*/// Feedback \\\*
With version 0.0.14.2 leaking I figured this might be a good time to ask you all for feedback. Development on CMW has been going well, but I recently heard someone mention that the game still feels very early in development. How would you rate the current state of the game? And I'm particularly interested in the following points:
- Clarity (do you know where to go / what to do?)
- UI / UX (is the user interface easy to use / does it do what you think it should do?)
- Polish (does the game feel polished / professional to you?)
- Bugs (have you ran into any bugs?)
Besides that I would also love to hear any suggestions you may have for the game.
I haven't yet played / experience the update since 0.0.14.2 (last played 0.0.14.1), so take my feedback with an even healthier grain of salt than you'd normally give to any feedback anyways
Firstly - I want to start by saying that I _really_ enjoy the game. This is one of the games that I most look forward to updates on. So while this feedback will by it's nature contain some negative items, overall I really enjoy the game as a whole and am looking forward to it's progression.
With regards to level of development - at least my impression is that story-wise you are a fair bit into it, perhaps getting close to either the ending or else the last chapter, depending on if you have a phase after the final individual is cleansed. Most game-devs I know tend to save things such as detailed polish, etc., towards the very end, so honestly I'm not expecting a super polished experience right now.
To your questions:
1. Clarity (do you know where to go / what to do?):
Most of the time yes. There are a couple of optional times where it was a bit difficult to determine.
Example 1: The "Laundry Day" photograph, along with the evening photograph (whichever day that was), are two notable examples. Laundry day occurs during a single loop in the game if memory serves me right; it does not show up on the calendar and isn't ever really mentioned again. So the hint provided wasn't something I was able to use, because by the point I was trying to complete the photo album it was way past when laundry day had occurred and I had no in-game way to look that day up.
Example 2: The fairies. I'm going off memory, but I think I'm missing a single fairy in my save. I have no idea where the fairy would be, there is no hinting system that can point me towards what section of the map it would be, I don't know if they only show up at certain times of the day, and finally... I don't actually know the point of collecting them. My assumption is it's just a fun little thing to collect... but I don't think the game ever actually confirms that.
2. UI / UX (is the user interface easy to use / does it do what you think it should do?):
Most of the time yes as well! Some specific examples of things that are non-intuitive to me.
Example 1: Time travel was unintuitive to me the first time. Perhaps this was just due to having an older save, but my experience was that the icon on the calendar just... appeared. I didn't realize it was related to the time travel mechanic, so I was looking for a different button. So I clicked on it, trying to figure out what it was. If memory serves me right, I then didn't follow that up by clicking on a day (because I didn't realize it was time travel), and it ended up causing the script error page to pop up!
Example 2: Navigation at night. This is something that becomes relevant when you are checking the telescope to complete your photo album. In the day, you can use the map to quick teleport to the telescope to try and grab the photo... for the night one, you have to navigate there manually. Given that you don't know what day the photo is on, that means you basically have to check every day by navigating through 6+ clicks per day, which really slows it down. I eventually just looked up which day to time travel to instead of figuring it out in-game because it was too much effort to brute-force (and to be honest, the fact that I was brute-forcing it initially probably implies I wasn't seeing the hinting).
3. Polish (does the game feel polished / professional to you?):
Professional, yes, polished... somewheres in the middle.
Some of the polish is just that the game literally isn't finished yet. Simple example: There is a photo hint in the album talking about penelope at the glory hole, but that hasn't been added yet. There are a lot of areas of the game that imply more customization is coming, but is currently mostly empty (example: the clothing selection for the main character. Off memory - I think there were something like 9 slots for appearance changes, but only 1 or 2 are in use currently).
There are some other very minor bits of polish are things that _could_ be updated now, but I'd normally see them saved until the game is mostly story-complete and things are entering the later stages of development.
Example 1: The navigation at night comment from the UI/UX section.
Example 2: Rare Monster photographs - it'd be nice if the game made it more likely to experience the rare monsters you don't already have a photo of
Example 3: Potion usage - not all of the potions are usable in all of the situations you'd expect it to. An example would be the potion increasing your cum output. If memory serves me right, it gets used once and then basically never again, whereas it'd make sense for it to maybe add some bit of flavour text to most of the scenes (even if it doesn't change the pictures, CG's, etc).
1. Bugs (have you ran into any bugs?):
Yes, but not anything game breaking.
I did run into the santa bug that was being discussed above, but my save is also old enough where I did the santa quest last year, so that's the likely culprit.
I mentioned the time travel bug up above, but that was very much a "Doctor! It hurts when I do X! (Doctor) Well don't do X then" situation.
The only other one I remember off the top of my head was the counselors christmas outfit showing up as a "?" even after it was unlocked. In my game, if I click on the "?", she'll put on the outfit, but it still doesn't show up in the outfit selection screen.
EDIT: clarified the last sentence