I played through the demo and came away with a few impressions that might help the dev as he/she refines this game:
- It isn't clear why this game is being developed. It's in a pretty saturated market, and doesn't yet do anything that hasn't been done a dozen times by games much more mature than this one. The dev's notes don't give us any clue, either. If this game is going to be unique, the dev needs to not only say so, but include some of that in early builds, if possible.
- The mechanics are clunky right now. Dressing seems to take way too many clicks, for instance, and why do I need to click on the street and then the store when I could just click on the store? The dev should look at ways to click once, like maybe an outfit system and a strip button.
- Time is wonky. I think my char moved in and cleaned the whole house in less than an hour. The home repair dudes took minutes to refurbish the house. This is linked to the fatigues system, but the linkage wasn't clear. Also, I think that "happiness" isn't the measure you are looking for; I am not less happy when I finish cleaning the bathroom, I am more happy, because it is done. Maybe "boredom" vs "stimulation" or something is what you are looking for. Cleaning is boring.
- A lot of the personal characteristics use the word "normal" as one of the choices. There really isn't a "normal" for most of these. Breast sizes are not referred to as "large, normal, and small." "Medium" works with "large" and "small," "average" with "above-average" and "below-average." "Normal" only really works as a comparison to "abnormal."
- The cooking minigame, where you make the player try to remember what the recipe said, is awful. It's exactly the kind of minigame that pisses off players, because it just makes a routine thing (we've all used recipes of one kind or another, and always looked at the recipe if there was something we were unsure of, like cooking times). Building a game around makiing routine tasks irritatingly difficult is a bad design choice. Puzzle minigames work; memorization minigames fail.
The game certainly has promise, but the bits I've seen so far don't seem to have been assembled with a lot of forethought. Decide where you want the player to think, and what you want them to decide, and then present the information they need to decide that, and no more. Minigames, if even present, need to be related to the story, not just tacked on to add to player irritation.
Good luck with this.
Thank you for your feedback. Keep in my that this is my first game and I'm new to all of this.
First, I won't be giving false hopes to anyone. I don't want anyone to think that this is just a masterpiece or a piece of art that will stand out from the other games here. My primary goal isn't to milk players delaying updates or giving short updates after long periods.
As time goes on I'll expand on what I want the game to become (Or atleast what I've planned).
I know most of the mechanics are clunky. If you just saw how it was before... I've been refining them as I learn how to make them better. I don't have dozens of people behind me telling how to improve those mechanics. I'm not an expert with 15 years of expertise nor I'm getting paid. (Don't take it in a bad way. I love what I'm doing and I love learning with the game).
They will be refined later to become less cumbersome and more fun? Of course, but it takes time.
The wardrobe have constant changes. "Strip all" button will be coming in the next update. The map is like that because there won't be just one store or place at each street, there will be more places in them. Just like the supermarket is part of the "map navigation" but has the Clothing Store and other places to come.
Time is just that. If you read what the "cleaning" action button says you can see that for each action you add 15 minutes to it, using energy and fun (even adding points to you hunger level and decreasing your hygiene level).
The intro(home repair guys) add 2 hours but doesn't use any stat as is the intro, if people see that "non immersive" then I'll make it to use stats.
In what ways time will affect gameplay? Well at night there will be some places that will be open, others will close. Some activities can be done at night and some at day.
And that's not a happiness stat hahaha. It's a "fun" stat. If you hover your mouse on it, it will say so. I made that icon as a happy face because I'm not an artist/drawer.
Yeah I need to change a lot of things about personal characteristics, as how sensibility is displayed and other things like "normal" instead of "regular" or maybe "common".
The next update will have this changed. Thanks
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The cooking minigame is at it "second stage". It got reworked so it could be more easy to me to add new recipes and steps.
Why do you need to memorize it? Because for now I haven't implemented any other way to check recipe steps. One of the things that I can say about this and that is in my plans is that after you get to the recommended level (for that recipe) you won't need to do the minigame again, instead you'll get the food (but it doesn't give cooking exp anymore). The "early" way could be to people check recipe steps again before cooking, maybe in something like a codex where info is stored.
When this will be implemented? When I make an update focused solely on the cooking mechanic.
People like memorization minigames too lol I'm one of them.
The game just had only 2 updates. One of them was a hotfix and the other a QoL update, there isn't a lot of things to do so that's why this is a "demo" or a "test" version.
Thanks again for you feedback. If you want to maybe give me some ideas on how to improve some mechanics or any new mechanic/idea that you may think it will be worth looking at, pm me I'll gladly give it a look and talk with you
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