I mean, imagine you're playing a RPG game, you put all your points into abilities EXCEPT your hit points and then you die when you face an enemy because you're too weak. Is it the game's fault or YOURS for not choosing your points wisely?
It depend... If you can load your last save and do other things in the game, long enough to finally raise your hit points, then it's your fault. But if you need to go back to the last time you assigned a point, and change your decision to "hit points" instead of the choice you made, then it
is the game fault.
In what RPG game you played, you needed to explicitly raise "this stat" to not be completely stuck ? I can't remember one released after the middle 80's. All of them need that you have "this many points in this stat" to progress this path. But all of them also have paths that can be progressed with your actual points distribution
and at least two different ways (based on different stats) to achieve the same goal.
That's the meaning of the stats, you build the MC the way you want it, and it must not prevent you to play. Either you're a good fighter and you fight your way to the objective, or you're a charmer and trick the guards. You can also be a stealth guy and nobody will even know that you were here, or a real acrobat and you'll enter by the window left open on the roof. There's always more than one way to do and you're never effectively stuck unless you have too many stats that are way too low. But when this happen, it's because you tried to go too fast, following a path that is way above your actual capabilities ; slow down your horses and goes for the path/quest related to your level.
Secondly, there's a tutorial AND a suggested starting points... so why ignore them?
Because the said tutorial claim that we can do as
we want... Either the player have the freedom to raise the stats he want, in the order he want, or he must do as expected. But it can't be both at the same time.
Keeping the previous paragraph, that's the difference between the player fault (he now know that his next choice will be to raise his hit) and the game fault (he needed to raise his hit points, now he's stuck and need to go back).
How many more hints do you need?
It's not a question of hint, it's a question of game design.
Yes, there's a hint. Yes, we know that we need to raise "this stat" to progress "this path". But it shouldn't matter, the player should be able to continue as he want with other path. And if he want to raise this stat last, when he have maxed all the others and decide to finally follow this path, he should be able to do it. But, as I implied in my previous comment, I don't expect this last assertion to be true in an indie game.
Seems to me all the gripes are, I don't want to read or figure things out, I want to just click and see all the naked scenes.
Well, for me at least, you're wrong. I want to enjoy the game I play. The naked chicks are part of this enjoyment, but just "part of". There's almost none in
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or
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, there were almost none in the early stages of
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. Still they are the games I enjoy the most ; and for the first one at least, we are legion to enjoy it.
But to enjoy a game, I need to understand the game ; or if you prefer, the game shouldn't lie to me. I'm fine with a game that goes, "you need to do this, then that, to go here, than there", as long as the game don't claim that I can do what I want.
There's a fine balance between TOO EASY and TOO HARD. I believe I've achieved this balance IF you take the time to actually read and understand the concept.
Sorry, but if there's only one way to progress, then the game is more on the "Too hard" side than anything else ; unless it's an interactive story more than a game. And the fact is that if you don't find the book in your room, you can start raising money. And you can't find the book if you don't have "this stat", while apparently not being able to raise the said stat afterwards.
So, sorry, but you failed. And it have nothing to do with reading or wanting the naked chicks from the starts. Like I said above, it's a question of game design. In the end, the sleuth stat is meaningless and shouldn't exist. You said it yourself, the player need to raise it with each update... which mean that you can simply ignore it and make every events depending of it depend of the advancement in the game.
All this being said without bad intentions. Your game is interesting despite his strange premise ; I wouldn't spend my time for a game I don't like or don't care about.
