I see a lot of potential in this game and I'm willing to give early version a pass in many aspects. But I really hope that the navigation UX will improve soon. Walking around without fast travel is not a nice experience.
Some easy fixes I would suggest:
- Separate Wait more clearly from navigation. Maybe put it in the sidebar or as a permanent banner on the top or bottom of screens. The worst offender is the main street where the Wait is in the middle
- Have a fixed structure for navigating out of a building. If I want to leave the house from my room, I first have to click on the last item then the first item and then the last again. Other places have "Exit" or "Back". Worst offender here is the Shopping District where the Main Street is the second last navigation item or 3rd item if you count "Wait".
- Remove dead ends, e.g. Natalie's Office.
- Maybe reduce the number of places all together. Are all 7 offices in the Academics Building going to be used?
- Clearer separation of event and navigation. Usually there is a divider between navigation and events/actions, but on main street there is a divider between places and in the abandoned shop there is a divider between rooms and "Outside". Also events are sometimes above navigation, e.g. in Mom's room and sometimes below.
Oh wow! Thank you for the feedback! You're not wrong about how terrible the navigation is. I do plan on overhauling a LOT of it. But let's get through each points first -
1. The navigation will change drastically with the coming updates and you're right about the placements of "Wait".
2. Regarding the structure of navigation I will be replacing the link based navigation to image based, so that it's a bit more put together. Also, why the heck didn't I think about an exit button in the Player room?! Thanks for that.
3. Damn I forgot to put the WIP gifs there. But it will be used.
4. Yes all 7 offices in the Academics Building will be used for quests and fun.
5. Like I mentioned before with an image based navigation system, dividers won't be all that necessary for quests and activities as they too will be image based.
For now my main concentration is still on the content. UX and UI are still on the back burner, rest assured I won't ignore them, you'll start seeing incremental changes with each updates.
Hope that clears things up. Again thank you for the feedback and thank you for playing.