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Exeunt Omnes
A game of strategic sophistry. Convince or crush the teenage girl who wants to end your reign of evil.
A game of strategic sophistry. Convince or crush the teenage girl who wants to end your reign of evil.
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RMN's (New) Favourite RM Games Of All Time Thread (2016 Edition)
Haha I made my list, then went to see my 2014 list. Main change is I discovered Merlandese. Otherwise, shame on me for being too old to change my mind on things, I guess.
1. A Blurred Line
2. The Way
3. I Miss The Sunrise
4. Set Discrepancy
5. Last Word
6. To the Moon
7. Star Stealing Prince
8. Leo and Leah
9. Aedemphia
10. Fleuret Blanc
NB: for anyone curious (who'd be, I have no idea), the ordering principle is mainly how much hope a game gave me about the medium when I played it.
1. A Blurred Line
2. The Way
3. I Miss The Sunrise
4. Set Discrepancy
5. Last Word
6. To the Moon
7. Star Stealing Prince
8. Leo and Leah
9. Aedemphia
10. Fleuret Blanc
NB: for anyone curious (who'd be, I have no idea), the ordering principle is mainly how much hope a game gave me about the medium when I played it.
I Miss the Sunrise Review
This review raises some valid points in a fairly uncivil way.
It is not unfair to score a game as a function of its aspirations, but then I think you should append a reference point to that score. Giving this game's plot+setting 2.5 out of 5 Asimovs or GregEgans seems defensible, while it clearly deserves 4.5 out of 5 VideogameSciFi.
Also, you kind of mix the game falling short of its potential and it saying something you don't like, which are both reasons for not enjoying it, but which should not be presented as arguments for each other.
Now I did not update my own review after playing the whole game, but I have to admit plot development overall was a bit more formulaic and less exciting than the rather radical setting - for me, the best part was all the flavor stuff, as is often the case in (the better end of) vidyagame writing. I won't lie, I had hoped for more, but still, "no substance"...
As for the gameplay, I think it just goes to show that balancing a RPG is hell; I remember when the game was *really* challenging. I'd just like to disagree with this:
This might or might not be the case here (I don't think it is, personally), but it's a fairly bad argument in general, like saying Go has no tactics because you have no supporting characters. Everything is always convertible to DPS/DPturn in RPG battle systems. Making this more transparent and then adding more temporal/spatial management tends to help have *real* tactics rather than just "find the gamebreaking combination of skills and equipment that the dev couldn't balance out".
If anything, I still think it was not transparent enough, with too many details to memorize before you could make significant decisions.
I raise that point in case Deltree (or anyone else) considers those arguments when making another game.
It is not unfair to score a game as a function of its aspirations, but then I think you should append a reference point to that score. Giving this game's plot+setting 2.5 out of 5 Asimovs or GregEgans seems defensible, while it clearly deserves 4.5 out of 5 VideogameSciFi.
Also, you kind of mix the game falling short of its potential and it saying something you don't like, which are both reasons for not enjoying it, but which should not be presented as arguments for each other.
Now I did not update my own review after playing the whole game, but I have to admit plot development overall was a bit more formulaic and less exciting than the rather radical setting - for me, the best part was all the flavor stuff, as is often the case in (the better end of) vidyagame writing. I won't lie, I had hoped for more, but still, "no substance"...
As for the gameplay, I think it just goes to show that balancing a RPG is hell; I remember when the game was *really* challenging. I'd just like to disagree with this:
That right there is your skill menu -- your only skill menu. Notice something? There are only attack skills (and a passive stat boost). Yes, really: instead of the rich diversity of character skills seen in most RPGs, your options are only ever damage, more damage, or damage of a different type. There aren’t even any AoE attacks, everything’s single-target. This is easily the worst design decision in the entire game; it pretty much vaporizes any possibility of tactical depth.
This might or might not be the case here (I don't think it is, personally), but it's a fairly bad argument in general, like saying Go has no tactics because you have no supporting characters. Everything is always convertible to DPS/DPturn in RPG battle systems. Making this more transparent and then adding more temporal/spatial management tends to help have *real* tactics rather than just "find the gamebreaking combination of skills and equipment that the dev couldn't balance out".
If anything, I still think it was not transparent enough, with too many details to memorize before you could make significant decisions.
I raise that point in case Deltree (or anyone else) considers those arguments when making another game.
Detective Games - Risking the Unwinnable
The tricky thing about true detective stuff is that there's a discrepancy between the representation of the world that the (linearly written) story presupposes, and the one that is given to the player. There's a degree of guesswork that goes in translating what the story is trying to tell into something that the player can actually do (which is generally limited to walking around, or picking options from a menu). Handholding is just a way to limit the arbitrariness and painfulness of that guesswork for the player.
To avoid it, you must either tone down the story to fit the player's tools (e.g. narratives where it makes sense to just be walking around, like Gone Home or a horror game where you're being chased by a monster) or expand the tools to fit the story. The best is to end up somewhere in between: for instance, as in Clue, have a mechanism that can represent some actions, and limit the story to something that can be represented like that in a clear, unambiguous way.
The closer your mechanism for representing information is to how you actually designed the story, the more likely it will be to let the player express their own thoughts and insights in a productive way.
