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murcheson

7
Posts
A member registered Mar 06, 2021

Recent community posts

This rules. I was delighted by each reveal of where a character is in relation to the others. Would love to see more of this.

Is there meant to be more to this besides guessing? Sometimes games have hints or clues.

Terrific. Remembering the anvil on the roof felt immensely satisfying. Challenging but not at all unfair. Well done!

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Very cool. Thanks again. As I said, I look forward to further updates! I think it's a shame that this kind of game went out of fashion, even before Flash got the axe. Sometimes I just want to feel like a smartypants and solve inventory puzzles without having to click through a bunch of exhausting "story" or run away from zombies or whatever! And now that I understand the controls a little better, I will definitely take another run at this when I have time.

Let me know if you're ever looking for a volunteer to help playtest!

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Sorry to add on to an already too-long comment, but if I may humbly suggest:

  • The most recently acquired inventory item should be "active" automatically.
  • The primary mouse button should either view, pick up or activate whatever interactable element is under the reticle. Right mouse button could maybe cycle through inventory items, or deactivate an item if that function is needed (although it shouldn't be).
  • If an item is active, primary mouse button should also serve to use that item (like a key) on whatever interactable element is under the reticle (lock).
  • On combination lock puzzles, you might want to give some basic player instructions, like "type in the answer and hit enter," because currently it is not very clear how you want players to input codes. (Also, I can only seem to input digits from the number row, and not the numpad. Can't imagine why that is.)

I picked up the first available object in the game (a cup) and I wasn't able to make it the "active" item from the inventory screen. I thought maybe it was something about that object -- there are a few other disposable cups in the game, and maybe all you intended for me to do with them is drop them. However, when I finally found a cabinet key (presumably important), the game wouldn't let me use that item either. Maybe that is your intention, but if this is intended to be an escape-the-room game and not some kind of artful experiment, you might want to make sure that players can use a key on a lock.

Also, this is not a deal-breaker for me, but you are expecting players of an essentially casual game genre to learn a LOT of function-specific key bindings here. Classic escape games are point-and-click, and that ease-of-use is part of the appeal. Obviously, you are putting a 3D, FPS (first-person solver?) gloss on it, which is great! Absolutely, do that! But I would like this game a lot more if my mouse buttons assumed the functionality you currently have variously assigned to the keys E, V, F, and Q. Everyone knows WASD, and based on the design, I can see how you would want a function key to open and close the inventory. But asking players to also remember that viewing something requires a different button than picking something up, which requires a different button than using an item--it all seems needlessly complicated, and it kind of sucks to play when it could be so much simpler. I quit the game after exploring a bit, solving one puzzle, and finding one unusable key, but even in those few minutes I found myself pulling up the "help" screen multiple times just to remember which button you want me to use for what. I mean, when I look at the key in my inventory, there is a tooltip that tells me which button will drop the item, but not which button will let me use the item, which seems like an oversight.

Anyway, I hope I don't sound like too much of a jerk... I really do appreciate what you're trying to do here, and I will still be excited to play this game when it becomes functional for me.

PS: I'll attach a screenshot of this, but on the left side of the room, in the filing cabinets between the two bookshelves, it's possible to read the document in the top-right drawer (the "CODE = ABCDD" note) even though the drawer is still locked. Seems like a glitch.