- Jan 30, 2018
- 933
- 1,523
This is my first time checking out the game and by the sound of things the quality of life improvements have come a long ways to make a better first impression.
The format it's taken now is the exact sort of thing I like best for this genre: mysterious setting that has a decent amount of thought put into the designs and 'fit' of everything, different paths to take, and some amount of customization that comes about by messing around with things you shouldn't or struggling really hard against a force that's trying to steer you. In my mind that's what makes a game like this satisfying for both playstyles where you're trying to find all the things that can happen and those where you're trying to avoid them - and the dialogues I've seen so far have been good about finding a balance between laying some of these out plainly and leaving others to implication. Not the most polished or eloquent, but reading them tells me that plenty of thought went into them.
Plus I have a soft spot for games that are knowingly cryptic and slightly-to-somewhat sadistic in their design. That combination will annoy a lot of people, but if it can come together just-so it makes figuring out how to proceed very satisfying.
That said, there are a couple of things that could be adjusted:
-In the mansion's courtyard, the doors should really be more distinct. I only found the passage to the east wing by pure dumb luck.
-A small event to introduce the grocery store would be a good idea. For several days I thought you were supposed to buy food at the mall from what looks like a convenience store.
-The closet is fairly tedious and if you play dress up for long enough it can lock up the game entirely.
-Item descriptions would go a long ways. Managing the blue bar in particular can get to be really tough when you're losing 75% of it to enter a dream, so taking random pills to see what they do isn't a great way to check things out. Figuring out that you need to buy expensive medkits to be able to stay asleep long enough to complete the witch's brew through trial and error is rough in the bad way.
And there is one definite gamebreaking bug: when you get your first paycheck from the maid cafe it resets your total and there's no way you can keep up with food costs earning only 1000 per day.
By the way: is it called Coffee Story because you have to drink so much of it to avoid nightmares?
The format it's taken now is the exact sort of thing I like best for this genre: mysterious setting that has a decent amount of thought put into the designs and 'fit' of everything, different paths to take, and some amount of customization that comes about by messing around with things you shouldn't or struggling really hard against a force that's trying to steer you. In my mind that's what makes a game like this satisfying for both playstyles where you're trying to find all the things that can happen and those where you're trying to avoid them - and the dialogues I've seen so far have been good about finding a balance between laying some of these out plainly and leaving others to implication. Not the most polished or eloquent, but reading them tells me that plenty of thought went into them.
Plus I have a soft spot for games that are knowingly cryptic and slightly-to-somewhat sadistic in their design. That combination will annoy a lot of people, but if it can come together just-so it makes figuring out how to proceed very satisfying.
That said, there are a couple of things that could be adjusted:
-In the mansion's courtyard, the doors should really be more distinct. I only found the passage to the east wing by pure dumb luck.
-A small event to introduce the grocery store would be a good idea. For several days I thought you were supposed to buy food at the mall from what looks like a convenience store.
-The closet is fairly tedious and if you play dress up for long enough it can lock up the game entirely.
-Item descriptions would go a long ways. Managing the blue bar in particular can get to be really tough when you're losing 75% of it to enter a dream, so taking random pills to see what they do isn't a great way to check things out. Figuring out that you need to buy expensive medkits to be able to stay asleep long enough to complete the witch's brew through trial and error is rough in the bad way.
And there is one definite gamebreaking bug: when you get your first paycheck from the maid cafe it resets your total and there's no way you can keep up with food costs earning only 1000 per day.
By the way: is it called Coffee Story because you have to drink so much of it to avoid nightmares?