To avoid it, you must either tone down the story to fit the player's tools (e.g. narratives where it makes sense to just be walking around, like Gone Home or a horror game where you're being chased by a monster) or expand the tools to fit the story. The best is to end up somewhere in between: for instance, as in Clue, have a mechanism that can represent some actions, and limit the story to something that can be represented like that in a clear, unambiguous way.
The closer your mechanism for representing information is to how you actually designed the story, the more likely it will be to let the player express their own thoughts and insights in a productive way.
Detective Games - Risking the Unwinnable
Good luck on making the prototype, and please feel free to experiment with the idea! I've also been frustrated by how guided most detective games (or similarly insight-based games like Phoenix Wright) tend to be, so I'd be super happy to see what you come up with.
Detective Games - Risking the Unwinnable
You could a few generic actions that are always available for use in these formulas. Stuff that is sufficiently broad in meaning that it can be used in multiple contexts.
With stuff like get/take, give, see, say... you can cover a lot of ground ("mr X" "get" "cigarettes" "at the store"), and you avoid the problem with parser interactive fiction where you need to guess the verb the author was thinking about.
One way I'd visualize a system like this: you've got a box where you mix the recipe and you can drop in various elements from an inventory, like "subject: mr X", "action:give" , "object:cigarettes", "target: ms Y", "location:store", "time:yesterday" so that the order of the 'sentence' doesn't matter, and it's easy to add more or less elements (for instance location or time are not always part of the recipe). For elements that can occupy different roles you may need first to combine "mr X" with "subject" or "target" before throwing it into the mix.
If that turns out to be too complicated, you can also have a few templates where boxes have to be filled for each of these roles (a template for direct action, indirect action, action at a location, and so on...)
With stuff like get/take, give, see, say... you can cover a lot of ground ("mr X" "get" "cigarettes" "at the store"), and you avoid the problem with parser interactive fiction where you need to guess the verb the author was thinking about.
One way I'd visualize a system like this: you've got a box where you mix the recipe and you can drop in various elements from an inventory, like "subject: mr X", "action:give" , "object:cigarettes", "target: ms Y", "location:store", "time:yesterday" so that the order of the 'sentence' doesn't matter, and it's easy to add more or less elements (for instance location or time are not always part of the recipe). For elements that can occupy different roles you may need first to combine "mr X" with "subject" or "target" before throwing it into the mix.
If that turns out to be too complicated, you can also have a few templates where boxes have to be filled for each of these roles (a template for direct action, indirect action, action at a location, and so on...)
Detective Games - Risking the Unwinnable
I have a slightly different suggestion - it is not incompatible with what you suggest, but I feel it is a bit more elegant (as it does not force a dead end).
If you don't want the player to just find things at random, you can use combinatorial explosion.
Imagine an "insight crafting" system where you have to put multiple elements together, Clue-style ("Mr X" "bought" "cigarettes" "at the shop"), and if the recipe is successful, you obtain/unlock a new topic/action/something.
Even if you have only 5 characters, 5 actions, 10 objects and 4 places for the whole game, that gives you a thousand possibilities - more than any player should be willing to exhaust - while making the correct combination is obvious once you've inferred what was happening.
If there's more than a single template, or even almost freeform combination (X saw Y kill Z), exhaustive search is even less plausible. The only thing that a player might be able to brute force is one missing element when they're pretty sure of the rest of the formula, and that's really not so bad (even Sherlock sometimes proceeds by elimination!)
If you don't want the player to just find things at random, you can use combinatorial explosion.
Imagine an "insight crafting" system where you have to put multiple elements together, Clue-style ("Mr X" "bought" "cigarettes" "at the shop"), and if the recipe is successful, you obtain/unlock a new topic/action/something.
Even if you have only 5 characters, 5 actions, 10 objects and 4 places for the whole game, that gives you a thousand possibilities - more than any player should be willing to exhaust - while making the correct combination is obvious once you've inferred what was happening.
If there's more than a single template, or even almost freeform combination (X saw Y kill Z), exhaustive search is even less plausible. The only thing that a player might be able to brute force is one missing element when they're pretty sure of the rest of the formula, and that's really not so bad (even Sherlock sometimes proceeds by elimination!)
RPG Maker shall not defeat us this time.
Great! Have lotsa vacation funs.
(Oh and as for the GAFDOQ thing, I'm sure it could work even for scenery and cutscenes, since it works for drawing (sketching) and for writing (drafting) - in essence, just block in the main elements of the map and the scene, then move on to the next scene, and only start looking back when you have a whole chapter or even a whole game. Knowing that the draft's going to be terrible and that's normal.
Anyway, not everyone works like this, but I figure it would be a relief for you to know that, even if you just stop improving on it, at least you have something playable from beginning to end that will be considered A Game. And you can focus the improvement on places that really deserve it.)
(Oh and as for the GAFDOQ thing, I'm sure it could work even for scenery and cutscenes, since it works for drawing (sketching) and for writing (drafting) - in essence, just block in the main elements of the map and the scene, then move on to the next scene, and only start looking back when you have a whole chapter or even a whole game. Knowing that the draft's going to be terrible and that's normal.
Anyway, not everyone works like this, but I figure it would be a relief for you to know that, even if you just stop improving on it, at least you have something playable from beginning to end that will be considered A Game. And you can focus the improvement on places that really deserve it.)
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