively telling the player where they are, perhaps these would stand out more if they were used less, e.g. only have them when it is “The Previous Day” or “The Night Before” etc, just a thought.

  • Time-shifting in the narrative - one other thing I have noticed is that the time-shifting felt/read better when there was more of it in one of those times, for example, if the current state is “now”, then the next state is “yesterday”, then the next state is “now” again it can get a bit confusing. However, if there are several states in a row in one of those times then it becomes a bit easier to follow. You do have this later on, but there are a few where you bounce the reader back for just one state, and then return to the present again.

  • Options - you have quite a few options where there isn’t really a choice, it’s just “Continue” or similar, in some cases this will be necessary but being that the game you are offering is based on a Choose Your Own Adventure I think you need to keep those to a minimum where possible so that it gives the impression of choice to the player.

    On that note, I also found that each time there was an option to “Look Around”, it was always option 1 and I never came to any harm by doing so. Mixing up the order of the choices may help, but also what happens within those choices, perhaps the story needs a few more endpoints? For example, when I read that I knew I had to go to the third floor in the mansion, I was still presented with options for exploring all three floors, which I did, I visited them in order, nothing bad happened. On the second floor, as you have already described how most of it has collapsed, perhaps there’s an option to look around in a specific room, and if I do my candle gets blown out and I end up falling through the floor. Consequences etc. Again, just a thought.

  • Continuity - I came to a state where I had options for binding the vampire(s), I suddenly have items I didn’t recall seeing previously (binding necklace/knives?)

  • Ending - I really liked the way that you linked back to the letter, that was a fantastic way of circling back to the start of the story and concluding it, revealing the plot - well done. :slight_smile:

  • Spelling - I know you mentioned in this when you posted above, and whilst I did try to ignore them, there are quite a few. Especially with this kind of text-based game, you are bound to get a lot of feedback that points these out, and, if you’ve flagged it up yourself when you promote the game being published some may ask, “If you knew about them, why didn’t you fix them?” for example. I fully appreciate spelling may not be your thing, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses but perhaps you could use some tools which could help you with that. If you have access to Microsoft Word on your computer, for example, you could copy/paste the narrative in and let Word do the hard work for you, correcting them as you re-read it yourself and then copy/pasting back into Unity. If you don’t have access to software like that you could try the web, I did a quick search on Google for “Online spell check”, the following was in the top results;

    I have no idea what it’s like but it lets you select a language and you can just copy/paste back and forth.

    Whilst the spelling errors are a huge issue in themselves, what they create is a distraction for the reader, a bit like the time-shifting, if it becomes distracting it becomes harder to read, if it’s harder to read it’s less fun, if it’s less fun - “Why am I playing this?”

Again, well done for completing this section of the course, publishing your game and creating an interesting and enjoyable experience for your players. I really liked your narrative and I can tell you really invested in your game as there are so many states which create your verbose story. The time-shiftig was a feature I haven’t yet seen anyone else consider adding so was interesting, the option to read the letter though, that was a great addition!

I hope some of the above is of use to you :slight_smile:

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Thank you for the feed back it really helped :slightly_smiling_face:

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You’re very welcome :slight_smile:

Thanks o

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